After all that hand-wringing and sweating over the Coral Gables commission election, much fewer voters will actually have made the decision when it comes Tuesday.
Already there are more than 2,500 fewer voters between vote-by-mail ballots and early voting than there was for the first round April 13.
The endorsements are multiplying in the Coral Gables election, which ends next Tuesday. And just in time, too — as the vote-by-mail or absentee ballots are mailed to voters.
Three Group 2 candidates who didn’t make the runoff in the April 13 vote, Tania Cruz-Gimenez, Alexander Luis Haq and Claudia Miro, each endorsed Rhonda Anderson at a press conference in front of City Hall Tuesday. She already had the endorsement of the Miami Herald.
The four candidates in the two Coral Gables city commission runoff races will be grilled Wednesday at the only debate before the April 27 election. It’s going to be as if they were in virtual court.
“Former U.S. Attorney Leon Kellner will use his prosecutorial skills to extract truthful answers,” reads an ominous email from the Coral Gables Neighbors Association. “This will be the first and only debate this election and we saved this tough-question format for the runoffs.”
They may have a new mayor already, but Coral Gables voters aren’t done picking the two commissioners who will serve alongside Vince Lago. Both commission races will have runoffs, as expected, on April 27.
The Group 2 race looks more lopsided and Jose Valdes-Fauli, brother of the current mayor, Raul Valdes-Fauli has a lot of work to do. Rhonda Anderson heads into the runoff with the momentum — and a 16-point lead over Valdes-Fauli, mostly fueled by her staunch anti-development stance.
There are seven candidates in the Group 2 race in the Coral Gables election. But, really, there’s only three. Everyone watching knows the fat votes will go to Rhonda Anderson, Tania Cruz-Gimenez and Jose Valdes-Fauli.
As the only gringa in the race, Anderson is almost a shoe in for the runoff. She might have the charisma of a cardboard box but this is Gables politics and it can still get ethnically divided.
