Former Coral Gables Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick, a class act who was involved in many civic organizations and served as First Lady of the City Beautiful for 10 years, died Thursday evening after a long battle with cancer. She was 75.

Slesnick, wife of former Mayor Don Slesnick (2001-2010), was first diagnosed with lymphoma in 2014 and also fought back breast cancer in 2016, one year after she won election as a commissioner. She did six weeks of radiation and went into remission. Then the lymphoma returned in 2020 and there was more chemo to beat it back. Until it returned again earlier this year, Jeannett said in an email sent to friends in June, warning them that she had little time left.

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In another close race mirroring the 2017 contest, Coral Gables Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli was barely able to hold on to his seat against former Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick.
Now, we can’t say Valdes-Fauli won by a scant 187 votes anymore. Now, it’s a flimsy 123!
Not really a mandate, is it? The margin is even narrower than it was two years ago, when Valdes-Fauli won his first term. It could narrow further as absentee ballots that come in Tuesday and provisional ballots are counted. Who knows? It may get close enough to trigger an automatic recount. Or go the other way.
In the sole commission race — Commissioner Mike Mena was re-elected without opposition — there will be a runoff, as expected, after Ralph Cabrera got almost 40% of the vote and the next closest candidate got 31%. The second round is on April 24.
But this was the second round for Slesnick and Valdes-Fauli, and the incumbent showed a lead early on.  When it was just absentee ballots, the first to be counted, Valdes-Fauli was leading 53% to 47% with a 236-vote advantage.
But, while not enough, Slesnick’s people turned out stronger on Election Day and the margin narrowed to 50.7% to 49.3% by the time the precincts had reported just after 8 p.m.
Ouch for Slesnick who lost by only a few dozen votes — again! It must be heartbreaking to work so hard and come so close.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera set to enter runoff with campaign cash advantage
A total of 8,572 of the city’s 33,194 registered voters cast ballots, almost a 26% turnout.
Cabrera had the win from the get-go, with a substantial lead of nearly 40% when absentee ballots were counted. The second highest AB getter was Jorge Fors, Jr., who got 31%. Former interim city manager Carmen Olazabal got 26% and Jackson “Rip” Holmes got just over 3%.
That means voters will have to go out again in two weeks to choose between Cabrera and Fors.

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Even before 7 a.m. Tuesday, 4,287 voters had cast absentee ballots in the Coral Gables election. That’s almost 55% of the 7,835 ABs that were sent out.
That’s the highest number of mail-in ballots returned in the City Beautiful in at least 10 years, maybe all of history. And more may arrive Tuesday.
But while the city generally has a higher turnout on Election Day, a 90 percent chance of rain with thunderstorms predicted for Tuesday threatens to keep voters away from the polls this year, making those mail-in votes even more important than ever.
Read related: Mayoral race in Coral Gables is a do-over on over-development
Especially in the mayor’s race, which is a rematch of a contest lost by 187 votes two years ago and may be close again.
Incumbent Raul Valdes-Fauli, who only treats people well the two months he campaigns, beat former Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick in both mail-in and Election Day votes, but the day-of margin was smaller (15).
“We are really working on the absentees this time as that is where I fell short last time,” Slesnick said Monday evening. She said the rain is likely to fall between noon and 4 p.m., which are not peak voting times.
Still, both mayoral campaigns are offering voters rides to the polls. Slesnick put her personal cellphone number (305-975-8158) on all her emails and materials and says people can call her if they need help getting to vote.
Valdes-Fauli’s latest campaign finance report shows a $5,500 expense for “Election Day operations” to Bridge 305, which could be for transportation.
Read related: Development interests fund campaign for Raul Valdes-Fauli
A total of 8,416 people voted in the 2017 election, the highest turnout in the past decade. In 2015, it was 7,084 (3,770 absentee), in 2013 it was 7,047 (2,807 and in 2011, it was 7,922.
Back in 2001, when Valdes-Fauli was voted out of office the first time, 10,271 people voted. But Ladra bets it was a sunny day.
Four candidates are competing for the commission seat vacated by Commissioner Frank Quesada, who is not seeking a second term. They are former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, attorney and homestead exemption cheat Jorge Fors, interim city manager and compulsive liar Carmen Olazabal and Jackson “Rip” Holmes.
“I’m absolutely concerned with tomorrow’s weather,” Cabrera said late Monday night. “Don’t know the impact it will have on turnout. However, traditionally, it has reduced turnout by as much as half.”
Read related: Ralph Cabrera set to enter runoff with campaign cash advantage
Cabrera has reason to be concerned. He has traditionally done much better on Election Day than he has with mail-in ballots.
But, rain or shine, none of the four commission candidates are likely to take 50% plus one so there will likely be a runoff on April 23 between the two  highest vote-getters (read: Cabrera and someone else).
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

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Whoop! There it is!
The latest campaign reports are in — the last ones before the Coral Gables election on Tuesday — and, just as expected, Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli got a windfall from real estate developers and the construction industry.
More than $80,000 in seven days! That must have set some kind of campaign record in Coral Gables. Not all of it is development — there is some healthcare bundles in there, and Versailles owner Felipe Valls gave $3,000 — but most of it is related to the industry: Developers, real estate investors, architects, engineers, property managers, vendors and subcontractors.
Read related: Mayoral race in Coral Gables is a do over on over development
That last report, covering March 29 through April 4, brings the mayor’s total to $254,125. More than half of that has been collected in the last two reports, or since March 15. And it’s where the development money has come out. All but $5,000 has been reported in the last week, after nearly 4,000 people voted via absentee ballots.
Perhaps Valdes-Fauli wanted thousands of people to vote absentee before they knew the building industry was funding his re-election.
And boy are they coming out now to rescue Raul. It’s almost as if they’re afraid that former Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick will beat the incumbent and try to stop or curb the upzoning of properties to maximize developers’ profits.
One of the special interest contributors bundling maximum $1,000 donations was NP International, the developer behind both the Gables Station and Paseo de la Riviera projects on U.S. 1 — the latter is going up now and photographed here — which were given height and density variances and have drawn much residential ire. NP had only contributed $1,000 as of the last report through March 28. But in one week, they made up for any lack of enthusiasm with another $6,000 from multiple companies and their two officers in Minnesota.
Ladra can’t help but wonder how much more they will give Valdes-Fauli in the next four days that we won’t hear about until after everyone has voted.
It’s not the only out of state money. This latest report has another $13,000 coming from real estate investors in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina and Texas.
Allan Morris donated another $5,000 through his companies and Jorge Perez of Related gave at least $2,000.
Valdes-Fauli has spent $221,389 of the bank, leaving at least $32,000 for expenses in the next four days.
Slesnick has the whole $100K nut she loaned herself, which she hasn’t touched really. She has spent $73,000 of the $82,000 she raised, $20K in the last week — not an easy task when you do it $100 and $200 at a time with a $500 thrown in now and then from all different people rather than in bundles of $1,000 from the same dozen dudes.
And while there may be some related “development” money through real estate interests and the supporting industry, Slesnick’s contributors are also almost exclusively Coral Gables residents — another good sign for her on Tuesday.
Because the developers in Minnesota, Texas, North Carolina, New Jersey and New York who gave to Valdes-Fauli can’t vote for Valdes-Fauli.

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The mayoral race in Coral Gables is a rematch between Raul Valdes-Fauli and former Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick. But some people really see it as a do-over of 2017, a second chance to make things right.
“Let’s not make the same mistake again,” is not just the headline of an email sent by the Gables Neighbors United group of Riviera neighborhood residents. It’s also the mantra of people who don’t like the development boom they’ve seen in the City Beautiful and people who don’t like how incumbent Mayor Valdes-Fauli handled the battle between the city manager and the popular police chief.
And people who thought Slesnick had it in the bag in 2017 and didn’t vote.
Valdes-Fauli won two years ago by a scant 187 votes. That’s not exactly a mandate. But there were a bunch of factors that don’t exist this year. The last election was during spring break. Many families were away. Spring Break this year is over. All of Slesnick’s friends will be here.
Also, the big developments she voted against — like Gables Station on Douglas Road and the gigantic Paseo de la Riviera project going up where the Holiday Inn used to be across from the University of Miami (photo, right) — are either finished or going up.
“Now people can see what I was worried about, these monstrous buildings looming over us,” Slesnick told Ladra. “Now they see it. And they don’t like it.”
So, two years later, the contest is still centered on development and the rapidly changing character of this Miami-Dade suburban paradise and that gives Slesnick the upper hand. The former commissioner, wife of former Mayor Don Slesnick and real estate pro has been talking about reigning development in for years, both on the dais and in her Jeannett’s Journal publication. It is the reason she ran for commission in 2015 in the first place.
Read related: Rematch! Jeannett Slesnick will jump into Gables mayor’s race
“Coral Gables is fragile. And its been overrun by developers and all these mega construction projects it doesn’t need,” Slesnick said. “Ninety-nine percent of the calls I get are about development.”
Valdes-Fauli counters that hers is a single-issue campaign.
“She has a negative campaign. She’s running on one issue,” the mayor whined in a short, terse telephone interview. “I’m running on my record. I didn’t have a record the last time.”
But that’s not really true, is it? Valdes-Fauli was voted out of office in 2001 by voters who disagreed with his plan to pave over and close off Biltmore Way and build a huge, 60,000-square-foot annex to historic City Hall. He was beaten by — drum roll please — Don Slesnick, who Valdes-Fauli blames for the development boom.
And while some of the big developments that have been criticized over the last couple of years were approved during Mayor Jim Cason‘s tenure, Valdes-Fauli — who has Cason’s endorsement — has said that he would have voted for all of those projects. He may have told the Miami Herald he would not have voted for the Paseo project, but that is not what he told the Riviera Neighborhood Association when they met the newly elected mayor right after the 2017 election.
He says he is for “smart” development in the downtown and along the U.S. 1 corridor to go with the Underline park that is being developed underneath the MetroRail. He says “smart” development does not add traffic.
But it looks like he has not voted against a single development since elected, including the 9-story Venera project for 165 apartments on a property owned by a developer of student housing, despite significant opposition from residents. Not sure how “smart” that project is.
“We fight so much to downscale projects,” Valdes-Fauli told Ladra, “reducing height from 160 feet to 140 feet or lot coverage.”
What he didn’t say is that 140 feet was still over what’s allowable via the city’s zoning and master plan, which keeps being ignored.
And voters are catching on to the bait and switch where electeds beholden to developer money tell their sponsors to ask for more height and more density so it can look like a compromise when they meet somewhere in the middle.
Valdes-Fauli has the support of the development community through dozens of campaign contributions from developers and builders in suspicious bundles that indicate it’s more of an investment than support for his public policy. This includes $10,000 in 10 separate $1,000 maximum checks from Armando Codina and his companies, $5,000 from developer Tibor Hollo and his companies, $5,000 in 10 checks from Sergio Pino, at least $6,000 from Carlos Marquez and his multiple construction companies, $11,000 from real estate investor Hugh Culverhouse and at least $1,000 from NP International USA, the developer behind the Paseo project and Gables Station (photo).
Read related: In Coral Gables, campaign cash goes out as quickly as it comes in
Perhaps more will be reported in the next campaign report. All but the $5,000 from Hollo were reported in the last campaign report, covering contributions from March 15 to March 31, when Valdes-Fauli collected almost $52,000, more than a quarter of his total $173,325 bank.
“We believe that Valdes-Fauli is bought and sold by developers,” said Sue Kawalerski, an active Riviera neighborhood resident and member of both the Gables Neighbors United and the RNA. “We do not trust Valdes-Fauli.
“Jeannett was the only one who stood by us with Paseo,” Kawalarski said. “Jeannett would never vote for something that would disrupt a residential neighborhood. She is accessible. She listens to us. She represents us.
“We have to stop the madness.”
Voters see a vote for Slesnick — who is not taking any developer money for her mostly self-funded campaign — as a vote for some very much needed balance to the board. Her critics say she did not accomplish much in her two years as a commissioner before she abandoned the seat to run for mayor. But her champions say she was a consistent vote against over development and that made her an outsider who was “punished” with a lack of support.
The other big issue that could hurt the incumbent is the lack of leadership he showed during the former city manager’s campaign against Police Chief Ed Hudak. Valdes-Fauil talked a big game when he was campaigning about changing the city manager, but once he was elected he let Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark run over Hudak with administrative baggage and a bogus investigation that she tried to use to hurt the police chief — even after it exonerated him. Valdes-Fauli let that saga drag on for months.
He argued that he did provide leadership — by putting the item on the agenda seven times. One of those times, he called it “The boil in Coral Gables.” He is proud of that because he made sure to remind Ladra. But seven times? Some might call that all talk and no action.
“We resolved the issue in a very legal and adequate manner,” the mayor insisted. Yeah, sure. Ask the police officers who were used for the city manager’s vendetta if they thought it was handled in an adequate manner.
Read related: Bob Graham, others host huge campaign gig for Jeannett Slesnick
His supporters are counting on an ethnically divided contest. Part of the reason Valdes-Fauli won last year was because of an ethnic whisper campaign about alleged discrimination that does not exist. They still believe that he has his base, the Cubans, and she has hers, everybody else. But Coral Gables Cubans are not Little Havana Cubans or Hialeah Cubans who vote along ethnic lines and can get spooked by campaign propaganda about the hidden “communists” among us.
In fact, several prominent Hispanic Gables voters are supporting Slesnick. Raul Mas Canosa and Ana Permuy-Mas, Frank and Maria Elena Gonzalez and Sergio and Maria Concepcion recently hosted a very well-attended fundraiser at the Concepcion home.
Slesnick, who made commission town halls a thing in the Gables, has made civility part of her campaign: “People deserve a mayor who treats them with respect and courtesy and not ignore them and impose his will, which is what we have now at City Hall.”
Valdes-Fauli is known to be rude and arrogant and makes misogynistic comments on the regular, saying at one forum that his opponent sounded like a nagging wife. He welcomes the developers and vendors to commission meetings and calls them Mr. This and Mrs. That. But he berates, belittles and bullies residents and tells them to “sit down and shut up” when they’re time is up if he doesn’t like what they’re saying.
Not that he is listening to what they are saying. Valdes-Fauli often stands up, leaves the dais and walks out of commission chambers in the middle of the discussion — that’s if he is not playing his Dominos app on his cellphone while residents speak.
A few voters who supported him last time told Ladra they would not vote for Valdes-Fauli again. They see this election Tuesday as a second chance to get it right, they said.
 

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Former Coral Gables Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick — in a bitter mayoral rematch race against Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli — got a big endorsement Wednesday when former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who served 1987 to 2005, gave her his support.
Graham — who was also Florida’s 38th governor from 1979 to 1987 — and his wife Adele were among the hosts of a reception for Slesnick on Wednesday along with Raul Mas Canosa and Ana Permuy-Mas, Frank and Maria Elena Gonzalez and Sergio and Maria Concepcion, who opened their Santa Maria Street home for the fundraiser.
Read related: Rematch! Jeannett Slesnick will jump into Gables mayor’s race
The bartender said there were at least 150 people there. That’s more than three times the number of people who RSVPed.
Concepcion, who is in real estate also, said some nice things about Slesnick being one of the first people he met in the Gables and how he now goes to her for market advice because nobody knows more about Gables real estate than Slesnick.
The election is less than two weeks away and people have already been voting. Of the 7,546 absentee ballots that have been sent, 1,931 received had been received as of Wednesday, representing a 25.59% turnout so far, according to Miami-Dade Elections spokeswoman Suzy Trutie.
Every single vote counts since Valdes-Fauli only won by 187 votes in 2017.
Meanwhile, Valdes-Fauli has the endorsement of former mayor Jim Cason and the current Coral Gables Commission — the same people who dragged their feet and stood by while the former city manager and her henchman from Hollywood made the police chief’s life a living hell and who rubber stamped most of the zoning variances to allow out-of-scale development that many voters believe has gone overboard. No surprise here.
What happened to Jeb? Former Gov. Jeb Bush had endorsed Valdes-Fauli in 2017, very early on in the election.
Ladra guesses Jeb is as disappointed in Valdes-Fauli two years later as the rest of the Gables is.

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