With just over a year until the next countywide General Election in Jacksonville, a first-time Democratic candidate is launching a challenge to incumbent Mayor Donna Deegan.
Marquita Valencia, a 42-year-old third-generation native of Duval County who grew up in Brentwood, still goes to Mt. Moriah Church and attended Mandarin High School, opened her campaign account Friday.
Valencia has been a mortgage loan processor for Deutsche Bank for the last five years and has spent her entire career in financial services, so she has an eye on the bottom line in all things related to her campaign, including qualifying for the ballot.
She tells Florida Politics she intends to do so by petition, which requires 7,500 signatures, to save on the filing fee.
Valencia learned frugality growing up, noting that her mother sometimes struggled with the cost of food. Those early struggles and the ongoing issues in her old neighborhood inspired her to run in part.
While she acknowledges progress has occurred in parts of the city, it hasn’t gotten to places like Brentwood, which suffer from a lack of grocery stores and inattention to infrastructure as investment goes to other parts of town, many of which she has lived in over the years.
“I don’t see any progress in those areas,” Valencia said.
Despite media focusing heavily on federal politics, she believes that real progress is actually made on the local level. She also noted that mayoral elections in the city historically have low turnout, with voter participation actually lowest in the neighborhoods most in need of help from City Hall.
Places like the Northside and Eastside need “change and progress to lower crime, to lower homelessness,” Valencia said. But city leaders prioritize downtown over the neighborhoods that border it.
She questions one of Deegan’s signature projects specifically.
Valencia doesn’t believe the city’s $775 million investment into refurbishing the Jaguars’ stadium, which comes at the expense of deferring paying off a now-closed pension plan five more years until sometime in the 2050s, benefits the Northside or the Eastside by bringing “healthy food” to those areas or making it “safe to walk” the streets.
To be sure, this first-time candidate will face a challenge in trying to make Deegan a one-term Mayor, as the former newscaster launched her campaign last week to become the first Democratic Jacksonville Mayor re-elected since Jake Godbold in 1983.
Though the formal re-election campaign is just beginning, Deegan has already begun fundraising. The aligned Duval for All political committee has raised more than $1.62 million and has spent less than $177,000.
Deegan’s administration has been defined by several tangible accomplishments beyond the stadium deal. These include labor deals with the Jacksonville Association of Fire Fighters and the local Fraternal Order of Police that will allow these public safety workers into the Florida Retirement System in Fiscal Year 2028.
In contrast to Alvin Brown, the last Democratic Mayor who left office in 2015 after one term, Deegan isn’t facing pushback from the Left. Brown, who ran as a conservative Democrat, was pressured for not backing the expansion of the city’s Human Rights Ordinance to include LGBTQ+ people. That expansion happened during the first term of his Republican successor, Lenny Curry.
However, some observers perceive Deegan as being vulnerable in not doing enough for the Northside and Westside, and Valencia’s campaign could attract support from those who remember the Mayor made promises to that effect that are still works in progress nearly three years into her term, especially given her roots in the community.
Valencia is the eighth filed candidate, but the only Democrat running except for the Mayor. The other six candidates haven’t gotten much traction so far. Only two have raised money, and the leading fundraiser among that group of challengers has roughly $6,000 cash on hand.
Deegan had one serious Democratic opponent in 2023, former Senate leader Audrey Gibson.
Though Gibson failed to advance to the May election, she took enough of the vote in March to ensure that race went to a runoff in May. It is entirely possible that the worst-case scenario for Valencia would be to force this Mayor to defend her record and reach out to constituencies who may not be sold on the first term so far.
The most likely serious Republican challenger at this point appears to be House Speaker Pro Tempore Wyman Duggan, who is wrapping up eight years in Tallahassee.
Duggan, though prohibited from fundraising for much of the quarter due to a ban on legislators doing so during Session, still managed to raise more than $90,000 to his Citizens For Building Florida’s Future committee between the start of the year and March 31, which pushed the account near $1.2 million cash on hand. The lobby corps is on board, and he could count on hard-won statewide help.
If he announces a run, it likely will be at the beginning of a financial quarter. Thus, July 4, or soon thereafter, may be the logical target.
However, it remains to be seen if Duggan can clear the field of serious Republican competition.
City Councilman Rory Diamond tells Florida Politics that a lot of people are asking him to run and offering support. He has roughly $62.000 in his political committee, so those verbal assurances are just that for now.
And fellow Councilman Ron Salem isn’t ruling out a run.