Jacksonville Appears to Elect Its First African-American Mayor

In what is believed to have been the closest mayoral race in Jacksonville history, Democrat Alvin Brown led Republican Mike Hogan by 603 votes on Tuesday evening with all 256 of the city’s precincts reporting.

Unofficially, Brown received 95,580 votes to Hogan’s 94,977. The officials results probably won’t be known until later this week, after some 1,500-1,600 absentee and provisional ballots are tabulated. The counting of those ballots will begin Wednesday morning, according to Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland.

An automatic recount will be triggered if the margin between the two candidates is less than one-half of one percent.

“We want to make sure every vote is counted,” Brown told his cheering supporters on Tuesday evening. “We as a city will get the results together and unite the city behind the winner.”

Hogan, who clung to a lead all night long — only to be overtaken when the last four precincts reported — spoke to his supporters about a half-four later, telling them, “We’ll know a lot more tomorrow.”

Hogan, the Duval County Tax Collector, was considered a prohibitive favorite throughout the entire campaign.

Brown, whose long-shot candidacy was aided by the fundraising prowess of former President Bill Clinton and billionaire Robert Johnson, founder of the Black Entertainment Television network (BET), had served as a senior aide to both President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and later directed the White House’s Community Empowerment Board, a federal program that oversees billions in urban renewal programs.

Following his years in the Clinton administration, Brown returned to Jacksonville where he served as chairman of the National Black MBA Association and later as the director of the Willie Gary Football Classic. In 2009, he was appointed an executive-in-residence at Jacksonville University’s Davis College of Business.