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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.
Looks like the third time is the charm for former Coral Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera. Even if it’s just through the process of elimination.
Cabrera, an insurance consultant, has tried to get back on the dais twice since he left office in 2013. But both times he ran for mayor against Jim Cason. This time he is running for commissioner because, after all, it’s a city manager run government where all votes are equal. And because it was an open seat.
But because it was an open seat, it also attracted some people who would never even think of running against a sitting commissioner. And Cabrera — who is running on his experience and has the endorsement from the police union, the firefighters union, Gables Commissioner Vince Lago and SAVE — has the clear advantage in this election, which ends Tuesday.
Because the other three candidates are basically unelectable.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera outraises opponents in 4-way Gables commission race
The first to write off is Jackson “Rip” Holmes, an, um, colorful downtown property owner who has run unsuccessfully a bunch of times and whose single mission is to bring a department store to Miracle Mile.
But he has baggage galore: Holmes, who can barely finish a thought let alone a sentence, has a 2008 domestic violence charge, later dismissed, from one of his two mail order-type brides and a conviction in 1988 of threatening Jeb Bush, whose father was president at the time, that landed him in federal prison for three years. He has since said the whole thing was a misunderstanding and lavishes Bush with praise on his website, www.ripholmes.com.
Also, Holmes believes the Boston Marathon bombing, the Sandy Hook tragedy and other horrible attacks were inside jobs done by or with the assistance of extraterrestrials. And he has uploaded more than 500 videos to YouTube, the most recent of which are campaign related. Check them out. Cheaper than going to the movies.
Next we can lose former interim city manager and Cason crony Carmen Olazabal, who carried Pat Salerno‘s water and helped him lie to the commission about public safety. Olazabal learned everything she knows from Salerno. She doctored a document from the police department to indicate that there wasn’t an increase in accidents on Ponce de Leon Boulevard due to some palms planted on corners.
Read related: Commission candidate Carmen Olazabal can’t rewrite ugly past
Turns out there was. The cover-up ended with Salerno’s forced, on-the-spot resignation and the uprooting of several palm trees. Olazabal’s exit, not by choice, came months later. But not before she gave herself a 10% raise. Employees dislike her and distrust her so much, most of them are supporting Cabrera.
Today, Olazabal, who is basically running on her gender, has her own government consulting business, working on specific projects (read: no-show jobs) for municipalities, which could present a conflict of interest if she is elected. She was hired by Miami Lakes, for example, to manage the FDOT funded completion of a 1.5 mile route between an elementary and a middle school.
Olazabal is really looking for a job. The four-year commission term pays $31,585 a year.
The last to cross off is attorney Jorge Fors, who has never been involved in any Gables civic life and suddenly wants to be a commissioner because, he says, he had a baby. In truth, Jorgie Come Lately was recruited by the outgoing Frank Quesada, who endorsed his friend despite the fact that Fors has actually claimed an illegal Homestead exemption on a Little Havana condo he didn’t live in for almost a decade each and every year.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal homestead exemption
“I’ve known Jorge a long time and we’ve had cases together, he’s a great guy,” Quesada said in a text message last month after he declined to accept or return my calls. “When he discovered the homestead issue he resolved it.”
Except he didn’t just “discover” the homestead issue. He paid the back taxes, interests and penalties in January because he was running for office and after Ladra started sniffing around and pulling public records.
It’s not like he claimed a false homestead exemption once by mistake and forgot about it. Every year, before March 1, property owners have to claim their exemptions. For eight or nine years, every year, Fors checked the box to claim an exemption on a 5th Street condominium he admits he never lived in. The whole time, he voted in Coral Gables, not the city of Miami.
For a lawyer, he seems to have a disdain for the law. Because that’s not the only one he broke. He has a traffic history a mile long and was arrested for open containers and underage drinking in college. And he’s been caught parking in the handicap space — twice. He is trying to make annexation a campaign issue, using fear tactics to get votes, even though it was supported by a majority of the commission as well as the police chief.
So, we got a nut job, an opportunist liar and a scofflaw cheat fearmonger on the ballot with Cabrera, who may rub some people the wrong way with his brutal honesty but has definitely proven himself as a public servant. He didn’t go along to get along but why would any interested voter want that?
Read related: PAC says it did NOT send hit piece on Ralph Cabrera — so who did?
During his 12 years on the dais, Cabrera lowered taxes twice, brought free wifi and Giralda Under the Stars to the downtown, created the citywide traffic advisory committee, sponsored new residential zoning to fight against McMansions, strengthened the valet parking ordinance, spearheaded an insurance RFP process that saved the city 30% on renewals, created a local vendor preference program and did a lot more you can find on his website. He actually has a good track record.
Next to the others, he’s a poster boy candidate. So strong are his chances that he is the only candidate being attacked by negative mailers that have no factual base and paid by unknown campaign operatives and donors, which becomes another reason to vote for him.
This should be Cabrera’s year. Not before a runoff with either the liar or the cheat. But he should win that, too.
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