This Florida county is struggling with inflation and housing costs. Voters don't trust either party to fix it.
The latest installment in ABC News' "Your Voice, Your Vote" series.
Rebecca Esche has lived in Jacksonville, Florida, for most of her life. She is active in her community, getting hooked on the local political scene by "rabble rousing" and engaging with local lawmakers about the state of the city's public parks on social media. The 35-year-old artist, homemaker and mother of a first grader is passionate about issues like LGBTQ+ rights and combating climate change.
But while she's an involved citizen and a committed voter, she's not excited about voting this year. "I will hold my nose," she said. "This is probably the one that hurts. It hurts the most so far … This one, I'm not stoked on it."
And while Esche plans to vote for President Joe Biden, she knows plenty of other people who probably won't bother to vote at all this year. The primary concern she and some of her friends have about this year's presidential contest isn't even about the issues, she says; it's that both major-party candidates — including Biden, who she believes is fundamentally a "good guy" — are out of touch with the everyday economic realities at the top of voters' minds.
This is a common attitude in competitive Duval County, which is coterminous with Jacksonville. Former President Donald Trump narrowly won the county in 2016 before it flipped to Biden in 2020, 51 percent to 47 percent — the first time the county had voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976. But if voters were looking for a change, they may not feel that change has come.
In an election year in which voters nationwide are particularly unenthused about the state of the country, and about a 2020 rematch between unpopular candidates, local economic and political tensions only seem to amplify their doldrums. The Jacksonville community has experienced steep increases in housing prices and cost of living over the past five years, and many voters say they aren't hearing a compelling message on these issues from either side.
The Jacksonville voters we spoke to feel that politics has become as much about culture wars as it has about issues like economic policy. "I've never seen a time when politicians run on things that aren't really related to issues; they're running on slogans … running on how to make the other person look so bad," said Matt Carlucci, a moderate Republican and insurance agent who sits on the city council.
"I think 60 percent of the country is looking for answers to real issues," he added, but he lamented that those issues, like the high cost of living, aren't being addressed by politicians on either side of the aisle, as intense partisanship has resulted in a war between two political fringes. "The middle doesn't have a chance to be heard, because they're too busy taking their kids to school, going to work, paying their taxes, going to church, coaching their kids' Little League, doing things that regular, normal, productive citizens do."
In that sense, Esche represents a typical Jacksonville voter this year: someone who is disappointed by the state of politics and who knows the direction she wants the country to go in but is not animated by the choices before her. A major question going into the election is just how many voters like her will also "hold their noses" and show up to the polls — and how many will just stay home.
"It'll come down to turnout — how many Democrats turn out, how many Republicans turn out — and a lot of that has to do with the excitement behind the candidate," Carlucci said. "And with the candidates we have now… [they] will have to do everything they can to turn out their base," he said, shaking his head dispiritedly.
Located in Northeast Florida, Jacksonville is one of the largest cities in the country by land area and has a much more Southern feel than many other Florida cities. The Caribbean-inspired pastels typical in much of the state give way here to a streetscape with a more columned, stately brick vibe.
Like most of the rest of the country, and especially the South, Florida underwent a profound political transformation in the past half century, as rural areas became more solidly Republican and bigger cities became more Democratic. And as is true for other states, which column Florida falls into often comes down to turnout in swingy and populous urban and suburban areas, like Duval County.
In recent presidential cycles, Florida has shifted from being a pivotal swing state — it decided the 2000 election — to being redder at both the state and national levels. Jacksonville bucked the trend by shifting to Biden four years ago and electing a Democratic mayor last year. The split between a Democratic mayor and Republican city council has prompted some of the "culture war" conflicts that Jacksonville residents on both sides of the aisle pointed to as a distraction.
Demographics likely play a role here: The city is in some ways a microcosm of the United States. Unlike many other big cities in the state, where Latinos are the largest or second-largest racial or ethnic group, Jacksonville, which has just about 1 million residents, is about half white, 30 percent Black, 11 percent Latino and 5 percent Asian American; there is also a small Arab American population that the U.S. Census Bureau counts as white and has a long history in the region.
As larger Latino populations in South Florida have flocked to the Republican Party, eating away at Democrats' advantage in other cities, Jacksonville's demographics could help it move in the opposite direction.
"What's made Duval County sort of this epic battleground county in America is really [that] it's a voter-registration war," said Dean Black, a state representative and chair of the Duval County Republican Party. He noted that more voters in the county are registered to vote as Democrats than as Republicans, but Republicans have been working to catch up and strengthen their get-out-the-vote operation.
Black particularly emphasized his party's economic message, saying increased cost of living is a main topic of conversation for voters in Duval County and arguing that "inflationary policies" and government spending under the Biden administration are the main cause. (Economists say the reasons behind inflation are more complicated: After the COVID-19 pandemic, supply-chain issues, a tightening labor market and energy price increases spurred in part by the war in Ukraine all contributed to rising prices.)
Whatever the cause, the residents of Jacksonville certainly have pressing economic concerns. Among them is whether they can afford to continue living in their city at all.
Over the past few years, rents and home prices in Jacksonville have shot up. Rent.com found that rents in the city rose by 8.2 percent last year. Home prices, too, have risen sharply. The average home price in February 2020, right before the pandemic, was just over $198,820, according to Zillow; this June, it was $302,349.
Both of these metrics were driven in part by the fact that Florida remains a top destination state for movers. Plus, unlike cities farther south that tend to attract retirees, Jacksonville has recently attracted many younger families and those newly able to work from home. The city is affordable compared with areas with similar populations like Westchester County, New York, where home prices also shot up and currently sit at $787,186, or San Francisco, where prices have been declining but are still almost $1.3 million.
Corporations got in on the buying spree too. Jacquelyn Harris, a long-time Jacksonville resident who joined a local advocacy group because of housing affordability issues, said her monthly rent went up drastically during the pandemic: from $700 to almost $1,200 in two years. She blamed rent increases on corporations buying up properties and raising rents. "They were like buzzards," she said.
Experts say she's right. David Jaffee, a sociologist at the University of North Florida, started a program to investigate and identify the reasons for increased rental prices in Jacksonville, and he's found that corporate ownership of rental properties plays a much larger role in increased prices than traditional models account for. Because housing is a basic need, he said, families are not always in a position to look for and demand lower prices.
"People need shelter, they need a home, they have families, they have kids, and so they're going to take what they can find … [but] it's going to impact the ability to pay for all the other necessities of life," Jaffee said. "At some point, it's going to be unbearable, they're going to have to move, they're gonna get evicted." Indeed, in 2022, Jacksonville had the highest eviction rate of any major metropolitan area in Florida, a study from UNF found, with a monthly average of 7.08 evictions for every 1,000 renters.
Esche started to notice problems with her budget a year ago. She said her family switched the grocery store they went to and started eating out less to save money. "Parents aren't having birthday parties for their kids as much as last year," she said. "You can feel it. I mean, there's a girl in my daughter's class who turned to her and said, 'I wish I had strawberries. My mommy said they're too expensive.'"
Esche knows many neighbors who are thinking about leaving Jacksonville. "There is a mass exodus," she said. "People can't afford insurance. They can't afford food, they can't afford the things that they want to do entertainmentwise, because all of the prices have climbed so high." It was only through a devastating loss — the death of her father, who raised her as a single dad and left her a small sum of money — that she and her husband were able to buy a home in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Jacksonville five years ago. Today, Esche doesn't think they'd be able to afford a house in her home city.
Both parties have their own proposals to address these issues. Biden touched on the cost of housing in his State of the Union address and has promoted a plan that would give first-time homebuyers a tax credit of up to $10,000, among other proposals, while Republicans, including Trump, have focused on reducing mortgage interest rates. But while Americans' pessimism about the economy has eased a bit in recent months as economic indicators show a growing economy that is doing well on many measures, voters still aren't wild about the way Biden has handled it. In April, only 38 percent of Americans said they had a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence in Biden to do the right thing for the economy, according to Gallup.
Part of this comes down to the fact that Americans are thinking about the economy differently after the pandemic: Issues like high housing prices and costs for necessities in particular have left most Americans feeling gloomy, and they remain very concerned about inflation, even as it's slowed significantly. It's no surprise that these concerns are exacerbated in places like Jacksonville, given that inflated housing costs are a big part of why prices are still rising, and in Florida broadly, which still has one of the highest inflation rates in the country. And Biden's low approval ratings aren't the only hint that this could push voters toward Trump: Polls have found that voters trust him more than Biden to handle the economy.
Conventional wisdom holds that a sitting president with such low approval on economic issues faces headwinds to reelection. And with consumer costs remaining high, Democrats have been left to push back against the prevailing ideas that their policies are to blame. It's a tough sell, even to many liberals.
A friend of Esche's, Lindsay Bowyer, said she's planning to vote for a third-party candidate, Jill Stein of the Green Party. Bowyer, who works in art education, is upset with the ultra-conservative turn in her state, including efforts to remove diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in education and pass anti-LGBTQ+ laws. She says she feels abandoned by the federal government on many of these issues.
"Particularly at the federal level, I have lost a lot of optimism," Bowyer said. "I'm going to be directing more of my energy toward the state and local level."
But she's also one of the many who have considered leaving Florida, in no small part due to the increased costs of housing, especially for home insurance. "We have already had to switch insurance carriers because, in just a short three-year time span, our premium was going to double, and we simply couldn't afford it," she said. Her family's insurance broker encouraged them to budget, but they had to switch carriers and opt for a less comprehensive policy. "If the money is not there, the money is not there," she said.
Bowyer said she doesn't blame presidents for every price increase, but there's a larger problem with both parties being out of touch. "I don't really feel like they care about us. The more that I watched and the more that I learned, the more the two primary parties just seemed the same. And they both seem increasingly corrupt and out of touch with what the average American wants and needs," she said. "I've never been somebody who expects the president … to be some kind of hero. But at this point, it just feels like the bar is below sea level."
Carlucci says issues like Bowyer's increasing home insurance premiums are the kinds of issues politicians should be working on every day but are failing to address at a local, state and national level. "[Voters] want to hear about that kind of stuff," he said. "They're tired of the government getting into other cultural issues … Forget it. Let's talk about the basics."
Losing disenchanted voters on either side of the aisle could make the difference this November in Duval County, and in swing areas like it around the country. Esche says she understands why some voters don't feel up to voting at all. "What is missing in our politics right now is, it feels the constituents are being forgotten," she said. "There's the culture wars, and there's the back and forth, and the Democrats versus Republicans. But in the meantime, there are very real people that are hurting."
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