Former Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi — suspended by Gov. Rick Scott earlier this month after he 
was arrested by the FBI on bribery and extortion charges –misses his office and want’s his seat back already.
At least that’s what we have to think after his son picked up a candidate packet for him at the clerk’s office at Town Hall Tuesday afternoon.
City staffers confirmed that the suspended (read: disgraced) mayor’s son had picked up a packet just before 3:30 p.m., though nobody knows why he did that since Pizzi can download all the documents from the town’s website.
Is he trying to psyche out the competition?
Maybe he thinks it’s going to go well at his arraignment Tuesday, which is three days before the qualifying deadline.
Pizzi was busted Aug. 6 along with Sweetwater Mayor Manny Marono and two lobbyists after a two-year FBI sting in which undercovers posing as shady businessmen from Chicago worked with the electeds to defraud the federal government out of grant monies meant for job creation. They each had to lie to other undercovers who called purporting to be from AmeriCorps, which had awarded the grants, to find out how the monies were being used.
Since Pizzi was also suspended as town attorney in Medley, he apparently has a lot of time on his hands now and Ladra can just imagine him bouncing off the walls looking for something to do. He may also believe his chances are not that bad, especially if Councilman Nelson Hernandez — who has already resigned his position to run for mayor — and longtime Pizzi critic and town activist David Bennett split the anti-Muscles votes.
Hernandez could not be reached immediately, but Bennett said Pizzi’s possible political rebound changes nothing for him. At least not now. He may reconsider after the qualifying deadline, which is noon Aug. 30.
“I’m happy with any one of us being mayor,” Bennett said, referring to the other three candidates, which also includes founding Mayor Wayne Slaton, who lost to Pizzi last November in a 62 to 38 percent landslide.
Bennett said he had already spent about $5,000 of his own money preparing for a race and would not have to return checks because he won’t raise funds until after everyone qualifies.
Suspended candidates have won before. Seems that 305 voters like a candidate with a different kind of record.
In 1998, former Miami Commissioner Humbertico Hernandez — who had been suspended by then Gov. Lawton Chiles the year before after he was charged with federal money laundering charges — ran for commission while under the suspension and won his seat back with 65 percent of the vote.
Of course, he was suspended the next year for different charges — his role in electoral and absentee ballot fraud.
More recently, former Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones won a special election in 2010 after she was suspended two months earlier when she turned herself in to authorities to face charges of grand theft. But then Gov. Charlie Crist just suspended her again.
So, who knows? Maybe this is Muscles’ comeback. Or maybe, drama king that he is, he just wants to be suspended twice.
Ladra, for one, can’t wait to see who contributes to his campaign.
Arrested Miami Lakes Mayor Michael Pizzi may run again added by Ladra on
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