Voters in Miami’s District 2 rejected 9-month Commissioner Sabina Covo, choosing financial advisor and human rights activist Damian Pardo, who was hit with a flurry of negative attacks in the last week by a political action committee funded with dark money.
Interestingly, it may have backfired. Because while Covo won in the mail-in ballots, Pardo got more early votes and Election Day nods, leading to a 53% victory. In the low turnout election, that translates to a difference of 263 votes.
One of the founding members of SAVE in 1993, when it was called SAVE Dade, Pardo has been volunteering and involved in civic service for 35 years. He was a two-term President of the largest AIDS Health Organization, CareResource (formerly known as Health Crisis Network) and in 2015, co-founded 4Ward Miami (and the Gay8 Festival), dedicated to uniting South Florida’s diverse communities. He served on the Miami Dade Equal Opportunity Board, the Board of Trustees of the Miami Foundation, the Celia Cruz Foundation, and various national and local non-profit boards. Today, Pardo — who was a member of the city’s LGBTQ Advisory Board — serves on the Board of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens.
Honored as a “Voice of Equality” a “Champion of Equality” and an “Equality Hero” by various organizations across the years, Pardo becomes the first gay commissioner in the city of Miami.
Read related: Last minute attacks on Miami candidate Damian Pardo are from dark $$ PAC
Pardo did not return calls and texts to his phone Tuesday, but told television reporters at his victory party that he plans to call out corruption and increase transparency. He is going to encourage residents to speak up more at commission meetings and wants to return the Neighborhood Enhancement Team offices that were eliminated two years ago so commissioners could pad their office budgets.
The race could also be seen as a performance review on Covo, who many District 2 voters expressed had been a disappointment. The former TV journalist had run on a promise to bring light to the corruption of the city and quickly became a cog in the broken system. She even attended and posed with Commissioner Joe Carollo at an event after he took over operations of the Tower Theatre. She legitimized it when she should have called him out.
Pardo, who demanded Carollo’s resignation after the commissioner was found liable in a $63 million judgement for two Little Havana businessmen whose rights Carollo violated, is expected to be different.
“It’s a new day in Miami,” echoed on the platform previously known as Twitter. Can Pardo help restore people’s trust in government? No pressure, dude.
Pardo also counted with the support of nearly all the other candidates from the first round: Downtown Neighbors Alliance President James Torres, Michael Castro and Alicia Kossick. Castro told Political Cortadito that they had made an unofficial pact over pizza after a candidate forum that whoever went into the runoff would get the others’ support. Eddy Leal, former counsel to Mayor Francis Suarez, however, allegedly broke that pact.
Days before the election, there were allegations that attorney Leal, who came in third place in the first round Nov. 7, had given Covo his endorsement in exchange for a six-figure job. Both Covo and Leal deny this but their denials are weak and disingenuous. Leal even met with City Manager Art Noriega after talking with Covo.
Read related: Did Miami’s Sabina Covo offer Eddy Leal a job in exchange for endorsement?
Oh, first he denied meeting with the manager twice on the Actualidad Radio Contacto Directo show with Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera and Juan Camilo Gomez. Only when Torres, the president of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance who came in fourth in the first round, suggested people check out the video from that day did Leal admit to meeting with the manager. But they didn’t talk about a job, he said.
Leal said he and Noriega talked about Covo and the election, which seems like a highly inappropriate thing for the manager — who did not return repeated calls to his office — to be discussing. More likely, they discussed scenarios under which Leal could return to work in the city, as he said in a television interview that he would like to do.
That’s moot now. He must be dusting off his resume.
Damian Pardo beats odds, incumbent Miami Commissioner Sabina Covo added by Ladra on
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