Kick Ass (29 page)

Too bad for them. Good for him.

Even as modern-day Miami puts on its glossy birthday face, it continues to revel in a checkered history full of rogues, hustlers and blowhards. More than a few of them were elected to public office.

Sure, the city can do better than Joe Carollo, but it must also be said that there’s not exactly a sterling legacy for him to sully. Local politics has produced plenty of colorful characters, but few truly memorable leaders.

It’s impossible to predict what kind of mayor Carollo will be, but one thing he won’t be is dull. Where Steve Clark was happy as long as he had a five-iron or a cocktail in his hand, Carollo isn’t content without tumult and controversy.

Forget all the media baloney about a “new” Joe, mellow and maturedthat’s wishful thinking by jittery old enemies, hoping he’ll forget old affronts. He won’t. Carollo is as ruthless and nakedly ambitious as he was eight years ago; he’s just smoother now.

Besides, Miami (of all places) shouldn’t begrudge him either ambition or egomaniabasic ingredients, going back to the hairy days of Fort Dallas.

It’s fun watching Carollo jerk Wayne Huizenga’s chain over the arena lease for the soon-departing Panthers. The sports tycoon deserves a dose of his own petulance, and it’s refreshing to see a politician brash enough to stick it to him.

Ever since Miami was born, its so-called leaders rolled over like puppies for anybody who showed up at City Hall with a nice suit, the right lawyer and a fat wad of dough. Nobody asked where the money came from because they were too busy asking for favors.

Land developers always got the red-carpet treatment, but occasionally so did gangsters, gamblers, bootleggers, bank swindlers and cocaine smugglers. Miami became known as a very friendly and gullible town.

The last thing it needs at this point in history is another glad-handing, ribbon-cutting, look-the-other-way mayor. Joe is capable of all that, but he’s clearly more comfortable in the role of doubting Thomas.

He doesn’t mind infuriating the rich and powerful, and he has always had a pretty good instinct for sniffing out dirty laundry. One of his first acts as city commissioner was to disrupt the cozy downtown parking monopoly around the arena, something that should have been done long ago.

If we’re judged by the enemies we make, Joe’s got an impressive list. It’s encouraging, for example, that he is despised by Jorge Mas Canosa. Perhaps now we’ll see a decline in the undue influence of the Cuban American National Foundation upon the city manager, and the police department.

Of course, the potential for fiasco follows Carollo like a hungry bear. He has a knack for the half-baked, half-cocked and insensitive remark, and the black community especially has reason to be wary.

Time will reveal Joe’s true self. Sixteen months from now Miami will get a chance to reelect him, or once again banish him to obscurity.

It’s entirely possible that (as his enemies have muttered) Joe Carollo is a sneaky crook, or a nut case. Miami has had its share of both. It’s also possible that he’s in it just for the glory and honor.

In any case, he is the mayorand 81 percent of the city’s voters have no room to bitch. Enjoy the birthday party and pray, between chili dogs, that history will judge you kindly.

It won’t be hard to fill Miami’s ‘Crooked’ seat

July 31, 1997

The long-anticipated indictment of Commissioner Humberto Hernandez leaves open, once again, the designated crooked seat on the Miami Commission.

Long held by Miller Dawkins, now imprisoned for taking payoffs, the post was won by the controversial Hernandez last fall. The lawyer’s lopsided margin carried a message from voters:

We’ll always hold a place for sleaze in our hearts, and in our government.

Hernandez was hardly an unknown commodity by Election Day. It had been well publicized that he’d been canned as an assistant city attorney for basically operating a private legal practice out of City Hall.

Much had also been written about the buzzardly antics of his law firm following the Valujet crash, and the complaints lodged by heartsick families of victims.

Similar hard-to-miss headlines had been devoted to Hernandez’s prominence in an FBI investigation, and to the fact that agents had visited his office to confiscate files.

So it shouldn’t have surprised a soul when the commissioner was formally charged Tuesday in a 27-count indictment involving ambitiously devious bank fraud.

Prosecutors say the plot centered around a Key Biscayne condo, The Pyramids. Phony condominium sales allegedly were set up as a means of securing inflated mortgages, often never repaid. Agents say some of the bogus deals were used to launder millions in dirty Medicare money.

Future-commissioner Hernandez served as an attorney in some Pyramids transactions, and as a buyer in others. (Under oath he once asserted he didn’t know the name of a client for whom he was holding almost $1 million of real estate.)

In subsequent testimony, Hernandez developed a fondness for taking the Fifth Amendment.

If convicted on all charges, the commissioner could be sentenced to several lifetimes in prison. His political career will now be put on hold while he strives to avoid joining his predecessor behind bars.

The governor suspended Hernandez on Wednesday, which means the crooked seat on the commission must be filled temporarily. The challenge is to find a suitable replacement, someone who brings to the task an equally shady cloud over his head.

Potential candidates could be chosen from FBI wiretaps and videotapes, but the screening process would take months. Why wait when there’s such an obvious choice:

Carmen Lunetta. He’s local, he’s experienced, he’s tainted by scandaland, best of all, he’s available!

The former boss of the Port of Miami, who retires today, could be a worthy successor to the Dawkins-Hernandez legacy. He quit under fire, leaving the port owing taxpayers $22 million.

The heaping debt had piled up as Lunetta spent thousands on golf outings, travel and other goodies. Many thousands more were funneled through a port-contracted company to political candidates.

Lunetta left port finances in such a mess that the new pro basketball arena is in jeopardy, as is the cruise-ship expansion known as Maritime Park.

Although Lunetta is the only person with a clue how the seaport runs, Metro-Dade Mayor Alex “Mister No Fun” Penelas is leery of hiring him as a consultant to help sort out the books.

That leaves Lunetta with loads of free time, at least on those days he’s not meeting with his lawyers. A Miami Commission seat would keep him near his beloved port, and intimately involved in the high-stakes Maritime Park negotiations.

It’s the worst place imaginable for a man at the center of a major federal investigation, which is all that Miami voters need to hear. Come next fall, it’ll be Carmen by a landslide!

Dead men voting couldn’t do any worse

November 30, 1997

Miami’s laughingstock mayoral race is in the hands of a judge, who eventually could decide to order a new laughingstock election.

Defeated incumbent Joe Carollo and the newly chosen mayor, Xavier Suarez, are battling over the mishandling and forgery of absentee ballots, which resulted in at least one verified dead person, Manuel Yip, casting a vote.

In many U.S. cities, this would qualify as an embarrassing scandal, one worthy of vigorous prosecution. But in Miami the term “tainted election” is a whimsical redundancy, and nobody ever goes to jail for stealing votes.

Moreover, judging by the outcome of this fall’s political races, you can make a pretty strong case that dead people in Miami ought to be allowed to vote. How could they possibly make worse choices than the living?

Example: 6,063 persons, all allegedly alive and conscious, overwhelmingly reelected Humberto Hernandez to the City Commission.

Humberto is the adorable young shyster once fired from the city attorney’s office for doing outside legal work on taxpayer time. Later he got in trouble for chasing grief-stricken relatives of the Valujet crash victims, a squalid little hustle that Humberto blamed on overzealous staff members at his law firm.

Most recently he was indicted by the feds on multiple counts of bank fraud and money laundering. The governor dutifully suspended Hernandez from the City Commission. On Nov. 4, Miami citizens enthusiastically returned him to office with 65 percent of the vote.

Fittingly, it was Hernandez’s support that later pushed Suarez to victory in the mayoral playoffs!

Which raises the obvious question: Is there really much difference between a brain-dead voter and a physically dead voter?

Consider: Miami has spent a year reeling from a bribery scandal and teetering on the brink of fiscal ruin. Nobody in their right minds would, amid such turmoil, willingly put the city’s fragile budget within reach of an accused swindleryet that’s exactly what living, breathing voters did.

It’s a persuasive argument for throwing elections open to everyone, regardless of pulse rate.

Usually when ballots of long-dead residents turn up, forgery is the presumed explanation. I’m not sure that’s automatically true in a place as occult as Miami.

Here it’s remotely possible that some dead citizens are so appalled by what’s happening that they supernaturally find a way to vote from the afterlife, if we give them a chance.

And maybe we should, because I’ll bet there aren’t 6,063 dead people who would have been caught

well, dead voting for a guy like Humberto Hernandez.

Admittedly, the plan has a few problems. Since deceased persons would by necessity use absentee ballotsthey are, after all, the ultimate absenteesthe possibility of fraud cannot be ignored. (Perhaps signatures could be checked against those on their Last Wills and Testaments.)

Political purists might contend that even if the dead would vote, they aren’t as constitutionally qualified as live people. That position is hard to defend, given what happened here at the polls.

Turnout among living voters was so disgracefully low that participation by the deceased should be welcomed. And no voter is less susceptible than a dead one to a politician’s grandiose promises, smear campaigns or cheap scare tactics.

Which brings us to the late Manuel Yip. Perhaps his name was, as alleged, forged on that absentee ballot. But suppose it was the real deal. What if it was an impassioned voice from The Beyond, a voice of conscience pleading: “What are you bozos doing to my city?”

Miami politics has caused lots of good, decent folks to roll over in their graves. Next time, let them cast a ballot. At this point, what could it hurt?

Miami Voters’ create new kind of open election

December 14, 1997

Miami’s election scandal has taken an intriguing twist, with the revelation that scores of people who “voted” on Nov. 4 don’t even live in the city.

Some didn’t know they’d voted at all.

Investigators call it fraud, but there’s a more positive interpretation. Think of Miami elections as the ultimate in participatory democracy, accessible to anyoneliving, dead, residents, nonresidents

even those who don’t particularly want to participate.

It might be crooked, but it’s also an ingenious remedy for the problem of low voter turnout.

If authorities allow the results of last month’s election to stand, we could soon see a day when Miami boasts more registered voters than live human beingsa democracy flush beyond the wildest dreams of Jefferson or Paine.

Many of Miami’s questionable ballots were filed in support of Commissioner Humberto (“I’ll Take the Fifth”) Hernandez and Mayor-to-be Xavier (“I’m Not Deranged!”) Suarez.

When the scandal broke, Suarez appointed none other than Hernandez to counter-investigate the state’s investigation. This was highly humorous for two reasons:

1) Hernandez is awaiting trial for alleged bank fraud and money laundering.

2) His own campaign manager, Jorge Luis De Goti, figures largely in one of the city’s most dubious voting patterns.

Records show several “voters” switching their registrations to addresses in Hernandez’s district, just in time for the election. At least nine of those supporters registered at homes owned or occupied by family of De Goti.

When reporters tried to find some of the new Hernandez voters, they found them dwelling at other locations, miles outside the city. (Hernandez himself said he’d never condone such a thing.)

Equally peculiar were absentee ballots filed on behalf of Francisca Brice, Cipriano Alvarez and Gloria Alvarez. Since they live in Hialeah and Hialeah Gardens, they hadn’t thought about voting in the Miami elections.

They were surprised to find out they had. Their ballots were “witnessed” by 92-year-old Alberto Russi, another campaign worker for you-know-who.

Russi had been arrested for other alleged voter fraud, including signing a ballot for a dead man. Russi said he didn’t intentionally do anything illegal on behalf of candidate Hernandez.

Cynics see the unfolding scandal as yet another sleazy chapter of Miami-style corruption. Others might regard it as a historic opportunity to broaden the political process to include those who customarily have been shut outthe dead, distant or otherwise ineligible voter.

A strong democracy depends on citizen involvement, and what was Alberto Russi allegedly doing but striving to involve as many citizens as possible?

Talk about open electionsMiami has a chance to redefine the term. What a bold experiment it would be to unlock the polls not just for the sneaky pals of candidates, but for anyone, anywhere.

Because Miami’s image reflects upon that of the whole state, an argument could be made that all Floridians should be entitled to vote here. And because Florida’s image reflects upon that of the whole country, a case likewise could be made that all Americans should be able to take part.

Indeed, every U.S. taxpayer has a substantial stake in Miami’s future, based on the FBI’s investment of time and manpower here.

Theoretically, a ballot cast from Nome, Alaska, is every bit as relevant as a ballot cast from Hialeah Gardens. And with millions of absentee ballots pouring in, it would be hard for our local scammers to steal an election.