He was absent from the redistricting process when the Miami City Commission disenfranchised black and Coconut Grove voters by dividing their districts and diluting their votes. He let Commissioner Joe Carollo carve up the Grove so he could put his own house into District 3 and he let Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla take his only real challenger out of District 1. Mayor Francis Suarez didn’t say ni pio.
But now he wants to be involved? Now he wants to work?
Suarez on Sunday — the last day he could — vetoed a measure taken earlier this month to put newly-elected Commissioner Miguel Gabela‘s home back into the district he has lived in for more than two decades. Gabela has been living in another property he owns in the district while the challenge to the new map, passed in June, goes through the court process.
Read related: Miami’s Alex Diaz de la Portilla loses re-election bid to Miguel Gabela on 4th try
Gabela, who beat the Diaz de la Portilla — who was suspended after his September arrest on public corruption charges — made the motion at the Dec. 14 meeting and it passed 3-1 with only Carollo voting against it. Commissioner Manolo Reyes was MIA.
Reyes is going to be key at the January meeting where the veto will be considered. The commission cn only override with a four/fifths vote.
Why on Earth does Suarez, who hasn’t commented on the charges against ADLP, care about Gabela’s house being in the same district it’s always been in?
“I think he’s being pressured,” Gabela told Political Cortadito.
“I don’t know what to think. This is a guy who has been absent forever,” said Gabela, who has not joined the chorus asking for Suarez to resign. He says he’s not ready to do so. But he did confront the mayor at the Dec. 11 special meeting when Suarez tried to give a little stump speech about all the good he’s done with the budget and the “highest reserves ever” blah, blah, blah.
“Are we on a budget here or are we talking about crime? What are we talking about here? I was told to stick to the issues and I want to stick to the issues,” Gabela said. “But we’re going on and on and on.”
Is this payback?
Read related: Growing calls for Francis Suarez to resign lead to nasty mayoral message
“He’s worried about my house, but nevermind what is going on with the city attorney, the budget that we had a crisis. Nevermind what’s going on with him,” Gabela said.
The city attorney is under investigation — or should be — for a scheme where her husband basically stole an old man’s home, buying it for less than it was worth and then getting the zoning violations waived before flipping it for a high profit. Something he’s apparently done a lot. The city almost lost $56 million in state funds because it had not passed the budget unanimously. And Suarez himself is under FBI and multiple agency investigations for his side gigs, including a $10K a month consulting job with a developer who got his help pulling permits for a project in the Grove, as the Miami Herald reported.
“Carollo’s house doesn’t bother him,” Gabela said. “Carollo was accommodated. Coconut grove was broken in half to accommodate Carollo and give him his house.
“Since the districts became districts, my house has always been in District 1,” Gabela went on. “Everybody knows what happened. That my house was taken out to help Alex Diaz de la Portilla.”
Suarez wasn’t at the Dec. 14 meeting — not even to make a quick cameo like he did at the emergency budget meeting on Dec. 11. “He couldn’t be here because he was in the Middle East or wherever,” Gabela said, referring to the many trips to Saudi Arabia that Suarez has taken for his law firm.
Former State Rep. JC Planas, Gabel’s attorney in the lawsuit against the redistricting map (and a candidate for the Supervisor of Elections), didn’t seem too surprised by the Suarez veto.
“It would not be Christmas without Scrooge,” Planas said. “For his sake, I hope he gets visited by three ghosts tonight.”
Absentee Miami Mayor Francis Suarez issues Christmas Eve veto on D1 lines added by Ladra on
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