Early Tuesday, Election day, as candidates were setting up tents at the Flagler County library on Palm Coast Parkway, Alan Lowe and Mike Norris, two of the five candidates for Palm Coast mayor, had a run-in. They didn’t yet know, of course, that by evening, Lowe was eliminated and Norris led the count. He’s in a runoff against Cornelia Manfre.
“Good morning, Mike,” Lowe said he told Norris, candidate to candidate: they were among the five candidates vying for Palm Coast mayor.
Norris, according to Lowe, answered with insults. “He started-bombing all over the place and started to threaten to punch me,” Lowe said. “I told him, ‘here I am. Take your best shot.’”
Lowe’s wife Grit Lowe spoke with Norris and asked him not to disrespect her husband. “He told me off in a not very nice way, because after all he wants to be mayor for me, too,” she said.
She showed a video she’d taken of the encounter. Norris is heard and seen say: “I know who your husband is. He’s a piece of shit.” Norris complains about Lowe “always attacking me on Facebook.”
Norris dismissed the encounter. “If Alan Lowe’s lips are moving, he’s lying. Direct quote. Mike Norris, period,” he said, sitting under his tent a short distance away from where Lowe had set up with others. (Lowe is not known for his accuracy.) “He’s been attacking me, and his minions have been attacking me ruthlessly for the past couple months, and I haven’t attacked any of those guys. Same thing with Peter Johnson. He says I stole his signs. He said I broke the story about him and the cat people. That’s all Alan Lowe’s people, not me.” Johnson was among the mayoral candidates and the subject of a fabricated smear.
“Neither one of those gentlemen should be in this race,” Norris said, preferring to talk about his qualifications. He was tense, but spoke of confidence, certain that he would at least make it to a runoff. He said he just didn’t know with who.
The run-in was a rare breakdown in civility at polling places since early voting began. Supervisor of Elections Kaiti Lenhart last week said it had been the least-tempered election she’d seen since becoming supervisor almost a decade ago. Candidates have generally been respectful toward each other, if often at arms’ length. Salty language is nothing new to candidates, though complaints about Norris’s temper have shadowed him from time to time in Republican circles, including Flagler Republican Executive Committee meetings.
Ed Danko, the Palm Coast City Council member who was running for a County Commission seat, described a similar incident with Norris. “Last week, when I was setting up here, Thursday or Friday, I don’t remember which day, Norris walked by, and I said, Good morning Mike,” Danko said Tuesday afternoon. “And he said, ‘Fuck you. Fuck you,’ and just kept walking. So I mean, when Alan told me what had happened and he told me that Norris had, like, threatened him, I’m going to kick your ass, I was like, Well, you know Alan, that’s not I’m not surprised after what he said to me.”
Danko, when he happened to be chairing a council meeting, had thrown Johnson out of the chamber for alleged misbehavior. “Peter Johnson and I shook hands today or yesterday,” Danko said. “I even joked with him and I said, if you become mayor, I hope you find it exhilarating when you throw your first person out of City Hall. I made a joke. Everyone has been delightful. No one has been mean, nobody has been nasty. So when I say good morning, I expected that I would just get a good morning, right? And that’s not what happened.”
Pending Friday’s recount, Danko lost his bid for a commission seat by 40 votes to Pam Richardson. Norris was the leading vote-getter in the mayoral race, with 31 percent, to Manfre’s 24 percent. Lowe and Johnson got 13 percent, and David Alfin, the incumbent, got 18 percent. The run-ins are not likely to benefit Norris if, for example, Lowe and Johnson end up supporting Manfre, who is almost certain to benefit from a share of the Alfin vote.
