A mailer that landed in the homes of South Miami voters Wednesday tries to paint one of the candidates in next week’s special election as pro-development.
But it was paid for by the same political action committee that smeared the three Hispanic candidates in the mayoral race last year. It is tied to former Mayor Philip Stoddard and his handpicked successor, Sally Phillips.
Candidate Mary Ann Ruiz, who is the chairperson of the city’s planning and zoning board, has raised the most of the four candidates that have filed to replace Commmissioner “Bicycle Bob” Welsh for the remainder of his term. Welsh died in February after a battle with skin cancer.
Ruiz has raised more than $14,000, including multiple checks from land use attorneys, according to her last campaign finance report. The mailer claims it is a conflict of interest to raise those funds while she serves as the planning board chair.
She also has checks from family members and former gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, who gave her $100.
Read related: South Miami mayoral race gets ugly with ethnically-tainted hit piece
“Mary Ann Ruiz wants you to think her brief experience as Planning Board chair qualifies her to be commissioner. Don’t vote for her,” the mailer says. “Unless you think collecting conflict-of-interest campaign contributions from land use attorneys is a good thing.”
It also looks like they took a bad photo from a Zoom meeting and blurred it up.
Ruiz, 39, could not be reached Wednesday and did not return a call and text to her phone while she was at a candidate’s forum. But in an email blast to supporters, she denounced the mailer and called the PAC into question.
“Election day is less than a week away, and that is when candidates who sit in their ivory towers — rather than knock on doors to speak with voters — begin to get desperate and rely on negative campaigning using shady, dirty, PAC money,” Ruiz wrote. “One such PAC has sent an attack mailer against only one candidate of the 4 in this race, me.
“As your candidate for Commissioner, I have knocked on thousands of doors and have heard your concerns,” the real estate attorney added. “I will not allow for our City to be sold to the highest bidder. Not on my watch.”
The PAC, South Miami Residents for Quality of Life, hasn’t reported any expenses or contributions since January of last year, when it got around $15,000 from real estate interests, including Grass River Property, which was one of the companies that owned Sunset Place until it was sold for $65 million earlier this year. Ruiz said in her email that the group had successfully lobbied Stoddard in 2019 for approval of high-rise towers.
That was the same month the PAC, run by Tallahassee attorney Mark Herron, sent out a mailer that attacked the three Hispanic candidates in the mayoral race. Only two non-Hispanic candidates were not attacked: One who denounced the mailer on Facebook and Philips, Stoddard’s pick.
The former mayor sent a letter to voters that promoted two other, non-Hispanic candidates.
“When Bob first learned of his skin cancer, maybe six years ago, he asked me to help assure that a worthy successor would fill his place on the City Commission,” Stoddard wrote, adding that he interviewed the three candidates who were all members or former members of the planning board.
“I found Brian Corey and Zach Mann to be the most thoughtful candidates,” Stoddard wrote, stressing that Corey’s answers were the most impressive.
Brian Corey, 36, is a marketing executive who has raised just over $7,000 and Zach Mann, a retired federal law enforcement officer and longtime South Miami resident, has loaned himself $900 for signs.
A fourth candidate, Henry Tien, hasn’t raised a dime. So nobody is attacking him.
Ruiz said in a Miami Herald story that she wants to engage more young Hispanic families in South Miami through events and festivals. “We have an opportunity in our city to have that kind of representation on our commission, which I think is really important in general,” she said.
It looks like someone else doesn’t want that kind of representation there.
Dark money PAC attack in South Miami special election hits Hispanic hopeful added by Ladra on
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