The Miami Herald appropriate calls it the year of the bust. That’s because 2013 was particularly packed with political corruption — or at least the kind we found out about, anyway.
But it was also the year of disgust as electeds promoted corporate welfare for the millionaire owner of the Miami Dolphins, another millionaire bought his election in Miami Beach, Doral exploded in a war of corruption accusations between the city manager and the mayor and illegal maquinitas ran rampant in Hialeah months after a state law banned them.
So as we raise a glass tonight to toast the year, let’s raise our glass and toast some of our favorite characters of 2013:
Hialeah Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez has to top Ladra’s list every year. Not because he was caught doing anything wrong but because he is repeatedly not caught doing anything wrong. Castro has one high-performing guardian angel doing double duty. And we toast to the reassignment of this angel. Because Hernandez keeps escaping any consequences for what everyone knows is rampant and illegal abuse of power as well as his role in Hialeah’s shadow banking industry with his mentor, former Mayor Julio Robaina, who was finally indicted this year on several federal charges stemming from that investigation. I mean, how is it that Hernandez is still uncharged after he admitted on TV that he was getting 36% interest on his personal loan to someone? “No, that’s principal. No, interest. No, principal.” Why isn’t he made to give a sworn statement? Didn’t the guy paying this extraordinary interest admit it was interest?
This year, Hernandez also snubbed his nose at the state legislature and continued to let the illegal tragamoneda gambling machines operate in his corrupt little city because, well, they had permits! He also seems to have received a free pass on a Florida Sunshine Law violation after it appears that he and his Seguro Que Yes Council met hours before the budget hearing to discuss the annual budget. A cursory investigation ended when the Miami-Dade 
Commission on Ethics and Public Trust could not find anyone to corroborate the meeting. Even though each council member was seen entering and leaving the mayor’s office area at the same time, we are expected to believe they all met separately — and this without a single sworn statement being taken. A few weeks before that, Hernandez had his favorite henchman, Chief of Staff Arnie Alonso, call the police on activists and journalists who were seeking public records in the clerk’s office on the third floor at City Hall. They activists left before police arrived, but officers still harassed them outside, despite the fact that they had done nothing wrong and were well within the law. A few weeks before that, Hernandez had his other favorite henchman, Glenn “The Goon” Rice, harass a challenging candidate at his home, calling him names and insulting him on camera, and get into a fight with former Mayor Raul Martinez at a local restaurant. In between he has defended the giveaway of a public park to a baseball enterprise and refused to listen to a group of homeowners with petitions against a particular development that appears to be getting all the green lights nonetheless. And he won re-election with a sweeping 81 percent of the vote, higher if you count absentee ballots.
Let’s toast to his guardian angel — so that she may be given a break and a more deserving ward.
We also toast Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Not So Golden Boy” Gimenez and his amazing ability to double-talk. Gimenez seemed to solidify his power earlier this month by vetoing the return of a 5% concession they pay on top of their health insurance, which he had promised to give back. Or did he do that back when he dismantled he public corruption unit that had tied his campaign to absentee ballot fraud in Hialeah? Meanwhile, Gimenez supports the giveaway of millions of dollars to private companies however, and earlier this year advocated — indeed, conceived the “unprecedented agreement” — for the public to pay for the lion’s share of a $350-million renovation to SunLife Stadium. An agreement that, luckily, was shot down in the Florida legislature. But let’s also toast the mayor’s ability to adapt, like a chameleon. Gimenez can change on a dime, when polling shows it is politically convenient. He showed that ability when he switched his original advocacy for a small tax increase to maintain service levels for a slash and burn budget that would have closed dozen of libraries and fired dozens of paramedics. And, after getting so much flack for his cushy relationship to the lobbyists involved in that Dolphins stadium scam, he has kept a staged distance from the controversial and questionable procurement bid involving the sewer pipe project and so many of his friends. He He asked the Ethics Commission for an opinion and then recommended all bids be thrown out and the process started over after he learned that someone broke the cone of silence and communicated with commissioners. But maybe that is because he really has every intention of divvying up the contract so that all his friends get a piece of the pie. Mark my words (more on that later).
Raise your glass and toast the big ones dangling from what I like to call, collectively, the three crooked mayors. I have to put them together because if we address them separately, they take up too much of the list. But Mayors Manny “Maraña” Maroño, Michael “Muscles” Pizzi and Steve “Whoop De Doo” Bateman — of Sweetwater, Miami Lakes and Homstead, respectively, have to be remembered fondly if only for providing us with a public corruption trifecta in August. We toast your big balls. And we wish you good luck in 2014. In court and in jail. You’re all gonna need it.
- Maroño will do time for sure. While both he and Pizzi were nabbed in August after a federal sting and charged with bribery after they allegedly took kickbacks to get bogus grant applications approved, Maroño was more loud-mouthed about it. Of course, he’s Cuban. He was caught on wiretaps, beating his manboobs, bragging about his ability to lie to the federal auditors checking up on the grant funds. Maroño knows his goose is cooked. That is why he was allegedly cooperating with
federal authorities before they started digging around in his past, his police department and his towing business. Then, I heard from his friends, he clammed up. But Ladra thinks they will eventually get him to plea to everything. All they may need to do is threaten to go public with the audio, since I hear that federal funds is not the only thing he brags about tapping on tape, if you know what I mean. - Pizzi — who professes innocence still to this day — is a less certain fish. He does not implicate himself as much. He knows how to talk. Only in Miami can someone who took a $3,000 payoff from a lobbyist wearing a wire in his closet can dream of saying he is innocent. But Pizzi is a slick, double-talking lawyer. So he knows how much to say and how much not to say. Investigators are not happy about the fact that prosecutors do not like the Pizzi case as much. They are digging into his past, too, but he may not do time at all.
- Bateman either. His crime may be seen as less egregious. He wasn’t stealing from the government so much as taking money from someone else to grease the government’s wheels without disclosing it. His arrest, unrelated to the sting earlier that month, is on lesser charges of unlawful compensation. Nobody ever does time for that.
Lobbyist Michael Kesti, a totally unknown entity who was the one that brought the crazy federal scam to Maroño and Pizzi as a paid FBI informant, should get a toast of his own. To his air of mystery. May it be shattered in 2014. Because Ladra is still unsure of whether Kesti is the hero everyone says he is or a political pawn involved more deeply in graft than he or the feds will admit. Kesti came out of nowhere to make the introductions and first raise the prospect of kickbacks for the electeds help in securing grant applications at small cities. He continued to call and be involved, urging his subjects to take him up on his scam. He seems like anything but an honest broker of justice. And I, for one, would like to know more about his involvement and what he is doing now.
Doral City Manager Joe Carollo, we toast your gumption — and vocal stamina. “Crazy Joe” went on a three-hour verbal rampage in October and ripped Mayor Luigi Boria, his one-time BFF during last year’s mayoral campaign, with accusations of corruption and cozying up to “narco Chavistas.” Sev
eral investigations have resulted from that public spanking, er, I mean meeting and there may be a struggling recall effort that doesn’t seem to have much steam. But, most importantly, the battle between to two top Alpha dogs in that young city — which cost them, so far, the Miss USA contest — is providing some major political drama to those of us who eat that shit up.
Newly elected Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine has quickly become one of Ladra’s love-to-hate pols, what with his nasty penchant for political retaliation, disregard for the First Amendment and partnership with scumbags like lobbyist/consultant David Custin. We toast to his eventual demise. Nobody knows much about Levine, or where he got his millions. But people are watching him, if not already looking into stuff, because of his high-profile race and heightened interest in the Miami Beach Convention Center development. I mean, you get noticed when you bring former President Bill Clinton to town to support your mayoral candidacy. And even if they find nothing on him, which is hard to believe, I don’t think “Fix It” Phil is going to like having reporters and investigators nosing around in his business all the time. Ladra bets he doesn’t last the full term.
Boleteros Sergio “El Tio” Robaina and Deisy Penton de Cabrera, who got off Scott free with barely probation for their part in habitual absentee ballot fraud that is rampant in Hialeah. We toast to their amazing luck. Not only did they get off despite large amounts of evidence against them, but they can also get back to work on their campaign duties in time for the 2014 state elections.
Jeffrey “No Relation” Garcia, longtime campaign consultant and former chief of staff to Congressman Joe Garcia, should get a despojo after he gets out of jail for his 90-day sentence on bogus absentee ballot charges that seem pitiful compared to what the Hialeah mafia is guilty of (although it seems he may be out already, on early release). We toast to his spiritual cleansing. Because you have to be so cagado to get busted on this bullshit of generating absentee ballot requests, gentle readers, while others get away with changing votes and collecting dozens of absentee ballots on behalf of particular electeds and their friends. We also toast to whatever new skills he learned at the Turner Guilford Knight Center, because he’s going to be hard pressed to find work as a political consultant now. Or maybe not. This is Miami.
Let’s make it a two-for-one and toast to another despojo for Miami Commissioner Francis “Lost in the Future” Suarez, especially since he has a much awaited baby on the way. Suarez was el niño lindo, presenting a real threat to Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado in his re-election bid until August, when he pulled out of the race early. The withdrawal disappointed many, including his father, Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier “Mayor Sir” Suarez, who was the first Cuban mayor of Miami, and the multiple donors to Baby X’s million-dollar campaign, who were suddenly exposed as having supported someone other than the guy who’d be mayor for the next four years. But Suarez said he had no choice. The race had become about him defending himself from one tragic incident to another — his staffer’s unfortunate twitter comments, a lou
sy mailer with a picture of a dead teen from Miami Beach and, the icing on the cake, the arrests and plea bargains of two staffers involved in the online requests of about 20 absentee ballots for people who had signed up to get them at a drunken 5 de Mayo event. Some people believe (read: hope) that Suarez still has that golden future ahead of him, but Ladra is afraid that more than an asterisk, this episode will become the first sentence ever written about Suarez in anything he ever does. But, then again, this is the 305. Anything can happen.
And before we get too drunk, let’s raise a last toast to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle. We wish you bifocals and a hearing aide for 2014. Because there has got to be something wrong with you if you can’t see or hear the corruption all around — if you can’t see the aforementioned abuse of power committed by No. 1 on this list — and it takes the feds to make the really big arrests around here. The ones that stick. If there were ever a case for term limits, the SAO is it. Fernandez-Rundle has been there 20-some years and it seems that her job has become more about protecting her post than providing justice. At least when it comes to political corruption. She bungled the Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones case and the Congressman David “Nine Lives” Rivera case even though she had a 52-count indictment for him, couldn’t investigate absentee ballot fraud in Hialeah last year because of her own ties to those shenanigans — oh, is that what gives these people such a confidence level — and has given Maroño so many passes that we wonder why her son, the one who smokes pot, hasn’t been hired yet by the Sweetwater Police Department like Commissioner Lynda Bell‘s disgraced cop daughter was after she was fired from the Homestead force. Then she turns around and aggressively prosecutes two young kids who genuinely thought they had the okay of voters to ask for their ABs and were just trying to get out the vote, rather than steal the vote, and sentences the aforementioned No. 8 to 90 days while giving Sergio “El Tio” Robaina a pass. Maybe we should toast to some kind of psychological exam for her, also.
And let’s toast to 2014 and to the shower of shenanigans we will see exposed next year. Because now that the feds are on a roll, I expect to see a little more fallout come from the pending cases and investigations. We’ve come to expect an arrest or scandal once every couple of months.
And they better be on top of it. Because we don’t have a local anti corruption unit anymore.
A New Year’s toast to Top 10 political characters of 2013 added by Ladra on
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