If you missed the first Miami-Dade mayoral debate of the runoff Wednesda between Commissioners Esteban Bovo and Daniella Levine Cava, don’t beat yourself up. You didn’t miss much.
In fact, the 90 minute affair Wednesday — a Spanish-language debate on Univision 23 — made Ladra miss former Mayor Alex Penelas. At least he knows how to throw punches.
The debate covered most of the important stuff and is probably most notable for all the non COVID-19 questions about the “BayLink” connector to the beach — she wants to see a monorail like the MetroMover; he wants to wait to see what the current mayor proposes — the half penny sales tax funds for transportation expansion, sanctuary cities, permitting for businesses, affordable housing, the competitive bid process and, of course, the “defund the police” cause on which Bovo is basically running.
Read related: Alex Penelas and Steve Bovo steal the show, spar again in last mayoral debate
Bellowing like an old curmudgeon, again, Bovo — who is younger but seems older than DLC — railed that he did not want Miami to become another New York or Chicago or Portland. He said he had the police union support because he was on record as not wanting to defund the police, which has become code for diverting some of those funds — not patrol or investigation funds but certainly the fat — toward social services that help keep people out of the justice system. He keeps saying that Levine Cava would take police funding away and even has a new TV spot that, like a commercial for Donald Trump, streams images of violent unrest and uses that to scare voters.
It’s a lie to say that I will cut police funding,” Levine Cava said in her much-improved Spanish, which she should get points for. “I’ve always voted to increase police funding and I brought 80 new police officers to the south part of the county because we are growing and we didn’t have the protection we needed.”
Watching them felt like watching a reluctant spiff between Gargamel and Dora the Explorer.
Levine Cava may have said she would like to see some social programs expanded, and she voted for and co-sponsored the legislation that brought back the independent citizen review panel to provide more oversight of questionable police action. But both those issues are things that people have overwhelmingly said they want to see.
Read related: Miami-Dade ignores calls to move some police budget funds to social services
DLC got one chancletaso in when she pointed out that it was Bovo who voted in 2014 for the Gimenez budget that would have cut hundreds of police positions while she brought 80 new positions to her district in the south “because we were growing.”
She also got to turn the “communist” argument around on Bovo, not by calling him one, which is preposterous, but by preempting any attack on her liberal stripes. “Thank God we are in the United States and people can march peacefully. That’s a freedom lacking in Cuba and Venezuela.”
Drop mic.
Other than that, it was pretty much what you might expect. Maybe it was so dry because they were standing so far apart? Debates in the era of social distancing.
“Everyone knows I am a transparent person,” Levine Cava said.
“I know this community. I was raised here,” said Bovo, whose supporters have started a whisper campaign to “vote for the Cuban” or risk giving the gringos back the power they haven’t had since Steve Clark.
Blah, blah, blah.
If this is what the other debates are going to be like, let’s just vote now for Dora the Explorer.
Head to head Miami-Dade mayoral debate is a dud without Alex Penelas added by Ladra on
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