Commissioner Joe Carollo: Miami’s favorite chaos agent runs for mayor

Part of a series of profiles about the Miami mayoral candidates
If Miami politics were a telenovela, City Commissioner Joe Carollo would be the uncle who shows up late at the wedding, throws a chair, sparks three lawsuits — and then somehow gets two standing ovations.
Now, Carollo is formally in the mayoral scrum — late, brash, defiant, unapologetic and exactly the kind of spectacle Miami loves with its morning cafecito. He’s like the I-95 pile-up you have to crane your neck to see.
Carollo’s political résumé is equal parts longevity and controversy. He has been stirring the political pot in Miami since disco was still a thing — the first time.
He was only 24 when he first got elected to the City Commission in 1979 — and he’s been making enemies ever since. By 1982, even the police chief was accusing him of arm-twisting cops for favors and threatening to cut their budget if they didn’t play ball. In 1983, Carollo was supposed to endorse Mayor Maurice Ferré — his old ally — but instead ambushed him on stage and called him anti-Cuban. The betrayal was so spectacular it’s still talked about decades later.
Read related: Joe Carollo, ADLP are in, make Miami mayoral ballot a lucky 13 dog pile
From there, it’s been a wild ride of feuds, firings, and full-blown soap opera or evangelical rally with Joe as the preacher.
Carollo lost his commission seat, won it back eight years later, and in 1996 stumbled into the mayor’s office in a special election after the death of Stephen P. Clark. Within months, Miami was drowning in debt and scandal, commissioners were getting arrested, and Joe was fighting everyone in sight.
He’s been fired, reinstated, sued, and re-sued more times than most people change cell phones. In the 1997 mayoral race, he lost to Xavier Suarez — then sued over absentee ballot fraud and actually got the election thrown out. The court called it a “scheme to defraud.” Joe took back the mayor’s seat like a man reclaiming his throne.
But his second turn as mayor was just as messy — firing city managers three times in one week, battling over the Miami Circle (he did not want to preserve it) and suing his own voters after they voted to switch to a strong-mayor system. You can’t make this stuff up.
And who could forget the Elián González circus, when Carollo turned into a full-time talk-show guest, calling the child’s father an abuser and saying federal agents were Castro’s spies. When the dust settled, City Hall was literally pelted with bananas — as in, a “banana republic.”
Fast forward: Carollo got fired as Doral’s city manager in 2014 for bullying and “nonsense,” sued the city, then got reinstated just so he could quit. Naturally. Three years later, he resurfaced again — back on the Miami Commission, sitting in his brother Frank Carollo’s old seat, like nothing had ever happened.
Since then, he’s taken on everyone from the Little Havana arts community to homeless advocates to his own police chiefs. He’s been accused of abusing power, of weaponizing code enforcement, and of turning City Hall into his personal revenge machine. But somehow, Joe Carollo keeps surviving — lawsuit after lawsuit, scandal after scandal, election after election. Like a true Miami political cockroach, he never dies. He just finds another office to run for.
He’s a veteran of City Hall comebacks and headline-grabbing melees, a commissioner who delights in theatrical displays — whether whipping out satellite imagery to shame a colleague on the dais or a video clip of a dancing Elvis-clad police chief with a noticeable bulge — and castigating critics with long, monotonous diatribes full of lies and vitriol. That’s when he’s not yelling at someone.
His long shadow includes courtroom defeats, residency challenges, a recall effort, political favors, a tacky no-bid cat and dog sculpture park that cost almost $1 million — a pet project managed by his wife, Marjorie, which caused a Bayfront Trust Management Trust board member to resign — using a slush fund for his political ambitions and accusations that local governance under him too often looks like personal and political retribution. That record is now front-and-center in a mayoral campaign that feels vintage Carollo: chaotic, combative, and irresistibly entertaining.
Even his 2001 domestic violence arrest for throwing a teacup at his then wife has been turned into a local joke — complete with merch: You can buy a “wife-beater” tank top with his mugshot on it, or a mug, or a sticker and other stuff from the BecauseMiami website. Ladra is getting a sticker for $9.99.
Read related: Protest ‘chicken’ arrested at Miami park opening for dogs, cats and Joe Carollo
And let’s remember when he got that protester in a chicken costume arrested at the opening of that cat and dog boondoggle in another show of Pollo Carollo’s abuse of power. All the chicken guy was doing was passing out wife-beater shirts with Joe’s face on them.
The legal cloud: $63.5 million verdict and more
You can’t write a Carollo profile without the litigation chapter.
In 2023, a Broward County jury ordered Carollo to pay $63.5 million to a pair of Little Havana businessmen who accused him of weaponizing city offices to harass them after they backed his rival. The verdict landed like a political grenade: it’s big, ugly, and impossible to ignore — both politically and financially. But Carollo has tried, by using the redistricting process to carve his house back into District 3 so that it can’t be seized by the courts.
There have been more lawsuits that followed, but Carollo’s lawyers — who have reportedly cost the city at least $10 million so far — have argued the claims were unfounded or politically motivated. Appeals and litigation linger. But the headline number — sixty-three and a half million — is imprinted on anyone watching Miami politics. It could be the title of his biography.
That case feeds directly into the broader narrative critics use against him: that Carollo treats code enforcement, permitting, and other municipal levers as tools to punish enemies. He treated the Bayfront Park Management Trust like his own personal piggy bank until the commission wrestled it away from him. There was supposed to be an investigation into disappearing funds and payments made to friends and for his district commission office out of the Bayfront Park Trust monies. Ladra will check on it.
But, for years, city staff and citizens alike have complained about financial discrepancies and what they call “selective enforcement,” — and civic watchdogs have raised alarms about the pattern.
For voters who prize clean governance, the verdict is a heavy anchor to his bid for the mayor’s office.
There’s a running theme: accusations that Carollo weaponizes city government. From heated commission meetings, shouting matches and public displays to claims that city resources were misused against perceived opponents or for personal pals, the story line repeats — and national outlets picked up the thread when Miami’s municipal affairs became a cautionary tale. Critics point to episodes where code, police, and city apparatus were alleged to have been turned into a political cudgel. Carollo answers that he’s enforcing rules and representing the concerns of residents. His defenders cast him as a crusader against sloppiness and corruption. The truth, as always in Miami, is available in both versions — and voters decide which one matters more.
Read related: Commissioner Miguel Gabela set to expose more Bayfront Park Trust issues
Most recently, Carollo stepped into a fresh controversy when surveillance and neighbor photos showed a city staffer wearing a “Commissioner Joe Carollo District 3 Staff” shirt removing campaign signs for mayoral rival Emilio González, the former city manager who has become Crazy Joes biggest target. The incident — quickly labeled “Sign-gate” on social media — was seized on by rival campaigns as emblematic of Carollo’s alleged habit of blending official duty and political advantage. González and others call it another example of his abuse of office. Carollo’s camp insists the take-downs are routine code enforcement against illegally posted signs, and showed reporters other signs — “efficiency for rent,” tree removal offers, etc — that have been plucked throughout the district throughout the years.
He could be right. If it was political, wouldn’t they be replacing them with Carollo signs?
Recall attempts, theatrics, and the Carollo brand
Carollo’s knack for drama and abuse of office has drawn political pushback and a 2020 recall drive that was signed by more than 1,900 voters in District 3, but ultimately failed to make the ballot on procedural grounds. He has continued thriving as a polarizing figure — to some, a fearless watchdog; to others, a petty autocrat who enjoys the fight more than the fix. The recall episode cemented a brand: Joe is both unavoidable and unstoppable, the politician you love to hate or hate to love.
That brand has kept him politically alive through wins, losses, and lawsuits. It’s also a selling point with a certain slice of voters who like tough talk and performative accountability — even if it comes with a messy tab. And donors know that, which is why Carollo’s fundraising shows he’s a contender. He reported getting almost $713,000 in the last quarter, ending Sept. 30, between his campaign account and his political action committee, Miami First.
The big donations include $100,000 from an investment firm in Middleberg, Florida, just southwest of Jacksonville; $25,000 from auto mogul and former Philadelphia Eagles owner Norman Braman; $25,000 from competing auto mogul Mario Murgado, who took pains to hide it, making it in the name of his Maserati dealership in New Jersey, for whatever reason, instead of Brickell Motors; $15,000 from Bayside Marketplace; $10,000 from real estate investor and developer Craig Robbins, in four separate checks and $10,000 from uber-connected lobbyist Melissa Tapanes.
There are not enough dollars in the world to wash away the stains of civil judgments and public relations disasters that follow Carollo around, so he’s spending that money trashing other candidates instead, with multiple hit piece mailers hitting mailboxes, mostly attacking Gonzalez.
A career built on theatrics — and a stubborn refusal to go quietly
Policy-wise, Carollo often frames himself as the plain-talking realist: clean up the streets, enforce the rules, and stop what he frames as special-interest carve-outs. He grabs the populist mic and wags a finger at perceived sloppiness in city services or the county’s outsized draws on city taxes. There are people in Silver Bluff who love him because he closed their streets illegally — and the county had to sue to get them reopened again.
But his critics argue that his solutions tend to be performative — theater masquerading as governance — and that his political instincts prioritize scoring points over building durable policy. The paradox: he often raises the issues voters care about, but his methods make even those who agree with him uneasy.
That’s because the other shit he says sucks the oxygen out of the room: the claims that so many communists and Cuban spies are living among us, the accusations that Chavistas and drug dealers are funding his opponents campaigns, the references to city officials and Mayor Francis Suarez looking the other way when the city hired a “sexual predator.” It’s red meat for his viejito base and was a staple of his morning radio show, Miami Al Dia, on AmericaRadio, which seems to have been suspended while he campaigns but which he used until just the other week to attack most of his opponents in the race.
Carollo also spent nearly $1 million to elect Commission District 4 candidate Ralph Rosado, which he later said was “the biggest political mistake of my life.”
That is a hard title to get.
Read related: Bromance break-up at Miami City Hall as Joe Carollo and Ralph Rosado split
Joe Carollo is Miami’s political live wire: dramatic, combustible, and intense. He draws headlines and fills seats at forums; he terrifies or enrages opponents and thrills a base that likes its politicians raw and entertaining. But patterns matter: lawsuits, recalls, and now sign-removal theatrics contribute to a dossier that won’t look great in a general election spotlight.
Speaking of dossiers, if you are reading this story, he might have one on you. Just ask attorney David Winker, who was brave enough to represent the recall group and got a code enforcement knock on his door.
If you like your city leadership unvarnished and confrontational, Joe is your debutante and wrecking ball rolled into one. If you want a mayor who manages risk, avoids costly civil verdicts, and doesn’t make municipal business personal, you’ll have to look at someone else.
Either way, Carollo’s back in the ring. And for Miami, that means more drama, maybe a courtroom filing or two, and — for better or worse — very little dullness. The question is whether voters want a mayor who delights in the fight, or someone who can win policy victories without generating $63.5 million worth of grievances along the way.
And, hey, he can always go back to morning radio.
The post Commissioner Joe Carollo: Miami’s favorite chaos agent runs for mayor appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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