JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Out of 435 seats up for election in the U.S. House of Representatives, it would be hard to find a district with two better-known candidates than Rep. John Rutherford and challenger Donna Deegan.
Rutherford, R-Jacksonville, is undefeated in a string of campaigns that saw him serve 12 years as Jacksonville's sheriff before retiring from a career in law enforcement and winning election to Congress in 2016.
Deegan, the Democratic nominee, is a first-time candidate, but she was a long-time television news anchor before starting the non-profit Donna Foundation that raises money for breast cancer research and puts on the annual Donna Marathon.
The makeup of the 4th Congressional District favors Rutherford with 49 percent of voters registered as Republicans. Democrats comprise 28 percent of the electorate in a district that covers much of Duval County and extends into Nassau and St. Johns counties, including St. Augustine.
Deegan, who says she went into the race with her "eyes wide open" about the district's party affiliation, has raised $937,146 in campaign funds over the past year, which is more than the $922,746 banked by Rutherford this cycle, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Her fund-raising has built a campaign operation more sophisticated than past Democratic nominees for the seat. She also got a chance to share the stage with Rutherford in a televised debate at WJXT-TV Channel 4, a forum that repeatedly highlighted the contrasting views they would bring to Congress in their responses to almost every question from moderator Kent Justice.
Deegan talks of her own fight against cancer as she make health care the centerpiece of her campaign. She wants to strengthen the Affordable Act Act and its protections for health insurance coverage.
"God threw me a little bit of a curveball — something that I was not expecting — and that was not one but three diagnoses of breast cancer," she said at the debate. "I have to say that for me the number one reason I am in this race is because of health care."
She said she "heard so many heartbreaking stories" through her work on the Donna Foundation about people "choosing between food and medicine."
"We don't need to have that in this country," she said. "We need to make sure people have affordable health care and make sure they have coverage for pre-existing conditions."
Rutherford says his record shows he's a "common sense problem-solver."
"I was proud to work with President Trump to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that allows you to take home more of your hard-earned income," Rutherford said. "It also helped to create one of the greatest economies this country has ever seen."
He said he worked "across the aisle in a bipartisan way" to prevent school violence and stop drilling and seismic testing off Florida's coast.
Rutherford and Deegan split on the Affordable Care Act.
Deegan wants to bolster it and add a "robust public option" to its choices. Rutherford wants to repeal it and put in place a different health care program that he said would offer more affordable premiums and still cover people with pre-existing conditions by setting up high-risk pools for them.
"The talking point that somehow Republicans do not support pre-existing conditions coverage is just wrong," Rutherford said.
Deegan said high-risk pools have been tried in the past and they just don't work. She said the Republican plans for pre-existing conditions are "coverage in name only" because insurance companies could charge such sky-high premiums that people would be priced out them.
"This is not coverage if it's not coverage you can afford," Deegan said.
They also split on the tax cuts passed in 2017. Rutherford said he would extend the tax cuts, which are set to expire in 2025, because they generated strong economic growth until the coronavirus pandemic hit.
"Think back — we had the lowest unemployment in every demographic you can think of," he said. "It was an amazing economy that we had to shut down because of the COVID-19 (virus) that the Chinese released upon us. They are the ones who need to be held accountable for COVID-19."
Deegan said Trump cannot be blamed for the virus starting in China, but Trump and Republicans have been "going all over Florida to super-spreader" campaign events while Trump let the virus "run rampant because he didn't have a plan and still doesn't have a plan."
She said the 2017 tax cuts were a "slap in the face to middle-class Americans" because the cuts mainly benefitted the wealthiest 1 percent and big corporations. She said she would support Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's proposals for increases in the income tax for those earning more than $400,000 along with boosts in corporate and capital gains taxes.
"He's going to raise your taxes if you make more than $400,000 a year because we need to pay for things in this country," Deegan said. "We need to pay for healthcare. We need to pay for other needs we have in this country."
Other issues where she and Rutherford split were whether Washington D.C. should have Congressional seats. She favors that expansion, but Rutherford opposes it.
He said he would vote against expanding the nine-member Supreme Court, calling it court-packing by Democrats "literally trying to change the character of the country." Deegan said she would leave all options open and said Republicans have been hypocritical about pushing for confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett during an election.
In the midst of Black Lives Matter protests across the country, Rutherford said national statistics for fatal police shootings don't show institutional racism in law enforcement. He said he rejects "the narrative that America is a racist country, that somehow our institutions are systemically racist, that America is a bad place, that our founders were bad people."
Deegan noted that Rutherford once called Black Lives Matter a "hate group" and said when Rutherford was sheriff, Blacks accounted for a high proportion of those shot by police. She said Rutherford has "blinders on on this issue."
While Deegan and Rutherford staked out different positions, they also have sought to convince voters they can be bipartisan. Rutherford is a member of the Bipartisan Working Group in the House. A "bipartisan index" released annually by Georgetown University ranked him 41st among all House member, or in the top 10 percent.
Deegan calls herself a moderate Democrat and says she was not affiliated with either party for most of her life. "God did not leave me on this Earth, when he could have taken me, to serve any party," she said.
Deegan would need those independent voters and some Republicans to break her way for her to win Nov. 3.
The 4th Congressional District is the second-most Republican district in Florida. Rutherford has that as a base for his as a base for his campaign, and they've voted for him before, whether for sheriff or for Congress. In 2018, he won re-election with 65 percent of the vote.
