Ethnic vote split commission chair election for Rebeca Sosa

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Well, as expected, the votes for the new commission chair and vice chair were basically split down racial and ethnic lines giving the Hispanic majority — now that a Colombian is on the commission and it ain’t a Cuban thing anymore — an edge.

Ladra says “basically” because of Commissioners Bruno Barreiro — the breakout of the Babalu bunch with a longtime bond with the blacks on the board — and Xavier “Mayor Commissioner Sir” Suarez, the breakout period, who nominated Barbara Jordan, the only incumbent commissioner whose re-election he openly endorsed.

Chairwoman-elect Rebeca Sosa won by 7 votes Tuesday in the election to replace outgoing Chairman Joe Martinez, who lost a bid to unseat the incumbent mayor in August. Those seven, according to an internal memo of the tally sent to all commissioners just after 5 p.m. Tuesday, include the other four Hispanics, five including her own vote.

Jordan got Suarez and Barreiro as well as every black face on the dais: her own and those of Commissioners Audrey Edmonson, Jean Moonestime and Dennis Moss (who, dicen las malas lenguas, was supposed to nominate Edmonson until something changed at the last minute).

Sosa carried the Latino vote: Her own and those of Commissioners Esteban “El Bobo” Bovo, Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Javier Souto, and Juan Zapata, who nominated her. The swing votes, so to speak, were cast by Commissioners  Sally Heyman and Lynda Bell, who became the vice chair elect shortly after.

And those votes were split almost exactly the same in the runoff with Heyman (after Suarez was eliminated in the first round; X only got Souto’s vote after his own and Jordan, who he had nominated and who had nominated him). So Bell gained Suarez and Souto. She also got every Latino vote except Barreiro’s, who declined a nomination from Diaz and sort of had to vote for Heyman since he nominated her.

Does he now find himself in somewhat of a pickle, having voted against both the chair and vice chair?  Or was that part of some devious plan to make it look less ethnically drawn? I know Ladra sounds like a jaded conspiracy theorist — maybe more so Stranger things have happened.

Still, Bell, also like Sosa, did not get one black vote. They all went to Heyman.

It’s all a little too predictable for my palate. After all the etched-in-stone party lines I’ve seen in the past few weeks, these ethnically-drawn lines are no better.

But, still,  I can’t wait til the next meetings –already  loved the lively conversation Tuesday about the incorporation process (more on that later) — and you can bet that Ladra is going to be in that audience more often.