Mayor’s endorsements are practically paid transactions

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In yet another sign of the growing desperation Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and those around him have to keep that county gravy train going, the incumbent had a private event last week for only invited insiders to announce a group of insignificant endorsements from the low-hanging fruit.

It’s notable not because it was hastily planned and timed right after Camp Gimenez found out that Raquel Regalado was getting real endorsements, no strings attached, from clergy members, the Pets’ Trust and practically every single union — despite a 4% raise many got due to rising property values.

It’s notable because in almost each one of his endorsements there is, um, let’s say specific motivation at play. Or strings attached.

We will call them transactional endorsements — because you get something in return. Ladra may have not figured everybody out, but the public should know about the very possible quid pro quo for some of these nods. They are transactions.

In the case of Palmetto Bay Mayor Eugene Flinn and any Village council members, the endorsement comes just two days after their little government got a $7.5 million grant from the county to redevelop their “downtown.” Yeah, they actually call it that. This is one of the richest municipalities in our county, and they get 10 percent(!) of a half-penny sales tax slush fund of $75 million to encourage economic development countywide. You think there’s no fix in?

For Florida City Mayor For Life Otis Wallace, it’s all about family. His sister, Sandy Walker, has been paid $16,950 so far by one of Gimenez’s PACs for “outreach” and “consulting” (read: to gather black voter absentee ballots).  Wallace cannot bite the hand that feeds his sister. Even if she is a former county lobbyist arrested in 2007 for fraud who pleaded guilty to bilking the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust by submitting false tax returns under a $200,000 loan agreement with the nonprofit anti-poverty agency. It’s his sister. Wallace is just being a good brother. By the way, Commissioner Barbara Jordan is their other sister. That’s why she endorsed Gimenez, too.

Miami-Dade Commissioner Dennis Moss is being a good husband. He is standing with Gimenez to support his wife, Margaret Hawkins Moss, who has a six-figure county job in Water and Sewer (where we already know the mayor likes to hook up his pals). Hawkins started as a single girl working on the first term commissioner’s staff in 1993. Three years fast forward and she was a senior procurement contract officer, monitoring compliance on million dollar aviation department contracts that her fiancee was awarding on the commission. Until 2014, when the new airport director took charge. Las malas lenguas say they either didn’t get along or she simply didn’t cut it, so she was moved to WASA as chief of Small Business Initiative Services (is that a made up job?) — with a generous $8,000 raise to $108,000-a-year. In other words, Moss is just being a good husband. He can’t bite the hand that feeds his wife. And probably him, too. Not unless he wants to sleep on the sofa.

And speaking of where people sleep… Everybody knows that Miami-Dade School Board Member Larry Feldman lives in fear that someone will run against him because it is also common knowledge that he doesn’t live in the district. Feldman uses some rinky dink Pinecrest apartment behind the Mitsubishi dealership and Dairy Queen on U.S. 1. The Monterrey Gardens apartment on Southwest 68th Court is on his voter’s registration. But come on! Nobody believes that. Not when he and his wife, Avis, have a nice four-bedroom house with a pool in the 13900 block of 107th Terrace. Not when he claims his Homestead exemption there. So he’s either committing tax fraud or election fraud. And it is possible that Gimenez — whose sister-in-law is running for School Board and whose son tried to bully or buy others off the ballot — hinted that he would run someone against Feldman. I mean there is really no other reason for Feldman to go out of his way to betray a fellow school board member. Why wouldn’t he just stay out of it?

Cutler Bay Mayor Peggy Bell is basically a newby whose endorsement has questionable value anyway. But she owes her political career to her campaign manager, Jose Luis Castillo, who also ran campaigns for former county commissioner Lynda Bell and helped with Gimenez’s 2011 and 2012 campaigns. Castillo is also a lobbyist for the owners of a nine-acre property located on the corner of Southwest 184th Street and Old Cutler Road who, at the time, had an application to change the zoning from residential to mixed use. That means they could build a three-story strip mall on the historic and scenic two-lane road next to an ecological restoration coastal area. It’s quite possible that the application needs some kind of county approval. Or that they want some kind of county incentive money. He also lobbies the county for a number of other development clients.

See? Each of these people has his or her own reasons to stand with Gimenez — but you can bet it ain’t his leadership or his track record.

Because most of them have had beef with the mayor at one point or another. The most curious of the endorsements was State Rep. Kionne McGhee, who has recently led a bevy of these same South Dade leaders in taking the mayor to task for broken promises on the metro rail extension south.

“Unless you’re talking about light rail, don’t bother coming to South Dade talking about bigger buses,” McGhee said in March. “There’s not a single pastor, a single mayor, a single city council member who is asking for bus. They’re all asking for rail… people were promised a rail.”

What did it take for him to change his mind? Ladra suspects it’s the $31 million study that Gimenez now proposes to do on light rail options along five main corridors, as if a study is going to tell us anything new. But I can’t help but wonder if McGhee knows this is a five year study and that only $7.5 million is being allocated for this year. Hey, at least you can look for this photo to pop up in mailers or palm cards for black voters.

It’s too bad. Because this was an opportunity for McGhee to stand with the rest of this community that feels betrayed by Gimenez. I mean, how much does this Democrat really agree with the Republican mayor’s policies and decisions? Probably not much.

Instead, he and the others join Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez, an admitted loan shark and proven liar, in supporting the mayor. Because those are the kind of people who stand with Gimenez: Liars and loansharks.

And sell-outs.

  Carlos Gimenez, Eugene Flinn, Otis Wallace