Matters of Temper Dominate Palm Coast Mayoral Candidates Cornelia Manfre’s and Mike Norris’s Final Clash

Fitness for office: the theme dominated the last meaningful and only substantial face-to-face encounter of the election season between Palm Coast mayoral candidates Cornelia Manfre and Mike Norris when they met for one hour on WNZF’s Free For All Fridays on Oct. 18.




The candidates, neither of whom has served in elected office, are vying to replace David Alfin, who lost in the primary–and had not served in elected office either when he won in a special election three years ago. Whoever’s elected, none of the three new council members will have sat on a elected board, and the council member with the most seniority–Theresa Pontieri–will have had just two years in her seat, making it the least seasoned council in the city’s history (the original council in 1999 was stocked with people who’d served on the preceding service district’s board.)

Pontieri’s imprint aside, the mayor will have an outsized role defining the tenor and direction of the council, whether it’s in the appointment of a new city manager, the managing of the city’s utility improvements, or presiding over public meetings that have become the most contentious and unfriendly in the county after wresting that distinction from the now-calmer School Board.

In their hour on the air, sitting in close quarters in WNZF’s studio but with an empty chair between them, Manfre and Norris attacked, ducked, provoked and raised alarms about each other, never in good fun but never with disrespect. Manfre was clearly more prepared, sounding more forceful, answering questions in sharp, short and clear outlines and keeping Norris on the defensive.




His answers were longer but not always easy to follow–or as related to the question–and he (like Manfre) was cagey when asked to name his campaign team beyond his wife and campaign manager–a “team” to which he often refers, and who apparently signed non-disclosure agreements. For a local government candidate, it was a curious admission of shadowy secrecy. Manfre’s team? Her husband, Jim, the former sheriff, local officials and members of the real estate community. She, too, would not mention other names.

Respect, demeanor and temperament played a central role in Manfre’s attempt to differentiate herself from Norris, who parried her attacks on that score but didn’t manage to respond as effectively, or reassuringly. If anything, he on two separate occasions confirmed a fear within city ranks that he intends to clean house. Manfre had a plan, and stuck to it. Norris reacted, and at times got lost in his own weeds.

Rather than start with an opening statement, Manfre immediately challenged Norris about his confrontation with Alan Lowe on Election Day during the primary. Lowe was one of the five candidates for mayor (he lost in the primary). FlaglerLive had reported the incident, which took place at the public library on Palm Coast Parkway. Lowe said he’d greeted Norris with a “good morning,” only for Norris, according to Lowe, to start “f-bombing all over the place” and “threaten to punch me.”

Norris called Lowe a liar in an interview about the incident. But there was additional footage. When Lowe’s wife Grit Lowe, phone video running, approached Norris to tell him she’ll call the sheriff if he threatened her husband, Norris tells her he hasn’t spoken to Lowe, but continues: “I know who your husband is, and he’s a piece of shit, that’s what he is. So you can move along. Move along, please.” Norris repeated the same words, then said Lowe had attacked him on Facebook.




Manfre quoted the video, replacing the insult with three dots, then asked Norris: “Is that how you speak to women? Mr. Norris, do you speak to your wife like that? Your mother like that? You promoted your military background as an officer. Well, let me tell you, my son is a Navy officer, and if I ever heard him speak like that to women, I would chase him down with a big wooden spoon. Mr. Norris, your conduct is unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman, and you should apologize to Mrs. Lowe and all women right now.”

Noris replied by first saying he was “going to be the next mayor of Palm Coast, hopefully.” He then gave a brief history of his years at the local Republican Executive Committee since 2016, where he says he stood up for Lowe and Ed Danko (the city council member and an ally of Lowe’s), but also had advised Lowe not to run for mayor, since he was “unelectable.”

The morning of the election, he said, he had a private conversation with Lowe. “So he had his wife approach me with a camera and start talking trash to me,” Norris said. “I don’t know why you feel the need to attack me about a conversation with someone else, but I can sure surely tell you I served 24 years in the military. I am an officer and a gentleman, and I don’t take anything from anybody. I’ve been disrespected and gone through a lot of things in my life in the military, and I have seen the worst of humanity, unlike you. And also have a son in the Navy. He’s a naval submarine officer. He’s An Officer and a gentleman. And for you to attack me personally, when you’re completely uncapable of running this city, you don’t have the leadership ability to run this city, and to levy personal attacks on me, I think, is very low brow, and I really don’t have anything else to say to you.”




“I’m sorry you feel that way. Mr. Norris,” Manfre said, “but I believe 40 years of business experience, and you do not know the things that I’ve gone through personal tragedies, illnesses, you don’t know me.” Palm Coast Observer Brian McMillan, who was co-hosting with Ayres, did not let Norris off on the way he spoke to Grit Lowe, asking Norris if he had any regret for using that language–but also describing Grit LLowe’s action as “definitely a bait. She came at you with a camera. I can see that feel a little aggressive.”

“I regret that it happened,” Norris said. “I regret that she approached me because she shouldn’t have done it. Do you think that if her husband had a problem with what I said, he could have just easily walked over?” He said he should have left the scene after the interaction with Lowe, but at the same time would not “sit back and let somebody attack me and my family.

McMillan pressed him: what if there were a challenge to Norris during public comment at a council meeting? “I wouldn’t say anything like that to someone in public,” he said, characterizing his comments on the video as what he thought was a private conversation.

Jim Manfre, who was sheriff between 2000 and 2004 and again between 2012 and 2016. Cornelia Manfre was asked whether she’d be her own person, and whether she’d be able to look past the bad blood between Manfre and Staly in her treatment of city policy with public safety. “Jim Manfre is my best friend. We met the first day of college at Fordham University, and we are very independent people,” she said. “That is preposterous to even think that I would be shadowing my husband. If anything, maybe he’s shadowing me.” She described a family of strong personalities. As for Staly, “My job as mayor is to make sure the law enforcement is covered properly for the citizens of Palm Coast. There is no problem in any way between mister Staley and myself, and that will be guided accordingly.”




That prompted a surprising question from Norris: At a Tiger Bay forum at the Palm Coast Community Center during the primary, Norris told Manfre, “your husband approached me and said, ‘the only reason you were in the race was to take Democrat votes away from from Alfin.'” He asked what had prompted Jim Manfre to ask the question.

“I got into this race because I was very upset with the way that the city was conducting [sic] with developers that I was trying to bring into the city,” she said, referring to three lost opportunities with developers who left town. Norris took it as a non-answer. (Asked about his June interaction at Tiger Bay with Norris, Jim Manfre put it this way: “We had never met him before. Our table was next to his at the Community Center. Cornelia mentioned that Norris was glaring at her as she was greeting people at the table. I went over to Norris to introduce myself and clear the air. What I said was that Cornelia and he had the same purpose to replace Alfin as mayor and her entry into the race would deprive Alfin of the Democratic votes he would need to stay in office. He was dismissive and frankly seemed angry that I attempted to strike up a conversation. He was not interested in speaking so I went back to the table.”)

Based on conversations with them, staffers at City Hall have been worried about Norris taking over like a bull in a China shop. Asked about that in those very terms, and whether his temper will be an issue, Norris did not aim for comfort: “I’m a professional, and I’ve been a professional my whole life, and I know how to the run meetings and deal with working groups,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any problem, and I think the staff should be concerned, because some of those people on that staff shouldn’t be there.” He said he doesn’t have the authority to hire and fire, but, strongly hinting that he’ll do it through the city manager, he said: “We do have a new city manager coming in.”




Moments later he said again, after a long, discursive reply to a question about misinformation: “you have to clear out the system and get the right people in the positions to do the jobs.” He was also critical of staff salaries at certain levels.

Manfre took issue with Norris’s preference for an “outside” hire. “I would prefer to have somebody that knows this community, knows the business people, and know the development that has to come in to bring us jobs,” she said. “I don’t understand why you would discriminate it against a Flagler resident.” It is not uncommon of course for cities and counties to hire from outside, and the ongoing hiring process is being conducted by a firm recruiting nationally. But Manfre, while casting some doubt on that process, later clarified in a point-by-point outline of her priorities for a new manager that the hire be sought from Florida or elsewhere, with a premium on the local community.

When each were asked what he or she finds worrisome or scary about the other, Manfre immediately returned to the matter of “temper.”

“I believe the mayor position has to have a temperament that is balanced, and I’m concerned of temper,” Manfre said. “I’m also concerned that Mike doesn’t have business background. I’ve done 40 years of business development, bringing in jobs into the community, and I really do know my numbers. I’m just concerned of the temper.”

Answering the same question Norris said he worried “that she can’t keep her numbers straight.” But he then went on to cite the slightly erroneous city budget figure Manfre had stated, only to himself make a similar mistake. (The city budget is $358 million, but few people even in the city can cite it precisely.)




Given a final chance to answer the worries on doubt, Norris again stumbled: “I have the temperament the lead, and I have been leading men and women for over 24 years in the military. I am a Mustang, and I don’t take much that’s going to harm my–it’s always, always with me, it’s: take care of your people and accomplish the mission. That’s what I’ve always done. And everything I do is based on intent. I would always ask the question: Sir, what is your intent? If you give me your intent, I can follow through. So the city residents, give me your intent, what do you want? I’ll make it happen.”

If the answer accurately reflected Norris’s military background, it did not reflect an understanding of the give-and-take grays of city residents with competing residents asking the council not so much to “make it happen” as to knowingly and fairly balance those interests in order to satisfy as many of those competing interests, within the city’s financial and regulatory constraints.

The candidates discussed several other issues. Manfre is not opposed to reducing commercial zoning in favor of residential zoning: some areas–she cited an example in Seminole Woods–set aside more commercial zoning than viable, essentially creating dead zones that won;t be filled with commercial businesses.

Norris is opposed to such zoning transfers, saying less than 3 percent of city land is designated for commercial development. “We need to get more industrial footprints in here to grow our community, because we are not a retirement community, and we need jobs,” he said.

On growth, Manfre would categorically not favor a one-year moratorium like the one Council member Theresa Pontieri proposed earlier this month. Norris would have supported “just to discuss it, and it’s an option for me, and if that’s an option we have to do to get this city straight, then that’s what we’re going to have to do.”




Manfre defended her profession as a Realtor–a profession that’s become anathema to a core of public speakers at council meetings, to the point of discrimination. Manfre appeared ready: “I happen to have a license, but I’m also a corporate investment advisor. So being a realtor is this conversation that I just find rather offensive, quite honestly,” she said, “because Realtors here are the ambassadors of our community, and they should be respected developers. Developers take huge risk coming in with millions of dollars to develop our Publix’s, our Walmarts, our BJ warehouse.”

Only a few days from Hurricane Milton’s barreling through the area, both candidates had their own evaluations. Manfre said that for the most part the city fared well, giving the system’s stormwater system a B. But she said the city failed as far as sewage treatment, since the city urged residents not to take showers or flush the toilet: the city is far behind schedule, upgrading its sewer infrastructure. “That’s why we’re losing jobs,” she said.

But the statements were rife with mischaracterizations. First, even in current conditions, the city still has capacity for growth. Second, it is adding substantial capacity at its second wastewater treatment plant by winter, with plans under way to further expand capacity at the first plant. Third, and most mis-characterized of all: as city officials said at a council meeting last week, it would not have mattered what capacity the city had during Milton. Even if it had plenty more capacity in its wastewater treatment plants, the volume of water that drenched the city in the heaviest rainstorm in its history was such that the city would have had to advise residents not to burden the system regardless.




But no one was being told not to flush toilets or not take showers. Residents were only asked to conserve as much water as they could–limit laundry loads, for example, reduce the duration of showers, and so on. In that regard, Manfre was amplifying the mischaracterizations of residents who addressed the council, playing to voters’ falsehoods rather than correcting them, as a responsible elected official (or candidate) should. But Norris wasn’t much better, calling ITT’s swale system “cheap,” when in fact it performed better than in many cities in the state, according to Carl Cote, the city’s stormwater and engineering–and kept all but a handful of houses from flooding. Norris went further: he wants to pause grading swales and clear culverts instead, though it is not an either-or to city engineers.

Not surprisingly, Norris favors listening to residents “concerns” ahead of city staff’s expertise (“the people in charge are not always right”), while Manfre took a slightly opposite view: “You balance out what the community is asking for and what your staff is proposing,” she said.

Listen to the full hour below.