Jacksonville transition (#0318)

Trump sticker on an SUV pulling a trailer with six canoes on top and a UW-F.org sticker in the rear window.

UW-F.org? An organization of Florida ‘waterfowlers’ (they’re no longer ‘duckhunters’?) that seems like a pretty responsible organization. Their goal is to be a unified voice of waterfowlers as they deal with state agencies that regulate hunting. From their mission statement:

To promote waterfowl hunting by providing hunting opportunities for both youth and adults.

To promote conservation and enhancement of Florida’s natural resources.

To preserve the waterfowling heritage for future generations of Floridians.

Even though this car is a Trump supporter, they’re involved in an organization that sounds very much like some of the projects that Nature Conservancy or Audubon would support -- two orgs clearly not on Trump’s list of supporters…

……

While it wasn’t planned, this photo serves as a pretty good transition point in posting photos. I’ve plenty more photos and comments to make about Jacksonville history, but a key part of the trip was critically exploring other parts of North Florida that were part of my young adult years. So, at this point in the photos, I’m putting off any more photo-commentary on Jacksonville, and headed out of town. Right here I’m on FL-13 in a part of what was once ‘sleepy’ Mandarin headed, to a stretch of FL-13 that was (and still is) tiny towns and fish camps along the St. Johns River, and then farms. Jacksonville has grown tremendously, so it now takes quite awhile to get past housing developments punctuated by malls, freeway intersections, and all with heavy traffic. But the ‘old’ FL-13 does eventually show.

The area I’m in here is in the expanded Jax. The developments to the south mostly have the look of solid middle to upper middle class – large homes, nice landscaping, quiet residential streets, expensive cars, often in developments that appear to have strong HOA (homeowner) rules. An area I would have assumed to be mostly centrist politically, maybe like the UW-F.org people who balance hunting against the need for a healthy environment to support wildlife. Not a neighborhood that would be a 71% Trump vote (see link at end).

It’s probably fortunate that I didn’t think to look up county and precinct level voting until very late in the trip, if I’d known it probably would have altered my perception of what I saw. Even though Florida’s vote was close (48.6% Trump, 47.4% Clinton), I wanted to know how a state that I remembered as relatively centrist overall, went for Trump. Little did I know that the evidence for conservatism that I would see along the trip would confound more than answer. More forthcoming.

Source: Precinct 604 in enr.electionsfl.org/DUV/1608/Precincts/11578/?view=graphical

(Part of a photo-essay series on personal history and race with keyword FlaAla0518)