District 5 clock is ticking; Miami-Dade looks ready to crown a king — or queen

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Ladra predicts State Rep. Vicki Lopez gets appointed

Ah, Miami-Dade County… where the candidates start lining up before the seat is even officially vacant.

With Commissioner Eileen Higgins heading into the mayoral runoff and leaving her District 5 seat, the race to see who replaces her has gone from sideline chatter to full-blown arena. And we have our players.

The deadline to apply, for those who want to be appointed, came and went Wednesday and there were five wannabes for D5. Fitting. And they are exactly who we thought they would be. Commission Auditor Adeyinka Majekodunmi told Commission Chair Anthony Rodriguez in a memo Wednesday that there would be “background research and residency verification” of the candidates and that the commissioners would get a report by Monday, Nov. 17.

Read related: Let the jockeying begin to fill Eileen Higgins’ Miami-Dade commission seat

Commissioners are expected to make a decision the very next day. So, let’s give them some cliff notes they can get without the fancy audit, right? Here is some tiny basic background research on the five applicants for the District 5 commission seat:

• Former Commissioner Joe Sanchez, the “veteran” law enforcement figure who lost the Republican primary for the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s office last year, has been lobbying commissioners hard even before he filed to run for the seat the day after Higgins won the first round with 36% Nov. 4. He keeps publicly saying there should be an election, but that’s only because he knows someone else has the inside track.
• State Rep. Vicki Lopez, the one with the inside track, who is being pushed out by Tallahassee and seems to have most of the commissioners on board — Republicans as a favor to House Speaker Danny Perez, and Democrats because they think they can win the seat in a special election, which is not entirely impossible given the current climate (more on that later). But Lopez has excess baggage. It includes an indictment on 10 counts, including bribery and “honest services fraud,” when she was a Lee County commissioner in 1995 and served 15 months in federal prison until President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. Later, a court vacated her conviction. More recently, she’s been accused of benefiting from the school bus camera legislation she championed last year after family members got lucrative jobs in the industry. But in Miami politics, that kind of baggage often just means “experienced.”
• Former Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, who had the seat before Higgins and resigned to run for Congress. He lost. He told Ladra earlier this month that he has the time now that he’s an empty-nester and he wants to bring stability to the commission. You know, the kind of stability that comes with 20 years on the board.
• Former Miami Beach Commissioner and State Rep. David Richardson, who lost the Miami-Dade Tax Collector race last year and  filed to run for the seat has said he has already represented the same group of people in both the city of Miami Beach and the Florida House. His supporters make the case that, as the only Democrat in the running, he should replace Higgins because she, too, is a Democrat.
• Anthony Javier Diaz, the only non retread, who likes to be called Tony Diaz because that’s how everybody knows him, he says. He was going to run for Miami Commission in the District 4 special election but withdrew (read: chickened out) before it started. Ladra will bet that he won’t run if he’s not appointed.

Nobody should be appointed. By county rules, the Commission has 30 days to either appoint someone or call a special election to fill the vacancy. They have appointed commissioners in the past — Natalie Milian Orbis and Danielle Cohen Higgins some to mind — and proponents will say that an appointment saves more than $1 million taxpayer dollars.

But it’s going to be hard to keep a straight face when they gave FIFA $46 million for, basically, World Cup parties and can always find funding for the pet projects their contributor contractors can build.

Read related: Lobbying starts to fill Eileen Higgins’ D5 Miami-Dade commission seat

Ladra was under the impression that there would be an election for the seat in August anyway, which could make spending $1.2 to $1.5 million on an election in a tight budget year hard to swallow But that’s not true. That’s only if the person is appointed. That’s what triggers the special election with the other county seats in August. This term has almost three years left on it. If someone is elected in a special election in, say, February, they would serve those three years.

There’s nothing else to consider. A special election is the only choice commissioners can make next week if they want the public to have any trust in them whatsoever.

Only five people applied for a seat in a district that covers such hot spots as Downtown Miami, Little Havana, Brickell and parts of Miami Beach because everyone knows the fix is in. (Remember, Ladra was the first to say Orbis would be appointed). The commissioners are leaning toward appointment, because it gives them more control. They already set up an online portal, asked for résumés, and had the auditor’s office prep for the process. In other words:

The setup is ready for the “we pick someone” scenario. And Ladra’s money is on Lopez.

District 5 is now a political chessboard. The players: institutional favorite Lopez, beggar Sánchez, and the whole commission watching who blinks first. Whether the process will be democratic (a special election) or managed (an appointment) is the question — and the answer could tell us a lot about how Miami-Dade really “does” democracy.

Ladra’s prediction: The appointment route wins out, the inside candidate takes the seat, and citizens roll their eyes. Unless the chambers are packed on Nov. 18 and the outrage meter gets high enough to force a special election.

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  David Richardson, Eileen Higgins, Joe Sanchez, Vicky Lopez