In their first run-off ever, Coral Gables voters on last week picked Mike Mena, a land use attorney who has never served on any city board or committee, over longtime activist Marlin Ebbert, a retired schoolteacher who was backed by the a group of residents irate about recent development decisions. It was 54 to 46 percent.

Everyone saw it coming after the first round two weeks ago, where Mena captured a whopping 44 percent in the four-way race. Ebbert, in second place, got 32 percent. He would have won outright if voters hadn’t changed the charter to require runoffs. And even if Ebbert had gotten every single voter that cast for her on April 11 to go out again two weeks later, and she didn’t, she would not have won.

Read related story: Ebbert, Mena head for runoff in Gables commission race

Sadly, the commission seat was decided by just over, 5,100 voters and neither candidate got the numbers they got in the first round. Funny enough, Ebbert got the closest, with 2,392 votes (296 fewer than on April 11) while Mena got 2,794 — 849 votes fewer than his 3,643 earlier showing. It only proves runoffs are not the perfect pill some thought.

Mena was sworn in Friday with the two winners from the earlier election: Commissioner Patricia Keon — who won a challenge from former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers — and returning Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli, who beat Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick in a close race to win his seat back after 15 years out of office and out of sight.

Developers must be drooling. If the City Beautiful was attractive to them in the last few years, people with the right connections can now get their properties upzoned and secure variances for everything from height restrictions to setbacks. That Jeannett woman is out of the way. Her heir apparent was summarily dismissed. Ladra can see them now, licking their chops.

Read related story: Hoff, Mena stand out in four-way commission race

Mena spent more than five times what Ebbert spent to get this seat. His total as of the last campaign report filed, which was at the end of March before even the first round, was $136,540. Hers was $21,595.

Someone want to tell me again how you can’t buy an election?

It’s going to be up to Gable residents to keep these people honest. Ladra hopes they stay involved outside the election as they were during the race. Mena’s first meeting with the new Mayor Valdes-Fauli is next Tuesday, May 9.

The four-way Coral Gables commission race becomes a two-way race as longtime activist and everybody’s favorite tia abuela Marlin Ebbert heads into a runoff with land use attorney with hipster facial hair Mike Mena.

And Mena heads into it stronger, having garnered 44.5% of the vote Tuesday to Ebbert’s 33%. Retired Gables Police Sgt. Randy Hoff did not fare as well as Ladra thought he would with 18%. Maybe Ebbert’s name recognition — she ran against Vince Lago two years ago, getting 31 to his 53% — and a Miami Herald endorsement helped. Perhaps the baggage of Hoff having been a police union boss who advocated for employees on the retirement board was too much for residents to bear.

As Ladra predicted (and it was the only thing I got right), Serafin Sousa was a distant fourth with under 5 %.

Read related story: Hoff, Mena stand out in 4-way commission race

Mena, who Ladra was told was recruited into the race by Commissioner Frank Quesada, had far more money to campaign and has been doing so aggressively (he is the opposite of Chip Withers) with a dozen or so mailers and teams of young people knocking on doors every day. He had raised more than $136,500 as of March 28, compared to Ebbert’s $21,600.

He will likely raise more far more money than her over the next two weeks as well. Expect the campaigning to start Wednesday as absentee ballots will likely be mailed out again in the next few days and the runoff is in less than two weeks, April 25.

Does it really matter who wins now? The pro development foces (read: Quesada and Commissioner Vince Lago) have the third vote they need to continue to drive their agenda now that former Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli won his seat back, beating Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick in the ugliest of the three races. The answer isnt simple. Ladra says no. And yes.

No because Ebbert will likely end up in the same 4-1 position that Slesnick found herself in many times. Yes because she is friendly with Commissioner Pat Keon (both women are members of the Gables Garden Club) and maybe can talk some sense into her on the dais. And Lago has voted against development a couple of times so it just might make a difference once or twice a year.

Plus the message to newbies like Mena should be that they need to serve on a board or committee at the city level before running for full fledged commissioner.

But Ebbert would have to get practically all of Randy Hoff’s share to beat Mena.

If only the 2,687 who voted for her Tuesday and the 3,643 who voted for Mena show up or cast ballots for the April 25 runoff, well then, better luck to Ebbert on her third, next try.

Former Coral Gables Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers lost his bid to come back to office by unseating an incumbent Tuesday.

But did he really try? That’s questionable (read: not so much).

Commissioner Pat Keon, who had five times as much more money as he did, won handily, 57 to 43 percent in one of the two commission seats on the ballot. The other will head into a runoff April 25 between longtime grandma activist Marlin Ebbert and land use attorney Mike Mena.

Keon’s campaign was almost laughable. While she had raised at least $222,000 as of March 28 to spend on print, radio and even TV ads, she also basically took credit for the Gables tree canopy in an email blast and for a resolution that forces the city to program inclusive recreational activities for special needs kids. Really? Naturally both are good things, and I applaud the inclusion legislation. But was it necessary? And, even if we live in a world and county where it is, isn’t that, like the protection of trees, a no-brainer? Isn’t it far more difficult to make the right decision when developers are pressuring you to approve an oversized project despite the overwhelming objection of a huge majority of adjacent residents?

Read related story: ‘Chip’ Withers vs Pat Keon because of the Paseo project

In fact, Keon’s Achilles heel was just that: She doesn’t listen to the people. She’s oblivious to their fears about the lack of police presence or their disgust with some metal flower sculptures that 1,600 people signed a petition to have relocated from the Segovia Biltmore circle. She is arrogant and has this “I know better than you” tone in everything.

But Withers never used that against her. He thought he could run a shoestring grassroots campaign that banked on his name recognition instead of any real fundraising to get the anti-development, arrogant incumbent message out.

This is also proof that you can’t get elected by just los cuatro gatos impressed by Modesto “Mitch” Maidique and your immediate neighbors, no matter how many of them you have. It was pretty obvious, and several sources confirmed to Ladra, that Withers had been recruited by the Riviera Homeowners Association to run against Keon because of her vote to approve the Paseo project on U.S. 1.

They never put their money where their mouth is and were, basically, outmessaged. That’s the only reason she got more than 1,200 votes ahead. It should have at least been closer.

Former Coral Gables Mayor Raul Valdes Fauli will have that word “former” removed from his identification after he is sworn in as the new mayor again.

Valdes-Fauli beat Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick in the mayoral race Tuesday, 51 to 49, after Mayor Jim Cason said he would not run for a fourth term. As expected, it was a tight race and a slim victory — by a scant 187 votes. And it’s almost all absentee ballots.

Only 15 people more voted for him than for her on election day. The other 172 additional votes he got were via AB.

A total of 8,415 people voted in the mayoral election Tuesday (there was a drop off of about 200 an 300 in the two commission races), which is on the high end of a typical turnout.

Read related story: Coral Gables candidates will spend more than $1 million

“I always said I was going to need 4,000 votes. I just needed a little more,” Slesnick told Ladra late Tuesday night after several people had left her campaign party.

She said her business partner will be happy to have her back at work full time, but that she will stay involved in Gables issues. “I never stopped being involved,” she said, and she wasn’t talking about Valdes-Fauli but she may as well have been since he disappeared for 13 years until endorsing Cason two years ago and then getting rewarded with a charter review committee seat.

“We had a great turnout today and we ran a really good campaign. They were all volunteers except for one person. Everybody else was volunteer from start to finish,” she said. “I ran a very clean campaign and I’m very proud and I don’t know anything I could have done differently.”

With all due respect and my apologies for not writing enough about the race or earlier, maybe she could have gone a little negative? Valdes-Fauli sure did. And it seemed to work for him.

The former mayor waged war in this campaign, which was more of a grudge match for Valdes-Fauli, who lost his seat in 2001 in a bitter defeat to former Mayor Don Slesnick, the commissioner’s husband. Jeannett was cast as not much more than a shill for her husband, whose administration was mired in scandal and financial chaos, which was sort of the case but certainly not Don Slesnick’s fault.

Read related story: Mucho mailers mean to mislead in Coral Gables election

“I’m sorry he had to take the brundt of the campaign madness,” the good wife said. 

But Valdes-Fauli got his licks in on her, too. Using innocuous votes against her, saying she voted for the Paseo project when, in fact, it had already been approved and she was voting for subsequent measures, some of which downsized the project. She did her job. Another cast her as “Speedy Slesnick” because she voted against a feel-good measure to lower speed limits to 25 MPH on some streets whe her point is that what the city needs is police officers to enforce the already pretty good 30 MPH limit. 

The worst attack, however, was the whisper campaign about Slesnick being anti-Hispanic or anti-Cuban, which is a ridiculous and, frankly, insulting card to pull. It becomes especially injuring when it is pulled by a Castro apologist who recently visited the island, had some eye-opening experience and now advocates for closer relations with the Cuban regime. Que descaro!

We’ll know more in coming days about the demographics of the vote, but I bet that a lot of Hispanics were targetted and came out.

Read related story: Coral Gables mayoral race takes a nasty, ethnic turn

This victory is not just a victory for Valdes-Fauli — and for Sergio Pino, one of the developers that funded his campaign (with at least $10,000). This is a victory also for Commissioners Frank Quesada and Vince Lago, who endorsed the former mayor and will now have a third vote to push their agenda through.

And if people were concerned about over development before, they can just kiss the old Gables good bye, because it’s not about to get any better for the next two years. It doesn’t really matter anymore that Commissioner Pat Keon got re-elected or if Marlin Ebbert pulls out an upset and beats Mike Mena in a runoff (more on that later).

A majority is three votes. They have preserved that with Tuesday’s vote.

By the time the Coral Gables mayoral race is over on Tuesday evening, the two candidates will have spent at least a half a million dollars, maybe more. Ladra is not sure but is willing to bet that’s a record.

The six candidates in the two commission seat races raised almost exactly the same amount of campaign cash combined as of the last reports available, through March 28: $474,000. You just know that by April 11, that number will go up — making it a total of more than $1 million spent on this Gables election cycle.

Read related story: Jeannett Slesnick winning Gables mayoral money race

Obviously the two cash cows are in the mayoral race. Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick and former Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli have each raised almost a quarter of a million themselves — $247,819 for Slesnick, and $246,494 for Valdes-Fauli between his campaign account and his political action committee, Coral Gables First. Practically every dime of the $73,794 contributed to the PAC is from outside Coral Gables and most of it is development and real estate money — like the $10,000 in bundles from developer Sergio Pino‘s mulitple companies — except for $20,000 from a Mercedes Benz dealership in Brooklyn that seems to come out of nowhere.

But Valdes-Fauli has been burning through his piggy bank faster than the commissioner. Slesnick still has more than $107,000 to spend next to his $60K as of March 28. That could make a big difference in the last two weeks.

Read related story: In Coral Gables election, only a clean sweep will change course

The next heavy hitters are incumbent Commissioner Pat Keon, who has raised almost $222,000 to former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers‘ $39,411 as of March 28 (but Ladra doubts he will catch up). Also on that date, she had about $125,000 left to spend while he had about $14,200.

In the open seat race that Slesnick had to resign from, the four candidates have raised $211,800. Well, three candidates, since Serafin Sousa has only raised $1,000 and we don’t even know if he loaned it to himself or who gae it to him because he doesn’t know how to fill out a campaign finance report and nobody cares enough to ask him to fix it. So, its $211,800 between three candidates — and more than half of that belongs to land use attorney Mike Mena.

Mena, who was reportedly recruited by Commissioners Frank Quesada and Vince Lago, has raised $136,540 as of March 28. He had spent a ton of that ($119,178) and only had about $17,362 left as of Matrch 28. Meanwhile, retired police officer Randy Hoff has been far more thrifty and had $18,497 left from his $53,666 booty on the same day. Activist grandma Marlin Ebbert hasn’t even spent that much, with $12633 of her $21,595 going out, leaving her with just under $9,000 to get her to election day, unless she picks up a few contributions.

Read related story: Mucho mailers mean to mislead in Coral Gables election

Ladra knows that it’s not a guarantee that the candidate with the biggest bank gets to win on the ballot. Look at Miami Commissioner Ken Russell and Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez. But it helps.

If the money helped them get the message out, then Keon and Mena might be sittine pretty tonight. If anti development forces were able to rally the troops and get their turnout up, then, and only then, it won’t matter.

In the Coral Gables election today, voters are choosing between hitting the gas or putting the brakes on what many have called a recent drive to redevelop much of Coral Gables — going higher and wider and bigger.

And not just in the mayoral contest between Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick, the sole dissenting voice in every single one of the oversized projects recently approved in the City Beautiful, and former Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli, who was booted from office in 2001 because he wanted to build a mega City Hall annex building and close Biltmore Way and has been endorsed by the pro development forces.

Read relatred story: Coral Gables mayoral race takes a nasty, ethnic turn

Certainly overdevelopment — or, at the very least, zoning and land use variances that allow higher buildings with more density and less setbacks — has become the biggest issue of this campaign cycle, overshadowing all the rest, even public safety. Every race has been painted with this brush. The Riviera Neighborhood Association, which feels betrayed by the Paseo project approval despite their repeated objections, have gone so far as to recruit candidates in two commission seats.

Because it’s not enough to replace the mayor with someone less willing to bend the city code for developers. If Slesnick wins, but Mike Mena or Commissioner Pat Keon win their respective commission races, she will still be the lone dissenter on many of those votes. If former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers, who is running against Keon, and anyone else in the other group win but Valdes-Faui gets his seat back, the same thing will happen, because Valdes-Fauli will likelyl join Commissioners Vince Lago and Frank Quesada to create a three-vote majority that will basically allow them to redevelop anything they want.

That’s why it is important for voters to elect a clean sweep Tuesday.

Just like they did in 2001, when they elected a new mayor (coincidentally, Slesnick’s husband) and two new commissioners to stop the City Hall annex and reopen Biltmore Way, voters today must elect Jeannett Slesnick, Withers and either Merlin Ebbert or Randy Hoff to stop the railroading that they have seen from developers.

Read related story: Hoff, Mena stand out in 4-way Gables commission race

This is why the group Gables Neighbors United (which is pretty much the Riviera folks) have endorsed Slesnick, Withers and Ebbert. They’ve come up with a nifty little acronym to help people remember: SEW.

Ladra has made it clear that she supports Slesnick, for the aforementioned reasons and also because the negativity of the Valdes-Fauli campaign should not be rewarded. I’m also hoping that Withers wins, even though he has hardly campaigned, for the aformentioned reason — and maybe also because Keon is supremely arrogant and is only going to be worse if she wins this.

And we’d be happy with Ebbert but we prefer Randy Hoff for that commission seat because, in addition to the fact that Ladra still loves her first responders and that he’s earned it through years of service with the police department, he can give us a good handle on employee issues. It’s good to see an employee on the dais. Especially in Coral Gables, where city employees are part of the fabric. Still, there’s likely to be a runoff in this race. But the anti-development forces win on Tuesday if the runoff is between these two.

Either way, voters need to carefully consider each race, not just one, if theyt really want this election to make a difference at all.