Score one for Homestead mayoral candidate Mark Bell, whose campaign attorney filed an ethics complaint against former Councilman Jeff Porter for what they called a “maliciously false” mailer focused on a $25,000 CRA grant given to Bell’s Redland Hotel earlier this year.
The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust found probable cause Wednesday that the advertisement — sent out in September, for the primary — violated the county’s Mandatory Fair Campaign Practices Ordinance. And Ladra was, like, why haven’t we heard of this before when we live in a freaking forest of malicious falsehoods.
In this piece, Porter called the grant a “gift” from the city, making it look like un regalito de Crisma, and included a crude graphic of a check for $25,000 paid to Mark and Lynda Bell, the county commissioner who was the Homestead mayor once and who many believe put her hubby up to this race.
Bell’s attorney JC Planas filed the complaint earlier this month — about three weeks after the mailer hit mailboxes for the primary election, which Porter led. But he filed just after the window opened to force the statutory expediting provision to kick in. There are different criteria. One is for complaints filed 20 days before en election. This was filed 19 days before Nov. 5. How convenient. Or is it a coincidence that Porter was then slapped with a probable cause finding on an ethics charge six days before Election Day by Senior Judge Steven D. Robinson, who apparently agreed with the assessment of Advocate Michael Murawski.
Which is basically that they didn’t like the language used on the mailer and thought it could have used a better choice of words.
The next step is a hearing before the full ethics board, but that would take place after the election — and after the mailers that Ladra believes will arrive in mailboxes this week, slamming Porter for his purported ethics lapse. All they need is the probable cause.
Porter’s attorney Joe Geller who has more time now that he was fired as town attorney in Miami Lakes (more on that later) said he was almost 100 percent sure they would not settle. Are you kidding me? You can’t settle! And it has nothing to do with the mealy little $250 fine. You have to fight the probable cause determination on principal. Because it seems way out of whack that this is our best example of a negative mail piece. In this town? You have to be kidding, right?
Ladra would love to see more enforcement of the Mandatory Fair Campaign Practices Ordinance — which really needs a new name so let’s give it one, readers. But we also need to set and go by community standards. And if we look at our history of mailers, Porter’s may have danced on the line — with the little wrapped Christmas gifts vs. coal and the mock check to the Bells — but doesn’t seem to have crossed it.
“I don’t think probable cause was shown. And the judge was very troubled at one point. We’ll probably exercise our right to appeal,” Geller said.
Said Planas: “The county code is very clear, a candidate can not send out a false ad. The law is clear that you can’t send out things that are false.”
They are technical quibbles: The money went to the hotel, not the Bells; that Mark owns the hotel alone, but Lynda Bell sure acts like she owns it on this video tour.
“What we said was true,” Geller countered, saying that the general facts were not changed but that the Porter campaign simply got creative in presenting them. “They got the money,” he said of the Bells. “It came in the form of a grant. It went to their private business,” Geller said. The argument is that the Porter campaign just got creative presenting the facts.
Planas had complained and the Ethics Commission advocate had agreed that the mailer damaged the Bells because it said they “gamed the system” to get the grant. But the minutes of the meeting show that only three of 7 CRA members voted on it. Some were absent, one walked away at the precise moment. According to Wikipedia, “gaming the system” is defined as “using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system in order, instead, to manipulate the system for a desired outcome.” That could be what happened. Hell, it happens all the time. Ladra should have a new category on the blog: Gaming the System.
“That’s why we can’t use the word ‘steal’ or ‘fraud’. That’s why you say ‘gaming the system.’ That’s the point,” Geller told Ladra.
The most interesting part, to a wordsmith like me, is that both the judge and the advocate apparently, took issue with the word “gift” used to describe the “grant” and said they should have just used the latter. Basically because gift implies no strings attached and a grant is usually awarded under certain conditions that the recipient must reach — in this case, renovations. They are, as Planas noted, “matching funds.”
But, if you want to tell the truth without mincing words, and the Bells were going to invest in renovations anyway, then the monies are a gift, right? A reward, given to others as well, for making improvements to the business community in the city? A reward of monies they wouldn’t have without the, um, gift? Right? Because it is not paid back, right? That’s one legitimate interpretation.
“Reward.” That is another word for grant, by the way. Man, I hope the word police don’t start reading Political Cortadito. Ladra loves me my thesaurus, which, by the way, has “gift” as the second synonym for “grant.” The first is “allowance.” But the mailer could have used “donation” or “handout” and I think it should still legally suffice because they are synonyms, too.
Geller said it is unreasonable to demand that political advertisement carry all the contextual information about everything. The mailer could not logically, for example, include the conditions under which the grant was given, the other businesses that got community redevelopment monies, the council members who voted on it and those who were absent.
“This is not a documentary,” Geller told me, adding that he told Judge Robinson the same thing. “He said it had a negative inference. I said, ‘Well, yeah, it’s a campaign ad.'”
And here is why this seemingly inside political baseball item is important: Because we cannot allow judges and boards used and manipulated by attorneys and candidates to choose the words we are allowed use in political speech.
Said Geller: “If any time you do an ad you are going to be pulled in front of a board of bureaucrats and lawyers who are going to be judging it not on whether you used an accurate word but on whether you used the best word, that is going to become prior restraint. That is going to have a chilling effect because there could be sanctions if someone doesn’t like your word choice.”
Ladra tried to get Planas’ point of view, but he was way shorter with me (understandably so since I have been pretty harsh on my old friend and his creepy pals lately).
“If Geller wants to complain about the legality of the county ordinance then he can file a lawsuit,” Planas told me.
Geller said he just might. “The ordinance is unconstitutional as it is being applied and it has to be struck down. That’s a shame, because it is designed for hate speech. Words like racist, sexist, homophobe or xenophobe,” Geller said.
He said that the ordinance was not intended for the way that Bell, through Planas, used it to advance their political agenda and agreed that the timing of the complaint stinks to high heaven.
“The expedited rules for the days before an election is intended to be used if the conduct you’re complaining about occurs during the window,” Geller told me. “It is for last minute attacks. To allow something to go unchallenged for weeks and then file a complaint days before an election is unfair. Why should you be able to manipulate the rules?”
Planas said he filed the complaint a week after the Oct. 1 primary. “Nobody waited,” Planas said. “As soon as Mark got the copy of the CRA check from hotel accountant, we filed the complaint.”
But records show the complaint was filed Oct. 17, which is more than two weeks after the primary and the day after two Bell campaign workers were allegedly caught filling out four ballots for a Homestead family — and not for the candidates they had chosen, which included Porter. You’re going to tell me that is coincidence also? Planas says he filled out the complaint the 14th or the 15th. Maybe it was the night of the 16th? After your boys’s boleteros were busted?
That further clouds the timing and motivation for this complaint, which has one goal: To create the justification for a mailer voters will get this weekend, days before the election ends, about Porter’s purported ethics lapse.
Ladra was surprised that the ethics commission advocate didn’t see that, too. But then someone reminded me that Murawski is gunning for the Inspector General job — an aspiration for which he may need Lynda Bell’s vote and/or support, as well as the support of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who hosted a fundraiser for Mark Bell. I don’t know Murawski well, but I know his work. And while the level of fervency and urgency in the investigation of this complaint seems heavy-handed — again, for what we know as the community standard — I refuse to jump to the conclusion that he’d compromise a long history of public service for something like this.
But, then again, I’m not sure what to expect from the ethics commission anymore these days. Remember, these are the same people who came to the conclusion — in ten days and without one sworn statement — that nobody committed a Sunshine Law violation in Hialeah when every council member walked into the mayor’s office at the same time.
What do they know?
Score one for Mark Bell: Ethics board chides Jeff Porter added by Ladra on
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