The election in Hialeah is over. But the war is not.
Former Mayor Julio Martinez, a longtime critic of the current administration who lost solidly Tuesday to Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez in what could be one of the lowest turnouts in city history, took to the streets Sunday with a new message:
“If you didn’t vote, you are destroying democracy,” said the sign Martinez held Sunday afternoon on the corner of West 49th Street and 16th Avenue, in front of the heavily trafficked Westland Mall and a popular Pollo Tropical lunch haunt.
With him, were other candidates, including the other longshot mayoral wannabe, Juan Santana.
Ladra is not sure that antagonizing voters by blaming them for the garbage in Hialeah politics is the right way to go. But, hey, he’s not running for office anymore. And, still, this shows he ain’t kidding when he vowed to stay involved and stay a thorn in Hernandez’ belly.
Martinez had sworn to Ladra that he would stay involved in city politics, and says he may go out with the signs — or similar messages — again. “I have all the time in the world,” said Martinez, who recently retired as a county court bailiff. He plans to make more public records requests about the city’s use (read: giveaway) of public parks and the development being planned in the annexed area by friends of former Mayor Julio Robaina, who faces charges of tax evasion, fraud and falsification of documents. Though he is not charged with usery, the case stems from an investigation into allegations that Robaina ran a secret shadow banking scheme in Hialeah, loaning money at exorbitant — and illegal — interest rates.
“I love this city and I am not going to run again but I am going to work from the outside,” Martinez told me the day after he lost to Hernandez, with 16 percent to the mayor’s 81 (Santana got three percent).
This also could be a response to the banner-towing plane Hernandez or his people — most likely, his PAC chairman and chief bully security enforcer Glenn “The Goon” Rice— which graced the skies over the City of Progress on Thursday (sources say the original intent was to have it fly Tuesday). “Raul y Julio – Los Miserables Se Entienden,” it said, referring to former Mayor Raul Martinez, who Castro blames everything on. Or “Raul and Julio: The Miserable Ones Understand Each Other.”
Hernandez only had his message in Spanish. Martinez had friends on the corner, went bilingual, with the same sign but in English. And I bet it gets seen by more people than the banner, which was hard to make out by many witnesses I spoke to. And it’s cheaper, too.
But the deeper message to Hernandez is this: It’s not over, bud. If you thought you had gotten rid of your foes on Election Day, you got another thing coming.
Post election campaign continues in Hialeah’s war of the signs added by Ladra on
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