Mayor Donna Deegan selects Republican former councilmember for position of general counsel

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Mayor Donna Deegan unveiled a host of new appointments Thursday, including one former Republican city councilmember.

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Former Councilmember Randy DeFoor has been selected to serve as Jacksonville’s next General Counsel.

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Deegan highlighted DeFoor’s experience in city government and working as a corporate attorney for two Fortune 500 companies.

“Most of all she is known for her courageous stand against the corrupt sale of JEA, which helped stop the biggest theft in our city’s history,” Deegan said.

DeFoor crossed party lines after bloody Republican in-fighting during the March election and endorsed Deegan for mayor.

But the two political figures have expressed staunch differences in the past.

Read: Mayor Deegan announces seven new appointments to city positions

DeFoor supported former President Donald Trump’s reelection bid in 2020 and cast a vote last year against the removal of the city’s Confederate monuments.

During that vote she likened the monuments’ removal to Germany tearing down evidence of the Holocaust.

“It would have been far easier for Germany to remove any remembrance of what happened there,” DeFoor said during a hearing on the bill last June.

But DeFoor noted on Thursday, her new position will not be political in nature.

Rather, she’ll be tasked with representing and helping all members of city government, Republican and Democrat alike.

“I am not a policymaker anymore. So, that is not my role,” DeFoor said.

And Deegan emphasized DeFoor’s appointment is reflective of her campaign commitment to build a city government representative of the people of Jacksonville.

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“If you have every single person you bring into your administration that feels exactly as you do on every issue, how do you grow and how do you represent everybody in the community? The idea is to bring in people who are honest brokers, who are tough, who are going to tell me like it is and that’s what I want,” Deegan said.

DeFoor’s appointment will need to be confirmed by city council.

Ironically, it’s been some of the mayor’s bipartisan appointments that have run into the most resistance from Republican members of city council.

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Time will tell whether hard feelings over the results of the May Election spill over into the consideration of DeFoor’s confirmation.

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