Less than two weeks before Election Day, South Miami City Attorney Thomas Pepe issued an opinion last week that the city’s $250 limit on campaign contributions was null and void. It has been since July, 2021.
That’s when the state legislature passed a bill that not only pre-empted municipalities from restricting contributions to less than the state limit of $1,000 per person or entity, but also retroactively scrapped any limits already set. The South Miami $250 contribution limit was passed in 1991.
Candidates in this year’s mayor and commission election could have been raising $1,000 from at least some of the donors the whole time. It would be useful in this first-time November ballot, which should drive more turnout.
Obviously, some candidates were pissed off.
“It’s either complete ineptitude or malfeasance,” said former Mayor Horace Feliu, who is trying for the fourth time to get his seat back.
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“He should have been the one to tell the clerk the law had changed,” Feliu said. “I was in a serious position to raise more money.”
“He should have known. There is zero ambiguity in the language,” said former State Rep. Javier Fernandez, who is running for mayor also.
Pepe says it’s not his job, man.
“My job is to advise the city commission, the city clerk, the city manager and department heads. My job is not to advise candidates,” he told Ladra.
But that is what he did. Sorta. Because a candidate was the one who asked about the limits. Incumbent Commissioner Luis Gil sent an email to Pepe asking if the limits had changed. He did that after the Miami Association of Realtors gave him their endorsement and offered a check. They pointed the change out (it’s on 11A in the law).
“Last year, the legislature preempted a county, a municipality, or any other local governmental entity from enacting a campaign contribution limit,” Samantha Garcia, Miami Association of Realtors’ director of political affairs, told Gil via email.
“Do the Realtors have a point? Has our $250 limit been superseded by state legislature,” Gil asked Pepe, forwarding the Garcia email on Oct. 24.
The next day, Pepe told him she was right: Candidates could accept $1,000 campaign contributions.
Besides the question of whether or not Pepe (or the city clerk) should have known about the change sooner and advised everybody, there’s concern that Gil — one of the votes on the commission to extend Pepe’s contract — got a head start with this information.
“The assumption is that he got the information ahead of us,” said Steve Calle, who is running against Gil, and has Steve Marin running his campaign. “If I had an opportunity to raise more money, it’s always advantageous to do that. Going against an incumbent is not always easy.”
He says he feels disadvantaged. “It’s just not fair.”
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Pepe told Ladra that after Gil inquired via email, he responded. to Gil’s question in an email the next day.
“After do a lot of research looking for the legislative intent of the 2021 amendment to Section 106.08 and viewing several committee videos, I then had a conversation with Rebecca O’Hara at the Florida League of Cities,” Pepe wrote in the Oct. 25 email. “She followed this bill from its inception and believes that ‘less than countywide’ includes municipalities.”
That’s language from the bill, describing what races have a $1,000 contribution limit set by the state.
“Therefore, you can receive up to $1,000 per contributor and the City’s campaign finance limitation is preempted,” Pepe said. He copied the city manager, assistant city manager and City Clerk Nkenga Payne.
Ladra doesn’t know if Payne informed candidates, but three of them told her they didn’t know about it until Friday, Oct. 28, which is three days later. That’s the same day that Pepe sent another email to the clerk and the city manager asking if they got his email from the 25th.
“You’re talking about two days, there days,” Pepe said.
“Maybe she did it on the 25th. I don’t know. It’s not one of my duties to keep tack of elections. That’s the duty of the clerk.”
In other words, he’s throwing Payne under the bus.
Isn’t it his job, though, to keep track of legislation that affects municipal government? “I try to keep track of them, but there are an awful lot,” Pepe said, giving Feliu some validation on his first point. “There are hundreds of items and most of them have nothing to do with municipalities.”
Interestingly, Gil only got two $1,000 contributions after the opinion, according to the latest campaign reports through Nov. 3. One was from the realtors group and the other. His total raised is $14,875, of which he had reported spending $8,328.
Calle didn’t get any big donations. He added $350 in the last period for a total of $15,355, of which he has spent $11,821.
Fernandez, meanwhile, was able to get six $1,000 checks, for a total of $64,721. Of that, he had spent $54,625 as of Nov. 3. That does not include his political action committee, Leadership For South Miami, which collected another $88,050 and spent $80,695.
Feliu, who is woefully underfunded with a total $6,766 raised and no PAC, didn’t get any checks for the new maximum. But he did get two contributions of $500, which are over the old $250 limit.
So did Lisa Bonich, who is running against Michelle Readon for the seat vacated by Commissioner Walter Harris. Her total take as of Nov. 3 was a very respectable $30,937. She reported spending $28,646.
Readon didn’t get any contributions over the old limit, adding only $300 to her total of $9,272, of which she has spent $4,023.
Attorney: South Miami candidates could have taken more campaign $$ added by Ladra on
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