Why Democrats are touting Jacksonville mayoral win as rebuke of DeSantis' playbook

Jacksonville, Florida, on Tuesday elected only its second Democratic mayor in 30 years -- reshuffling the politics of one of the country's 15 largest cities and a large swing county in one of the nation's fastest-growing red states.

After former TV news anchor Donna Deegan defeated JAX Chamber CEO Daniel Davis in the runoff in Gov. Ron DeSantis' birthplace, both state and national Democrats celebrated the victory as a sign of a potential shift not even six months after the midterm elections saw Republicans romp around what had been a perennial swing state.

Jacksonville, which has a joint city-county government, had been the largest city in the country run by a Republican. Incumbent Lenny Curry was term-limited.

"Success is measured in elections, and ... Florida Democrats came up huge. Donna Deegan headed up a ticket that saw Democrats win in 6 of the 9 elections on the ballot in Florida's largest city," the Florida Democratic Party chair, Nikki Fried, said in a statement to ABC News.

A source close to the Biden campaign, who asked not to be quoted by name, echoed that.

"We see this as sending a pretty strong signal to folks that count us out of Florida," they said. "I think it's such a significant swing past where the midterms were, so it definitely sends a good signal and puts us on the offense a little bit."

Deegan, who also started a locally notable breast cancer nonprofit, campaigned on "change for good" and a message of transparency -- "throw open the blinds and bring the sunshine in," she has said. Her three key issues were infrastructure, health care and increasing support for businesses, big and small.

Davis, a former City Council member, heavily emphasized "law and order" and public safety during his campaign. He warned that Jacksonville risked, in his words, sliding into some of the same issues faced by New York or San Francisco unless the city embraced the vision of conservatives like DeSantis, who endorsed Davis.

Like Deegan, Davis also included infrastructure and the economy among his priorities. But unlike Deegan, he had to stave off contentious challenges from three other GOP hopefuls.

Noting the latter dynamic, Republicans played down the broader implications of just one election and insisted their loss on Tuesday had more to do with Davis' inability to recover from the "very brutal, bloody primary" than any reversal in GOP momentum across the state.

"It's kind of a joke, to use some municipal race, in an off year ... to say that it's some sort of indicator on how the state, which is a Republican state, not a Democrat county, but a Republican state, is going to perform," state Republican Party Chair Christian Ziegler said in an interview.

Campaign finance reports show that Davis outspent Deegan $1.5 million to $256,000 in April following a comparably expensive race leading up to Tuesday's runoff.

During the initial March election, none of the four Republicans, two Democrats or the independent candidate crossed the 50%-vote threshold, though Deegan led.

"Here's the reality in this race … millions of dollars were spent targeting our eventual Republican nominee that cut him a lot and took a lot of blood," Ziegler said.

Democrats narrowly outnumber Republicans in voter registration in Duval County, home to Jacksonville, but GOP voters turned out in larger numbers on Tuesday and Deegan won more of them, election returns show. She beat Davis by more than four points in a race where Republicans cast more than 7,000 votes more than registered Democrats.

Duval, on the northeast tip of the state, has long acted as a perennial swing county.

After President Joe Biden won it with 51% in 2020, DeSantis handily won Duval by a nearly 12% margin in 2022.

"It's kind of a swing, it's DeSantis' home county, it's interesting. It's not the same impact as the Wisconsin Supreme Court [election earlier this year], but I tell you, a lot of political sources are going to be looking at this race," veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said ahead of Election Day. "Everybody says the Democrats are dead in Florida, right? This could be one of these things that I'm kind of hoping it sneaks up on people."

Still, experts across the aisle cautioned that the results can be over-interpreted for their implications.

"Jacksonville is a large city and in an important area in the state, no question, but this is not a statewide race," GOP strategist Matt Terrill said. "I think, certainly, the Democrats will champion this as a win, particularly given the challenges that they've had coming out of the most recent midterm elections."

Heading into Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee activated volunteers from Biden's supporter network to have more than 130,000 conversations to turn out voters in Jacksonville, a Democratic official told ABC News, underscoring what the party calls recent efforts to overhaul investment in Florida ahead of 2024.

Fried, a former gubernatorial candidate and state agriculture commissioner who took over as chair of the Florida Democrats earlier this year, noted Republicans' "huge financial advantage" ahead of the race but said that fell short of Democrats' ground game -- and a more persuasive message.

"Ron DeSantis continues to fuel attacks on crime and wokeism and yesterday proved that those GOP talking points fell flat as Democrats campaigned on bread-and-butter issues," Fried said in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday. "Florida Democrats are putting 2022 in our rearview mirror. We turned Duval blue in 2018, and now we're reclaiming our territory."

Ziegler said before Tuesday that he was "pretty confident" in Florida Republicans' own ground game, noting Sen. Rick Scott's weekend campaigning in the county and his efforts to get out the vote.

Missing from the campaign trail, though, was DeSantis. While he endorsed Davis "right out of the gate," the governor spent the weekend before the Jacksonville mayoral election crisscrossing Iowa ahead of his expected announcement of a 2024 White House run.

Former President Donald Trump, who is likely to be DeSantis' main competition in the Republican primary next year, was quick to take a characteristic shot at DeSantis over the Jacksonville results.

"This is a shocker. If they would have asked me to Endorse, he would have won, easily. Too proud to do so. Fools!" Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Ziegler, the state GOP chair, said that DeSantis' support for Davis was widely broadcast across campaign literature and advertisements.

"I don't know how much more you really want from the governor," Ziegler said. "Obviously any additional activity helps, but would it have been enough -- that's the question, right? And I'm just not sure."