Calling himself the “new kid on the block,” Marco Antonio Valdes officially kicked off his campaign for Miami-Dade commission in District 10 on Wednesday with a happy hour at 94th Aerosquadron.
Valdes calls himself a “muchacho” at 45. But that’s just because he is running against the county’s “golden oldie.”
Valdes filed papers weeks ago to run against longtime Commissioner Javier Souto, who has been on the commission dais since 1993 and who everyone agrees should just retire quietly already, although few will say so publicly. Apparently, however, Souto wants four more years because he filed for re-election Nov. 20, three weeks after Valdes filed.
Maybe Souto, who will turn 75 Sunday (happy birthday, Commissioner), thinks the city of Westchester will incorporate within that last term. That way, he can be mayor there when he leaves, as is widely rumored to intend.
But then again, other rumors had Log Cabin Republican activist and Community Councilwoman Mimi Planas, who ran against Souto in 2010, looking at a rematch. After all, she got 23 percent of the vote — which, yes, is a scorching loss, but also a nice debut on her first showing for someone with no name recognition to get a quarter of the voters from the get go and encouraging for Valdes, who has similar (read: no) name recognition.
Alas, Planas says there is “no truth to that rumor. I will not be running for commission next year,” she told me in an email response to my inquiry.
Valdes, an FIU student taking a break from his mobile x-ray business, is an unlikely candidate. But Souto may yet get other challengers. He could be the most vulnerable incumbent, well, except maybe for Commissioner Lynda Bell, who is under threat of a recall and whose husband’s loss in the Homestead mayoral race has already drawn a few potential challengers of her own to meet with “people.”
The former state senator is seen as alternately as a classic old-school legislator or a dinosaur and seems to sometimes lose his train of thought in a meeting. Or at least he goes off on lots of tangents. You should see the eyes roll when he begins to speak on the dais.
“I think there’s a need for new people,” Valdes told Ladra Thursday. “There are a lot of changes that need to be made.”
Valdes and his supporters, which include the same people behind the recall effort for Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro (more on that later), are going to paint Souto as a professional politician who is out of touch with his constituency.
But, even though Souto fired an aide last year because she wouldn’t back him up when calling the police about an upset constituent, he really isn’t a bad guy. “Javiersito” is generally likeable. A Bay of Pigs veteran who still wears the watch the CIA gave him for his missions to Cuba is a one-time realtor and pharmaceutical salesman who served as a state senator from 1988 to 1992.
People connect him to horse country and the equestrian center at Tropical Park, two sources of county pride that Souto has been instrumental in nurturing. People say over and over again that he listens. He visits a park in his district every Saturday morning for an hour and goes himself — doesn’t send staff — to monthly town hall meetings twice a month, because he does one for Westchester and one for Kendall. And he likes to go in person — even though the commissioner himself has told me that “cuatro gatos” show up most of the time. His words. Not mine.
There were nueve gatos Thursday at the West Dade Regional Library for his monthly chat. After he caught them up on things the county is doing, he asked for questions.
Two residents spoke this week. One talked about how flooding was causing havoc in her front yard. The other talked about crime. There have been five burglaries at homes in her neighborhood in less than two months and she and her neighbors are jittery. Her home backs up to the rear of a shopping center. “We hear movement and conversations at night.”
We can expect both issues to become campaign issues in the next year.
Recently, Souto got proactive with getting approval for video surveillance cameras at Westbrook Park after neighbors complained of regular drug use and narcotics sales. But Valdes’ campaign manager, Tony Diaz of Lead Races, told me that residents near the park do not want that. “They see it as an invasion of privacy.” What they want, of course, is more police patrols.
Coincidentally, that was the day before Souto filed to run. Diaz said a park officer came to see the candidate as they were poking around at the park and that, lo and behold, the next day Souto put in his paperwork. The commissioners calls it coincidence. Diaz thinks the visit may have indicated that there was a real race on. “He didn’t know we were serious.”
Diaz, who is working on a number of other campaigns — including activist Pamela Gray‘s challenge to State Rep. Holly Raschein and Daisy Baez‘s bid to unseat State Rep. Eric Fresen — said the increase in crime would be one issue in this commission race. Miles of missing sidewalks and flooding in Calusa will be others.
“He has disregarded Fountainbleu Park and Calusa. Marco wants to bring safety back to those areas,” Diaz said.
Valdes, who has volunteered for the i9 sports program in local parks, says crime is keeping people out of our parks, out of their neighborhood, and locked up in their homes.
“We are losing the family oriented feeling of Westchester. People are not united as neighbors. They are all about themselves. We need to have more sports activities to get our kids outside. We need to get to know our neighborhood hospitals,” he said, and yeah, I don’t know where that last one came from, but he is in the medical business, right?
Diaz also said that Valdes wants to see Jackson Memorial Hospital run more like a hospital and less like a business. He said there should be more people with medical experience — as opposed to, say, banking experience — on the board.
Souto dismisses any claims that he is out of touch and brags about being one of the most responsive commissioners in the county — something echoed by some residents, even though Ladra knows of a few isolated cases that have been frustrated with his office. A longtime member of the parks and recreation committee he now chairs, he is sometimes called “the pothole commissioner,” because of his detail to little things like code enforcement and, every now and then, new sidewalks, which he was celebrating with some people a few blocks off Bird Road last week.
“I can be the pothole commissioner or I can be the guy signing the agreement with the Port of Spain,” Souto said, maybe a little hurt at the suggestion. “I have to wear many hats.”
But he makes no excuses about what he calls his “passion” on the dais (what others may call his nonsensical diatribes).
“Sometimes I go overboard in my pursuit of quality of life for people,” Souto said.
The commissioner said he was not concerned about any challenge to his last term.
“You know how I got this watch,” he asked Ladra, pulling up his coat sleeve to show me. “I got it working for the CIA in missions to free Cuba. If I’m not afraid of that, why should I be afraid of this?
“I’m afraid of God only,” Souto said, adding that, despite the haters, he doesn’t plan to retire anytime soon.
“God will retire me at some point,” Souto told Ladra.
‘New kid’ runs vs ‘golden oldie’ Commissioner Javier Souto added by Ladra on
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