Carlos Gimenez submits late night campaign check (10:20 pm)

Carlos Gimenez submits late night campaign check (10:20 pm)
  • Sumo

For all his exaggerated experience as a manager and fiscal expert, it’s ironic (and somewhat funny) that Miami-Dade GimenezMayor Carlos Gimenez would pay his re-election qualifying fee with a bad check.

That’s right. His original check was no good; it was back dated more than a year. The mayor was allowed to correct this with a “replacement check” — and yet nobody asks if this doesn’t render him unqualified to run our county’s $7 billion budget. Imagine that!

Gimenez, or whoever writes and/or signs his campaign checks for him, intended to qualify for the race on June 17. That’s when he presented his qualifying documents — a sworn oath, his financial disclosure with a net worth of $1.5 million — along with a check for the $1,800 fee. Only it was dated June 10, 2015 — more than a whole year earlier. Is he living in the past, or what? Someone at Elections must have noticed this before it went to the bank because they called and notified his Gimenez checkcampaign that the check would likely not be honored — you know, banks have a thing about checks that are older than 90 or 180 or 365 days — and that they needed a new check with a more recent date if the incumbent wanted to qualify.

It was like a “Head’s up!”

The deadline to qualify was at noon the next day. But, apparently, Gimenez couldn’t wait. Who knows? Maybe he was playing golf that morning. Because someone delivered the check right after 10:20 p.m. the night of the 20th, according to a stamp on a copy of the replacement check at the Elections Department.

That’s right, again! His second check was time stamped at 10:20-something p.m. You can’t really see all of the last digit on the time stamp, but it looks like a 1, like 10:21 p.m.

Deputy Elections Supervisor Carolina Lopez told Ladra that the same head’s up would have been given to anyone who writes a year-old check, even though nobody did. She also said that nobody had to come in on overtime just for the mayor. The office was already open and employees were already working to file qualifying documents online late into the night, Lopez explained. She said they would accept a check or missing qualifying documents from anyone, not just their boss, if someone came in the middle of the night.

That’s the time they are doing their quality control, Lopez said. Any and all candidates are notified when a deficiency is found. Usually, it’s a notarization issue. The document isn’t notarized or the notary commission is expired. Other times they forget to sign the oath or they sign the wrong oath for the wrong office.

“I dealt with many a candidate after 5 o’clock,” said Lopez, who is, indeed, extremely responsive after business hours and who reminded me that there were about 600 candidates on the ballot when you include all the party committee people.

Okay, I didn’t check 600 of them. But a cursory review of time stamps on dozens of other candidate qualifying checks — from judicial races to community council wannabes — shows that they all presented payment during business hours. Only Gimenez got a time stamp on his check after 5 p.m. Waaaaay after 5 p.m. What does that say about his ability to manage a $7 billion budget? What if he mistakenly backdates a grant application or something? Or doesn’t complete the paperwork on time?

Ladra is being sarcastic. Because obviously the competent Miami-Dade employees will take care of it. Proven by the eagle-eyed staffer at the elections department who noticed the backdated check and took care of the mayor’s mistake. So, at best it’s a sign that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. At worst, it could be an abuse of power. Because Ladra can’t understand why Lopez wouldn’t tell anybody who might be given a head’s up to please come in the next day. After all, we are busy working late into the night with the paperwork we already have! Even if there were a dozen employees there in some back room filing paperwork, the front door to the Doral Elections office wasn’t unlocked, was it? Someone had to call to get inside. The intake window wasn’t manned. Someone had to stop what they were doing to get the mayor’s new check right before 10:30 p.m.

“We do not provide any preferential treatment to anybody,” Lopez told Ladra, and I can understand why she might be upset at my doubts but it’s not about her. “Most of my calls are after 5 p.m. because that is when I have a chance to review the files,” she said. “In order to give our candidates the proper level of service, I give them every opportunity and entertain many calls after 5 p.m. I’m on 24 hours a day.”

Well, if this is a privilege allowed to everyone, I urge candidates in the next election cycle to beat the rush and go in the middle of the night on the eve before the deadline. Call Carolina. She’ll open the door for you.

The issue has become more relevant now because, even if there was no abuse of power, there is certainly a double standard being applied here when the mayor refuses to instruct the elections supervisor to start counting 127,000-plus petitions from voters who want campaign finance reform. A delay in verifying the signatures could mean the measure is not on the November ballot and the activists have sued the county to make it happen.

So maybe Gimenez is simply selfish. He moved hell and high water to make sure he was on the ballot to keep his gravy train seat but he won’t lift a finger to get the campaign reform measure requested by more than 127,000 voters on the ballot. Because he doesn’t represent them. He only represents himself.

By the way, that is more votes than he got for mayor in 2012.

But Gimenez is not known for sticking to process, is he? Look at what happened with the Liberty Square Rising redevelopment bid and the water and sewer infrastructure bid and a number of other business contracts in which he has impacted (read: meddled in) the process. Why wouldn’t he violate the process to keep his job? He has a history of thinking the rules don’t apply to him.

This should be investigated. The State Attorney’s Office and the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust should ask for video tape from the cameras in the lobby and sworn statements from everybody involved in procuring or receiving the replacement check, including whoever wrote the receipt for the second check and corrected the date from the 21st to the 20th. Because the first date hand-written on the receipt for the check was June 21 and the 1 was changed to a 0.

So did the mayor even qualify on time? When was that exactly? Did he get the replacement check in at 10:21 p.m. on the 20th, as indicated by the time stamp, or on the 21st, as indicated in the hand-written receipt? An investigation would end any speculation about what happened.

Because, at worst, Carlos Gimenez used his position to get an unfair advantage in the electoral process. And, at best, he doesn’t know how to write a check.

Voters deserve to know which it is.

31 Responses to "Carlos Gimenez submits late night campaign check (10:20 pm)"

  1. Even better from 8/17/2016

    http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/id=1202765317741/High-Court-Tapped-in-Case-of-Mayoral-Candidate-Booted-From-Ballot?slreturn=20160720151954

    The Florida Supreme Court was asked Wednesday to decide whether Miami Gardens acted legally when it disqualified a would-be mayoral candidate from the Aug. 30 election because his filing fee check was returned.
    Wells Fargo sent James Barry Wright’s $620 check back to the city, saying it could not locate his bank account. Wright and the city agree he had ample funds and that the bank had honored previous checks from the same account. But he was too late to make up the amount with a cashier’s check within the qualifying period.
    Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Bronwyn Miller denied Wright’s request to be put back on the ballot. The Third District Court of Appeal agreed, finding that state elections law clearly calls for the disqualification of candidates whose fees aren’t paid on time.
    “We recognize the statute produces a harsh result in this case,” Third DCA Judge Edwin Scales wrote in Wednesday’s opinion, with Chief Judge Richard Suarez and Judge Ivan Fernandez concurring. “When an unambiguous statute plainly requires a particular result, though, courts are powerless to fashion a different result under the auspices of fairness.”
    But because of the appellate judges’ “tremendous distaste for the result,” the panel asked the Florida Supreme Court to decide whether the law requires disqualification when a check is returned due to a banking error outside the candidate’s control.
    The high court returns from summer break the week of the mayoral election.

  2. After being disqualified from the Miami Gardens mayoral race, former candidate James Wright is fighting to get back in the race through a lawsuit.

    Wright filed a lawsuit against the city and clerk Ronetta Taylor Thursday in Miami-Dade circuit court and is asking a judge to reinstate him for the city’s Aug. 30 election.

    “Voters of the city are being prevented from considering [Wright] as a viable candidate for the office of mayor of Miami Gardens based on a technical ‘glitch,’ ” the complaint reads.

    Taylor disqualified the former Opa-locka police chief June 20, citing Florida Statute 99.061. She said in a letter that the check Wright used to pay his qualification fee was returned to the city because the bank couldn’t find his campaign’s account number. Taylor said the city was notified about the issue by Wells Fargo on June 16.

    “Unfortunately, qualifying ended June 2, 2016, therefore you are hereby disqualified,” Taylor wrote to Wright.

    Wright said he was shocked by the city’s decision. He argues that the check he used to qualify was never presented to his bank for payment.

    “There is no record of my check being presented for payment against my account,” Wright said.

    “The fact is, on June 1, 2016, I presented all of the necessary documents to qualify for mayor including a check for $620 in a timely manner.”

    In his complaint Wright also notes that he was never charged fees for insufficient funds or returned items by his bank. He said other checks written on the campaign account had cleared without any issues.

    The race for mayor includes two other challengers — political newcomer Clara Johnson and former councilman Ulysses Harvard — and the incumbent mayor, Oliver Gilbert.

    Wright was Opa-locka’s top cop from 2005 until he was fired in 2008. He also unsuccessfully competed in 2004 for the County Commission seat currently held by Barbara Jordan.

    The Aug. 30 election features three other races for city council seats with a mix of new and familiar faces. Voters have until Aug. 1 to register for the election.

    Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-gardens/article86938812.html#storylink=cpy

  3. Great comment by Rita.

    Besides the fucked up check….the cronyism is real, tangible and far exceeds the $4000 that a bank screwed over Raquel. She proved no intent.

    Mayor Gmenez made a big deal when he cut his salary from $300,000 to $150,000 four years ago.

    What he didn’t share was that his best friend then got a County contract that can earn him $18 million as a connected paper pusher.

    Best friends share. That’s intent for ya!

    “A firm owned by the finance chairman of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s reelection effort could collect up to $18 million over 12 years for work on a 2014 county sewer-system contract, according to information released this week.”

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