Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago may say he’s not worried about the recall effort mounted against him. He may say it’s just gadfly Maria Cruz and activist attorney David Winker with a grudge against him.
But don’t believe him. He is sweating it.
That’s why Lago has an anonymous, cowardly blogger trashing Cruz and Winker so he can then mass text the link to voters. That’s why he has a bunch of apologists, including developers and others with interests in the city, writing letters to the editor of a community newspaper on his behalf. That’s why he reportedly made a robocall telling residents not to talk to the people collecting petition signatures.
And now the police are intimidating those canvassers.
“It appears that Coral Gables Police are engaging in a coordinated campaign of harassment against those seeking recall signatures,” Winker told Ladra. “Following them, detaining them, searching their cars.”
Read related: Coral Gables activist forms PAC to recall former friend, Mayor Vince Lago
There’s already been three incidents, according to several sources. Officers are allegedly caught on video telling the canvassers that what they are doing is illegal. It’s not. In the latest incident, which occurred about noon Wednesday, an officer told a pair of canvassers near the University of Miami campus that they needed a permit. They don’t.
In at least one and maybe all instances, the police ask the canvassers — who are wearing bright red “Lago Must Go” t-shirts and holding clipboards — what they are doing.
In one police stop, officers searched a young woman’s car for no good reason. They got permission. They found nada.
Canvassers say they are being followed. One of them got a traffic ticket for something he said he didn’t do, and this was after he already had an officer approach him earlier in the day. “So, of course, I was being extra careful,” the canvasser told Ladra.
Winker calls it “another chapter in the weaponization of Coral Gables government against residents and political opponents.”
The harassment has gotten so bad that a top city administrator was getting ready late Wednesday to send an email to the police chief and employees “reminding” them of the law and the exemption provided for religious or political canvassers as far as permits are concerned. But this is Chief Ed Hudak, the same police chief who called voters last year to “warn” them against voting for Melissa Castro and Ariel Fernandez, who were running against two Lago-backed candidates.
Read related: Gables Police Chief Ed Hudak calls, pressures voters in commission race
Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who was in the city manager’s office when calls started to come in about the police stopping a canvasser, told Ladra late Wednesday that he asked for the clarification.
“Having been involved in local government as a government attorney, I thought it was best to get the city attorney’s office engaged,” said Menendez, who was once an assistant city attorney in Miami. “The fact that it happened again today means that whatever our law is or the exemptions are weren’t properly communicated or defined.”
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Menendez expects it to be “properly clarified” by Thursday.
But maybe by now the intentionally chilling message has been sent. Canvassers will get harassed by the cops. Who’s going to want to do that?
The recall effort needs 1,690 petition signatures by April 19 to get on the ballot. By Wednesday, they had collected almost half of that. Once they are validated, a date will be set for a voter recall election.
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