by Carl Hiaasen
By allowing Martinez to take office, Chiles establishes Hialeah as a unique sociopolitical experiment of the 19905—a sort of biosphere of sleaze. The rest of Florida can watch and learn.
What exactly is the mandate for an elected racketeer? Is he expected to continue extorting? If so, how much and from whom? Can he successfully bridge the ideological chasm between his criminal and noncriminal constituents? These questions are seldom confronted in American politics, and here's a rare opportunity to get them answered.
Because of its checkered history, Hialeah is a logical place to experiment with the convicted-mayor form of government. After 40 years of uninhibited corruption, the undeveloped land is mostly gone and, with it, the opportunities for easy graft.
The city is already an aesthetic ruin, one zoning atrocity stacked shoulder to shoulder against another. Even if Martinez went hog-wild, what difference would it really make? How much worse could it get?
In a sense, the Hialeah mayoral race was the purest test of democracy—the frank exercise of electoral choice in the face of civic pride, conscience and common sense. The people wanted a convicted crook, and they elected him.
Does government have a constitutional right to intervene? What would Thomas Jefferson say?
Voters sometimes do confounding things. Candidates who die on the campaign trail occasionally get elected anyway, but at least dead guys can't steal. The election of a shakedown artist is a riskier proposition.
Although Chiles is staying out of it for now, the Hialeah biosphere could be punctured by other forces. Martinez's conviction on six corruption charges is being appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the verdict is upheld, the governor has no choice but to jerk Martinez from office.
That's the law. It was conceived on the premise that voters would never tolerate criminals in office and would demand their instant removal. In most places, that's true. Hialeah is a special case, though, and perhaps an exception should be made.
Certainly those who voted for Raul Martinez on Tuesday were aware that he might soon be sent away to serve his 10-year sentence. So deep is their loyalty that many Hialeans would like him to remain their mayor, regardless.
In fact, there's no reason why Raul couldn't take care of the city's business from a prison cell in Eglin or Talladega. All he'd need is a telephone and some privacy.
Heck, it works just fine for John Gotti.
Hialeah vote 2: This time hide the cheating
November 10, 1994
Across the land, weary voters groan in relief: Another insulting, infuriating campaign season finally ends.
Unless you happen to live in Hialeah.
Residents of Florida's crookedest city are gritting their teeth for an ugly new mayoral election. A judge threw out the old one after a trial confirmed "substantial"—how shall we say?—irregularities.
Mayor Raul Martinez won the 1993 contest by only 273 votes, a margin achieved by a timely but statistically improbable influx of absentee ballots.
To the shock of no one, it was revealed that scores of those ballots arrived with forged signatures, witnessed by some of the Democratic mayor's loyal supporters. Bunches of those votes were gathered in a sweep of convalescent homes for the mentally and emotionally disturbed.
Martinez, awaiting a new (and unrelated) trial for bribery, professed no involvement in any skullduggery. His defiant assertion brought giggles not only from cynical Hialeah citizens, but from the battalion of FBI agents assigned to keep track of corruption in the city.
While the feds added electoral fraud to their list of recent crimes, Dade Circuit Judge Sidney Shapiro this week ordered a new mayoral vote to be held within 30 days.
It's hard to steal an election on such short notice. Martinez's supporters will have their work cut out for them. Here are a few tips to avoid another fiasco:
• Don't cut it so close.
If you're taking all the trouble to rig a vote, do it convincingly. Arrange a victory margin wide enough that the result won't hinge on validating a paltry 200-odd ballots. Why make the FBI's job any easier?
• Get better forgers.
The forgery techniques used on many ballots were so bad that even the city's own hired handwriting expert had to admit the signatures looked phony.
Microscopic examination revealed that some of the names had been penned in erasable ink, and even showed signs of erasure smudges. There's no excuse for such sloppiness.
Hasn't anyone in Hialeah heard of tracing paper?
• Get better witnesses.
When bogus absentee ballots are being prepared, it's important to maintain at least the appearance of objectivity. That's tough when many of those "witnessing" the signatures are the mayor's cronies, campaign workers or—in 13 instances—the sister of his own wife.
Another unfortunate choice was Hialeah policeman Glenn Rice, a Martinez campaign volunteer who signed 20 absentee ballots as a witness. When questioned under oath about forgeries, officer Rice crawled safely behind the Fifth Amendment and shut up.
For the upcoming election, the Martinez camp should make an earnest effort to find ballot witnesses who won't get laughed out of court, or require their own defense attorneys.
• Get undetectable voters.
Signing up the infirm and mentally disturbed must have seemed like a clever idea, but it backfired on the mayor's goon squad.
Equally ill-advised was the scheme of putting nonresidents on Hialeah voter rolls. For example, ballots were mysteriously cast in the names of two North Dade people who've never lived in Hialeah. Another woman claimed to have been a legal resident of the city, but she couldn't recall her home address.
Where election riggers made their big mistake was by using living and breathing humans in the fraud. That's not only risky, it's dumb. Dead people make better phantom voters, because they won't blab to federal agents, and they can't be subpoenaed.
The cemeteries of Hialeah are full of potential Raul Martinez supporters, absentee in the largest sense of the word.
Older, yet not wiser, Miami deserves Carollo as mayor
July 28, 1996
So it's your birthday, Miami.
A hundred-year journey ends with three stunning words: Mayor Joe Carollo.
It's perfect, really. Absolutely splendid.
In many ways, the man epitomizes the character of Miami—crafty, combustible and doggedly opportunistic.
Never mind that he would have scared the bloomers off Julia Tuttle and sent cranky Henry Flagler cursing all the way back to St. Augustine, yanking out the railroad ties behind him.
Carollo truly deserves to be mayor. He deserves it because he went to the bother of running, and because he knew that—despite a reputation as a pernicious little ferret—he could gnaw his way out of political purgatory and win.
More than most local office-seekers, Joe seems to understand South Florida's rich tradition of voter apathy, rotten judgment and shallow values.
The hype surrounding Miami's 100th birthday has sparked absolutely zero interest in how the city will be governed entering its second century, or by whom. Joe counted on the fact that folks would get much more excited about the chili dogs and free concerts than the mayoral race. He was right.
Up to 250,000 people are predicted to show up for today's huge centennial birthday bash in Bayfront Park. Less than 22,000 showed up for last Tuesday's special election.
Carollo was elected with a preposterous 16,556 votes—even fewer souls than attend an average Marlins game. Joe deserves to be mayor because an astounding 81 percent of registered voters stayed home, sat on their butts and let it happen.
Too bad for them. Good for him.
Even as modern-day Miami puts on its glossy birthday face, it continues to revel in a checkered history full of rogues, hustlers and blowhards. More than a few of them were elected to public office.
Sure, the city can do better than Joe Carollo, but it must also be said that there's not exactly a sterling legacy for
him to sully. Local politics has produced plenty of colorful characters, but few truly memorable leaders.
It's impossible to predict what kind of mayor Carollo will be, but one thing he won't be is dull. Where Steve Clark was happy as long as he had a five-iron or a cocktail in his hand, Carollo isn't content without tumult and controversy.
Forget all the media baloney about a "new" Joe, mellow and matured—that's wishful thinking by jittery old enemies, hoping he'll forget old affronts. He won't. Carollo is as ruthless and nakedly ambitious as he was eight years ago; he's just smoother now.
Besides, Miami (of all places) shouldn't begrudge him either ambition or egomania—basic ingredients, going back to the hairy days of Fort Dallas.
It's fun watching Carollo jerk Wayne Huizenga's chain over the arena lease for the soon-departing Panthers. The sports tycoon deserves a dose of his own petulance, and it's refreshing to see a politician brash enough to stick it to him.
Ever since Miami was born, its so-called leaders rolled over like puppies for anybody who showed up at City Hall with a nice suit, the right lawyer and a fat wad of dough. Nobody asked where the money came from because they were too busy asking for favors.
Land developers always got the red-carpet treatment, but occasionally so did gangsters, gamblers, bootleggers, bank swindlers and cocaine smugglers. Miami became known as a very friendly and gullible town.
The last thing it needs at this point in history is another glad-handing, ribbon-cutting, look-the-other-way mayor. Joe is capable of all that, but he's clearly more comfortable in the role of doubting Thomas.
He doesn't mind infuriating the rich and powerful, and he has always had a pretty good instinct for sniffing out dirty laundry. One of his first acts as city commissioner was to disrupt the cozy downtown parking monopoly around the arena, something that should have been done long ago.
If we're judged by the enemies we make, Joe's got an impressive list. It's encouraging, for example, that he is despised by Jorge Mas Canosa. Perhaps now we'll see a decline in the undue influence of the Cuban American National Foundation upon the city manager, and the police department.
Of course, the potential for fiasco follows Carollo like a hungry bear. He has a knack for the half-baked, half-cocked and insensitive remark, and the black community especially has reason to be wary.
Time will reveal Joe's true self. Sixteen months from now Miami will get a chance to re-elect him, or once again banish him to obscurity.
It's entirely possible that (as his enemies have muttered) Joe Carollo is a sneaky crook, or a nut case. Miami has had its share of both. It's also possible that he's in it just for the glory and honor.
In any case, he is the mayor—and 81 percent of the city's voters have no room to bitch. Enjoy the birthday party and pray, between chili dogs, that history will judge you kindly.
It won't be hard to fill Miami's 'Crooked' seat
July 31, 1997
The long-anticipated indictment of Commissioner Humberto Hernandez leaves open, once again, the designated crooked seat on the Miami Commission.
Long held by Miller Dawkins, now imprisoned for taking payoffs, the post was won by the controversial Hernandez last fall. The lawyer's lopsided margin carried a message from voters:
We'll always hold a place for sleaze in our hearts, and in our government.
Hernandez was hardly an unknown commodity by Election Day. It had been well publicized that he'd been canned as an assistant city attorney for basically operating a private legal practice out of City Hall.
Much had also been written about the buzzardly antics of his law firm following the Valujet crash, and the complaints lodged by heartsick families of victims.
Similar hard-to-miss headlines had been devoted to Hernandez's prominence in an FBI investigation, and to the fact that agents had visited his office to confiscate files.
So it shouldn't have surprised a soul when the commissioner was formally charged Tuesday in a 27-count indictment involving ambitiously devious bank fraud.
Prosecutors say the plot centered around a Key Biscayne condo, The Pyramids. Phony condominium sales allegedly were set up as a means of securing inflated mortgages, often never repaid. Agents say some of the bogus deals were used to launder millions in dirty Medicare money.
Future-commissioner Hernandez served as an attorney in some Pyramids transactions, and as a buyer in others. (Under oath he once asserted he didn't know the name of a client for whom he was holding almost $1 million of real estate.)
In subsequent testimony, Hernandez developed a fondness for taking the Fifth Amendment.
If convicted on all charges, the commissioner could be sentenced to several lifetimes in prison. His political career will now be put on hold while he strives to avoid joining his predecessor behind bars.
The governor suspended Hernandez on Wednesday, which means the crooked seat on the commission must be filled temporarily. The challenge is to find a suitable replacement, someone who brings to the task an equally shady cloud over his head.
Potential candidates could be chosen from FBI wiretaps and videotapes, but the screening process would take months. Why wait when there's such an obvious choice:
Carmen Lunetta. He's local, he's experienced, he's tainted by scandal—and, best of all, he's available!
The former boss of the Port of Miami, who retires today, could be a worthy successor to the Dawkins-Hernandez legacy. He quit under fire, leaving the port owing taxpayers $22 million.
The heaping debt had piled up as Lunetta spent thousands on golf outings, travel and other goodies. Many thousands more were funneled through a port-contracted company to political candidates.
Lunetta left port finances in such a mess that the new pro basketball arena is in jeopardy, as is the cruise-ship expansion known as Maritime Park.
Although Lunetta is the only person with a clue how the seaport runs, Metro-Dade Mayor Alex "Mister No Fun" Penelas is leery of hiring him as a consultant to help sort out the books.
That leaves Lunetta with loads of free time, at least on those days he's not meeting with his lawyers. A Miami Commission seat would keep him near his beloved port, and intimately involved in the high-stakes Maritime Park negotiations.
It's the worst place imaginable for a man at the center of a major federal investigation, which is all that Miami voters need to hear. Come next fall, it'll be Carmen by a landslide!
Dead men voting couldn't do any worse
November 30, 1997
Miami's laughingstock mayoral race is in the hands of a judge, who eventually could decide to order a new laughingstock election.
Defeated incumbent Joe Carollo and the newly chosen mayor, Xavier Suarez, are battling over the mishandling and forgery of absentee ballots, which resulted in at least one verified dead person, Manuel Yip, casting a vote.
In many U.S. cities, this would qualify as an embarrassing scandal, one worthy of vigorous prosecution. But in Miami the term "tainted election" is a whimsical redundancy, and nobody ever goes to jail for stealing votes.
Moreover, judging by the outcome of this fall's political races, you can make a pretty strong case that dead people in Miami ought to be allowed to vote. How could they possibly make worse choices than the living?
Example: 6,063 persons, all allegedly alive and conscious, overwhelmingly re-elected Humberto Hernandez to the City Commission.
Humberto is the adorable young shyster once fired from the city attorney's office for doing outside legal work on taxpayer time. Later he got in trouble for chasing grief-stricken relatives of the Valujet crash victims, a squalid little hustle that Humberto blamed on overzealous staff members at his law firm.
Most recently he was indicted by the feds on multiple counts of bank fraud and money laundering. The governor dutifully suspended Hernandez from the City Commission. On Nov. 4, Miami citizens enthusiastically returned him to office with 65 percent of the vote.
Fittingly, it was Hernandez's support that later pu
shed Suarez to victory in the mayoral playoffs!
Which raises the obvious question: Is there really much difference between a brain-dead voter and a physically dead voter?
Consider: Miami has spent a year reeling from a bribery scandal and teetering on the brink of fiscal ruin. Nobody in their right minds would, amid such turmoil, willingly put the city's fragile budget within reach of an accused swindler—yet that's exactly what living, breathing voters did.
It's a persuasive argument for throwing elections open to everyone, regardless of pulse rate.
Usually when ballots of long-dead residents turn up, forgery is the presumed explanation. I'm not sure that's automatically true in a place as occult as Miami.
Here it's remotely possible that some dead citizens are so appalled by what's happening that they supernaturally find a way to vote from the afterlife, if we give them a chance.
And maybe we should, because I'll bet there aren't 6,063 dead people who would have been caught … well, dead voting for a guy like Humberto Hernandez.
Admittedly, the plan has a few problems. Since deceased persons would by necessity use absentee ballots—they are, after all, the ultimate absentees—the possibility of fraud cannot be ignored. (Perhaps signatures could be checked against those on their Last Wills and Testaments.)
Political purists might contend that even if the dead would vote, they aren't as constitutionally qualified as live people. That position is hard to defend, given what happened here at the polls.
Turnout among living voters was so disgracefully low that participation by the deceased should be welcomed. And no voter is less susceptible than a dead one to a politician's grandiose promises, smear campaigns or cheap scare tactics.
Which brings us to the late Manuel Yip. Perhaps his name was, as alleged, forged on that absentee ballot. But suppose it was the real deal. What if it was an impassioned voice from The Beyond, a voice of conscience pleading: "What are you bozos doing to my city?"