With Palm Coast mayoral election ending soon, here's what influenced four votes

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

NEWS ANALYSIS

When compared with the other four members of a city council, a mayor’s impact is mostly ceremonial. In matters of policy, they have equal power.

Still, this election feels important because the next Palm Coast mayor will be the tie-breaking vote on two matters that have bearing on the city’s identity: tax rate and commercial vehicle parking.

With that in mind, I was surprised by how four anonymous voters explained their votes, when I approached them during early voting.

The first had just voted for David Alfin. She also liked Cornelia Manfre, but her main motivation was to vote for the person most likely to defeat Alan Lowe. The opposition to Lowe, however, wasn’t a matter of disagreeing with his stances on policy. She said she had received a “MAGA e-newsletter” saying that a Trump-supporting organization in another state did not support Lowe. She declined to forward the e-newsletter to me, and I couldn’t find it via Google. However, the Flagler Trump Club did, in fact, support Lowe.

If she had known that Flagler’s Trump supporters favored Lowe, would the woman have voted for Lowe instead?

The second voter, who recently moved to Palm Coast, chose Lowe over Alfin — because his neighbor was also planning to vote for Lowe. If this voter had spoken to a different neighbor, would his vote have been different?

The third voter chose Lowe because he saw Lowe as a disrupter. And why did the city need a disrupter? Because, the voter said, “every year, the city spends six figures on consultants to attract businesses to Palm Coast.” According to a city spokeswoman, however, the city hasn’t spent any money to attract businesses in at least the past two years.

The fourth randomly selected voter I spoke with said he was planning to vote for Manfre. One main reason, he said, was that he’s concerned with the Sheriff’s Office’s budget and would prefer to increase education spending, instead. What he might not have recalled is that the city’s budget has no impact on education; that’s the Flagler County School Board’s turf.

What to make of this? First, whoever wins should not assume that all voters were particularly familiar with their campaign platforms; the next mayor would do well to continue learning residents’ views. Second, we at the Observer will brainstorm ways to make our 2022 election guide our best yet to make sure that our community is as informed as possible.

Send your ideas to [email protected].