Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago got an opponent to challenge his re-election easier this month when Michael Anthony Abbott filed paperwork indicating he would run.
Abbott is an accountant who has lived in Coral Gables since 2002. He said he is also a founding member and CFO for SynXGlobal, Inc., a logistics transportation company. His late brother, John Abbott, worked at the city’s building and zoning department.
He has been active in the City Beautiful, but in the background. He said he fought against the truck ordinance, since overturned, that once prohibited pick-ups in residential driveways. He was also in the group that tried to save the original Burger Bob’s. They have a non-profit called Coral Gables Action Committee, formed in 2021 by Abbott and Brian Maloney (who is also his campaign treasurer), with a brand new website as of a few days ago that looks like it will be politically engaged.
Read related: Someone’s collecting petitions to move Coral Gables election date to November
“I’m not prepared to really have a conversation right at the moment,” Abbott told Ladra Tuesday morning about his campaign. “My professional background is financial. I am not a politician.”
But he did have one statement to make off the bat: “I am opposed to even the appearance of corruption.”
It’s not the appearance that anybody is worried about.
Abbott knows that Lago is going to be well-funded. “Money can’t buy love, so we will see how well we do up against the money machine,” said Abbott, who is a Donald Trump voter. “In all ways measured, we are going to make Coral Gables beautiful again.”
But he’s used to fighting in the City Beautiful. He has a lawsuit filed against Coral Gables and two police officers for a 2020 incident in which he said he was roughed up and falsely arrested at his home. He was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer and assault on a law enforcement officer, but the charges were later dismissed. Abbott claims his First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated.
A GoPro camera on which Abbott started recording the encounter was confiscated and the memory card went missing.
Abbott doesn’t have a platform yet. But Ladra bets its going to be about transparency and accountability.
“This city is notorious for sweeping things under the rug,” Abbott said.
Read related: Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago loses majority, Election Day November move
Abbott is the first but perhaps not the last candidate to file against the incumbent mayor, who is increasingly unpopular.
Lago, who was reelected without a challenger in 2023, is the weakest he’s ever been, after losing the majority on the commission — and then his mind — after the last elections, where the two candidates he supported were bested by Commissioners Melissa Castro and Ariel Fernandez.
The mayor has also put a puppet candidate up against Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who has rubbed him wrong by voting with Castro and Fernandez on a number of contentious items, basically stripping Lago of any power. Attorney Richard Lara has raised more than $61,000 so far, but he’s really fallen behind, from $45K in his first quarter at the beginning of the year to $3,000 in the last quarter, according to his campaign finance reports. Coral Gables Prince of Darkness Nick Cabrera is doing pretty well, though, getting almost $5,000 so far as Lara’s campaign consultant (read: Lago’s conduit).
Nobody has yet expressed any interest in running against Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson. But there is time yet. The election is April 8.
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