There’s another candidate in the Homestead mayoral primary today, though her name is not on the ballot.
Miami-Dade Commission Vice Chair Lynda Bell‘s husband is running for mayor in the southern city where his wife was the only woman to serve in that top post (from 2007 to 2009) and some people see the mayoral race — and primarily the first round today — as a litmus test on her own vulnerability in her re-election next year.
Some go as far to say that Mrs. Bell — who is also facing a silly pulled-out-of-a-hat recall effort — has as much riding on this election as Mr. Bell does. Maybe more.
Las malas lenguas say that Lynda Bell is so involved that she is the one who put her husband into the ring. Several sources told Ladra that the vice chair had been recruiting a potential candidate for months, asking some people as early as March. When she kept getting the door shut in her face, she turned to her husband. He drew the last straw, as one observer put it.
She says he made his own decision after he saw his beloved Homestead going in the wrong direction and insists her husband is his own man.
“When he came to me with this idea I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ We talked about everything,” Bell told Ladra. “The bottom line was he never told me when I was first running, ‘No, don’t run. This could hurt my business.’ He never discouraged me. So I felt like the least I could do was support him.”
She scoffed at the implication that he would be a puppet for her. “That’s nonsense. That’s just silly,” Bell told me. “Anybody who knows Mark Bell knows that he has his own mind and is going to do what he wants to do.”
But in mailers, on yard signs signs and in conversations over fences and coffee, people discuss about voting for or against “the Bells” — not Mark Bell.
And some say this litmus test could become a make or break turning point for Lynda Bell. A win here could solidify her and scare away any would-be challengers for next year. A loss here could show that could bolster any potential wannabes and may certainly slow the flow of campaign contributions.
Several political people have told Ladra that observers are watching to see how Mr. Lynda Bell fares before they get too involved in the lady Bell’s re-election campaign.
The Commission Vice Chair seemed to be taken aback by the question, when I asked her what she thought about the view that this was a litmus test for her. But Ladra can’t believe it would be because it was the first time she heard it. Maybe it was the first time she heard it from a journalist.
“That’s an interesting question. My, what an interesting question,” Bell said.
“But I really don’t think one thing has anything to do with the other. We are two different people,” Bell told Ladra.
Is she not afraid her husband’s loss could hurt her continued political aspirations?
“Number one, we don’t plan on losing. Number two, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to do what I do. If I get an opponent, I’m going to run my race. I can’t let that deter him,” Bell responded.
“I came back from a loss to win the commission election,” she said about her failed re-election bid in 2009, followed by the 2010 race to replace retired county commissioner Katy Sorenson.
“If that’s not a litmus test, I don’t know what is,” Bell told me.
Being Mr. Lynda Bell has its pluses and its minuses.
In the plus column, you get her experienced campaign consultant, lobbyist and rainmaker Jose Luis Castillo, funding from her campaign regulars, including developer Wayne Rosen, who has several interests in what some call Waynestead, other interested county money and the nod — or in this case a half nod — from Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, whose kiss of death might not be what Bell wants now a days.
After all, look at the last two Not So Golden Boy endorsements: former Coral Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, who lost against Mayor James Cason in April, and Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez, who abandoned his mayoral aspirations just a few weeks ago after a series of campaign missteps (read: someone kept stepping in it).
It’s not like Gimenez can pick a winner these days.
Homestead mayor’s race could be litmus for Lynda Bell, too added by Ladra on
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