Not only hasn’t Miami-Dade Commission candidate Cindy Lerner — who, we already established, will say anything to get elected — apologized for verbally abusing a number of Pinecrest residents when she was mayor, she has doubled down and claimed it was an isolated incident with the wife of a nemesis councilman that has been taken out of context.
“It is clearly, as you said, a snippet that provides you the moment that I have opened my mouth, but not what preceded that, so the viewers have no context whatsoever,” Lerner said Sunday on WPLG Local 10’s This Week in South Florida, trying to blame someone else who is not a public figure.
“That particular individual, Karen Ross, wife of Bob Ross, who was on the council, she would come to meetings regularly and not abide by the rules of decorum. She would march herself up to the podium in the middle of our council discussions and just start chastising us,” Lerner said.
“I, as the mayor, had the responsibility to try to regain decorum.”
Well, according to the booing, she failed. And she’s lying.
Read related: Video montage reminds District 7 voters of Cindy Lerner’s temper, rudeness
Well, I mean, Ladra doesn’t know if there’s bad blood between Lerner and Mrs. Ross. There could be. Las malas lenguas say there’s bad blood between Lerner and a lot of people.
“She yells at everyone. Her colleagues are scared of her,” says a county employee who has worked with Lerner. “Mommy Dearest,” he calls her.
It’s not like there’s no evidence. The TV spot on the air is just a short version of a much longer YouTube video — almost 10 minutes worth, with 1,636 views as of Sunday — that shows Lerner berating, insulting, intimidating, cursing and yelling at several people. Let’s count ’em, shall we?
Twelve. At least 12, maybe 13 different people were at the podium trying to speak when Mayor Lerner laid into them.
“If you open your mouth one more time…” Lerner yells to one person.
“You are out of order,” she yells many times.
She bangs the gavel.
“You can be escorted out.”
“Sit down!”
“The way you present yourself is offensive!”
“Let me finish!”
“We’re going to do it the way I call it.”
“Do not interrupt me!”
“If you don’t like the way I talk to you or anybody else, let’s have it out in the back room.”
“I’m not putting up with this kind of shit!”
“God dammit!”
Someone asks Lerner to stop rolling her eyes. “I guess I can’t stop,” she says.
Even the city attorney gets it when he tries to interject. “I don’t need your legal opinion,” she shouts.
Read related: Miami-Dade candidate Cindy Lerner lies with competing campaign messages
She adjourns the meeting abruptly, at least twice. A couple of times, hecklers in the audience boo her. “Disrespectful,” one woman says. “You need to be removed from office,” yells someone from the audience.
It’s not one time or one person or one meeting. It’s on different occasions because everyone is dressed differently. There’s a pattern of rudeness and disrespect and verbal abuse of power.
The longer video wasn’t even posted by Raquel Regalado, who Lerner faces now in the runoff. It was put together by the Pets’ Trust Miami supporters who were backing Michael Rosenberg in the first round.
Video doesn’t lie. How can she claim that this was a one time thing with one “particularly individual,” as she said? There’s video. Isn’t anybody giving Cindy any media advice? She should have owned it and apologized and said it was a difficult time for her but that there’s no excuse and she takes full responsibility and has learned from her mistakes.
At least, that would be plausible.
Cindy Lerner had a pattern of verbal abuse, not just one single incident added by Ladra on
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