Among those already looking at the 2014 State House races is former North Bay Village Mayor Joseph Geller, who is setting his sights on the seat that will be vacated by State Rep. Joe Gibbons (D-Hallandale Beach), who is term-limited out and has set his sights on a county commission seat.
Geller, who is now the city attorney for the Opa-Locka, El Portal and the tony little town of Miami Lakes, was also chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party for more than a decade, from 1989 to 2000. He was the Democratic party official, an attorney on the recount team, that was attacked by the Republican mob in what became known as the “Brooks Brothers riot” at the Miami-Dade County Elections department during the infamous 2000 presidential race hanging chad recount. There’s even a character in the movie “Recount” named Joe Geller who goes through the same ordeal.
But politics is not just in his bio. It’s in his blood.
Brother Steve Geller (the Democrat version of former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla) represented some of the same area for two decades — as a state rep from 1988 to 1998 and as a Senator through 2008.
And that helps to make Joe Geller nearly a sure thing. Not only is he a Dade Democratic Party bigwig who can draw money and support from the local Democratic network in a longtime Democratic seat and from the connections he’s made in the cities he has represented, but he will be able to count on his brother’s base in Broward, where 40 percent of the district lies.
This is a different seat, representing constituents from Surfside to Dania, than the one Geller ran for in 2000 against former State Rep. Dan Gelber, who became House Minority Leader in 2006, or the one he ran for against former State Rep. Richard “Text Me” Steinberg in 2008, who resigned last year after the Secret Service investigated his stalker-like, sex-charged text messages to a federal prosecutor. But Ladra knows she was not the only contact on his phone to get his sexy texts.
This Joe Geller run has been rumored for a while and posted in the 954 political blog BrowardBeat.com months ago. But Geller, who filed his appointment of himself as treasurer with the state in April, confirmed to Ladra Wedneday that he would be running. And I happen to know he’s been talking in recent days with Gibbons and the current Miami-Dade Dem chair, Annette Taddeo Goldstein, about the campaign. Even though there are two other Dems in the race: John Paul Alvarez, who filed paperwork in March, and Hallandale Beach Vice Mayor Alexander Lewy, who will have a fundraiser next week at Sagafredo Brickell in Miami.
No Republican has filed any paperwork.
“I’m really excited about it,” Geller, who is arbuably the front runner going in, said on potentially becoming, at 58, a freshman Dem in a GOP-dominated House. “Tallahassee is a mess right now and that’s the kind of thing I like to clean up,” he told Ladra.
He hasn’t hired a campaign staff yet, though he’s talking to people that everyone knows, he said. Right now, he’s just working with his wife, Betty, and 6-year-old daughter, Michelle, he said.
Geller, who served as mayor of NBV from 2004 to 2008, later became the village attorney a few months later and served as their lawyer for about a year and a half.
He is one of several Democrat hopefuls that local blue party leaders are looking at launching in 2014. He is going after an open seat long held by Dems, but in another race, the party is likely to back Redland area activist Pamela Gray, who lost a longshot bid at county commission in 2010 to replace former Commissioner Katy Sorenson, against State Rep. Holly Raschein, a freshman legislator who was the Republican legislative aide to Democrat former State Rep. Ron Saunders (more on that later).
Ladra hears they are seriously recruiting to find someone to run against several other GOPs in the House, including State Reps. Michael Bileca of Pinecrest and Erik Fresen of Coral Gables, who seem vulnerable after close wins last November even if it was an “Only Obama Year” phenomenon. Fresen already has another Republican filed against him — Amory Bodin, again.
But the Dems renewed energy and ambition may also include bids for the seats currently held by State Reps. Frank Artiles of South Dade, Jose Felix “One More Pepe” Diaz of Kendall and Carlos Trujillo of Doral, who they will attack on the sponsored parent-trigger bill that failed to pass the Senate but got through the House.
And expect to see some of these people come out of the woodwork soon. After all, we’re only 18 months away.
Joe Geller sets his sights on Tally, again, as a future state rep added by Ladra on
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