With all the talk about racism in the recent Coral Gables election — a needed conversation on the heels of that terrible letter the new mayor signed opposing curriculum inclusive of marginalized communities at his daughters’ private school — nothing’s been said about other divisions that exist.
If many Gables residents aren’t outright racist — and that’s a big if, considering the city is the lone holdout on naming U.S. 1 Harriet Tubman Way — they sure are snobby. It’s not so much about black vs. white. It’s more about old Gables vs. new Gables. Cuban vs. Dominican. Private vs. public school.
Several candidates in the April 13 election were characterized as outsiders and unworthy of elected office in the City Beautiful simply because “they don’t look like us or talk like us.” Not just the obvious Mayra Joli — a black Dominican Republican who had the police called on her twice — but also Javier Baños, Claudia Miro, Tania Cruz-Gimenez and, to a certain extent, Jose Valdes-Fauli, who is running against the only gringa left standing.
“Somebody must have [Police Chief Ed] Hudak on speed dial,” Joli told Ladra, referring to the two times police approached her at the Coral Gables library branch.
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The first was on the early voting Sunday because the music she was playing was “too loud.” She insists it was Rhonda Anderson, who led the results with a 16-point lead over Jose Valdes-Fauli and is headed into the runoff. That’s because right before, one of Anderson’s poll workers approached Joli about the music and, well, everyone agrees he wasn’t very nice.
“Mayra Joli has a right to freedom of speech, but if someone comes up to her to express something, I can’t stop him either,” Anderson said.
She told Ladra it wasn’t her and Chief Ed Hudak said he got the call himself, direct, from a neighboring homeowner. Unfortunately, there is no incident report to reflect that.
And guess he is on someone’s speed dial, after all. Hudak came back himself on Tuesday to tell Joli her mobile sign truck couldn’t be parked there. It had to be roaming around or he would impound it and arrest the driver, Joli said.
Now, why didn’t the officer say anything about the mobile truck on Sunday? Was that a new law added to the city books on Monday?
And, as more officers showed up, even one on motorcycle, “flashing my corner,” Joli told Ladra, someone yelled for her to “go back to your master,” in what seems like a reference to slavery. Even if it was referring to former President Donald Trump. Would he say that to a white Republican?
Still seems a little extreme, even for the Gables.
But the widespread rejection of Joli wasn’t just on race. She’s too loud. She talks with her hands. She dresses too sexy. She is not diplomatic.
“My music is scandalous, my presence is shameful,” Joli scoffed. “But the presence of Alex Diaz de la Portilla and others isn’t shameful? My attitude is bad for Coral Gables but the corruption is not?”
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Many people remember when Raul Valdes-Fauli ran against Jeannett Slesnick for the mayoral seat how the whisper campaign was for Cubans to vote for the Cuban and how the gringos wanted to get control again (like that could ever happen). That talk hasn’t gone away in the Group 2 race, where the only anglo left is Anderson. But it’s been reversed, where non-Hispanic residents have urged voters to keep one non-Cuban on the dais.
Ladra has heard people say it and thinks it’s coming mostly from former Commissioner Chip Withers and his squad. But Sue Kawalerski, an active Riviera neighborhood resident, says it isn’t prevalent in this election.
“Most of my neighbors are Hispanic, but they’re not looking at ethnicity as much as in the past,” Kawalerski told Ladra. “This time, I’m not hearing that at all, which is surprising and maybe healthy. This time it’s ‘What have they done? Who’s going to stop this mess?'”
Baños, who got a slight majority of the votes and is headed into a runoff with soccer dad Kirk Menendez, said he did not feel like an outsider. “On the contrary, I feel everybody has been very welcoming. I’m a self made person. I don’t come from a long known family. If that’s the expectation of the voter, I don’t fit that particular mold.”
But Ladra has heard that residents don’t like his accent and the fact that he calls people he doesn’t know Mamita and Macho. They say things like “he doesn’t look like us. He doesn’t sound like us. He should run in Hialeah not Coral Gables.” And — oh my God — he went to public school!
Andy Gomez, the former University of Miami professor who served on the city’s retirement board with Baños, said the candidate “doesn’t have the temperament” to be a commissioner because he is too combative and divisive.
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“He doesn’t see how he can compromise to move forward. It’s his way or the highway,” Gomez told Ladra. “We don’t need that in Coral Gables.
“There’s a higher level of expectations, even though the political climate in this city for the last 10 years has somehow deteriorated.”
The whispers about Miro, the only single mother in the contest, was that she dates too much. Like that’s anybody’s business. The whispers about Cruz-Gimenez were similarly irrevelant to her ability to serve. Oh, and that she’s actually from New Jersey. You know, one of those Cubans.
Baños said that he’s only had two doors slammed in his face of the thousands he’s knocked on. “My impression is, for the most part, that voters in Coral Gables are very smart. They do expect a professional commission,” he said.
“I hit some bad doors, too,” Anderson said. “One guy came out with a gun. I was hanging a door hanger on his gate.”
Her campaign messages have been entirely about comparing her track record to the others. “I’ve been doing this since 2004, and the others haven’t,” she told Ladra. “And I used their best pictures,” she added. “How else do you do position campaigning?
“There was nothing about anybody’s garbage fees or parking tickets or inappropriate behavior in the past. I don’t work that way,” Anderson said, adding that there should be a conversation about this after the election.
“I would hope that we could do some healing.”
In snobby Coral Gables, ‘not one of us’ plagues some candidates at elections added by Ladra on
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