Almost one week before the end of the Coral Gables city elections for mayor and two commissioners April 8, and each of the races is looking more like a tight, nail-biting contest that could go either way. The smart money is on runoffs for all three.
Even if fat chance mayoral candidate Michael Abbott, who is suing the city and claims the police violated his rights, only gets 5% of the vote — the people who don’t like incumbent Mayor Vince Lago or just want a change and think that Commissioner Kirk Menendez is not serious enough, so there’s an alternative — there could be a runoff. Some observers who spoke to Ladra say that Menendez — who performed well at the Gables Good Government forum, but was not smart enough to record it — isn’t campaigning hard enough. That he’s counting on the anti-Lago vote to get him over the top. That might not be enough.
He’s killing it at public appearances, by all accounts, but needs to get his message out to more voters.
Meanwhile, “muscle headed” Lago — that’s a term a voter actually used — is “angry all the time,” and boring people with his same ol’, same ol’ schtick about the salaries and the city managers and moving the election to November, blah, blah, blah. These are the three things on which he has failed to lead, frankly. Even his petition drive failed miserably, with thousands of invalid signatures (more on that later). This is his agenda, not the people’s. But no matter what the question is, Lago pivots to one of these things because they are campaign red meat and because it distracts from his arrogant, demeaning behavior, conflicts of interest and public temper tantrums.
Menendez has been direct and far more factual about the salaries, which were raised for the first time in decades to $65,000. Lago didn’t get to hear when Menendez explained it at the GGG event because the mayor left right after he spoke. Maybe Lago’s campaign manager, Jesse Manzano — hanging out in the back of the room “like a stalker” — told him about it afterwards.
Everyone who spoke with Ladra agrees that Lago must have taken a Xanax, or he was given one or two by his handlers, because of how calm and even-headed he was, given several opportunities to fly off his sensitive handle. “It was surreal, unsettling knowing how amped up he’s been,” a voter said.
It’s incredibly sad that nobody recorded it for so many reasons.
Also, none of the 118 people on the Zoom meet-and-greet last week hosted by the Coral Gables Neighbors Association with their chosen candidates asked about the salaries or the changes of city managers. Not one. Because who cares?
The CGNA has endorsed, along with Menendez: Tom Wells, who is running in the commission race to fill Kirk’s seat, and architect Felix Pardo, who is running against Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson, a Lago loyalist who has lost her anti-development base and must count on the Lago vote to win her first re-election. Good luck with that.
In Anderson’s Group 2 race, Laureano Cancio is also running, so he’s the reason there could be a runoff, but he won’t be in it. Not because he’s not a good guy with good ideas. He is. He just doesn’t have the community presence of the other two.
Pardo and Menendez also have the the endorsement from the fire union and the police union. While Wells is getting help from the Coral Gables Democratic Club against Richard Lara, the Republican mayor’s handpicked Seguro Que Yes vote, and FreeBee transit lobbyist Claudia Miro — officially vice president of business development –who once worked with former Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff. Miro has already lost one commission race, to Anderson in 2021.
Interestingly, her campaign manager is Tania Cruz Gimenez, who also ran in that same 2021 race and last year helped newly-elected Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz win that historic race. Wells is being helped by the Coral Gables Democratic Club. Members had volunteered to canvass for Wells in North Gables Sunday afternoon.
Ladra suspects that Miro, who has the Miami Herald endorsement, is going to be in the runoff, the question is with who.
So, it’s very possible that the April 8 election is just practice for the real thing, which would then be April 22. But the first round of early voting is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday, this weekend.
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