Manny’s moribund mandate: In another win for the concrete crowd, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz won easily in Tuesday’s Miami City election. Of course, a campaign war chest of $1 million donated mainly by developers and a cast of unknown opponents made it a sure thing.
The mayor should be credited with bringing Miami’s finances and bond ratings out of the cellar and back to fiscal health. He has also refrained from beating his wife, punching commissioners, placing his hand over news video cameras or running around the city in his bathrobe trying to get the early edition of the Miami Herald to see what lies they wrote about him today — all common behaviors among his predecessors.
But it is his endorsement of aggressive development, wildly unplanned and unmanaged development, that is a problem for Miami. Diaz is a lawyer, but has aligned himself with developers, stacked the Miami Commission with developers and has one of his former proteges in a runoff for the commission seat left open when Arthur Teele blew his brains out in the lobby of the Miami Herald building. If Michelle Spence-Jones wins the runoff, and Manny and his political goons have been beating up her opponent, the Rev. Richard Dunn (who, by the way, was asked to say the invocation at Diaz’ first swearing-in ceremony), hizzoner will have locked up the commission. Period.
But the election was no mandate. A mere 17.8 percent of the 150,000 registered voters even bothered going to the polls. That’s just 27,000 voters, and only 17,000 of them voted for Manny “Concrete” Diaz.
Of course, having the election delayed two weeks by a major hurricane couldn’t have helped the turnout. Neither could the still-frazzled condition of most of the residents of South Florida just less than a month after we were hammered.
However, the electorate is not Manny’s constituency; the developers are. And they got what they wanted. And they will continue to build McMansions and knock down trees and fill in wetlands and pave every last inch of the tip pf the peninsula because they can, and because they have the full blessing and cooperation of our mayor and city commission.
Goddamn the bastards!
