Miguel Gabela's D1 counsel runs PAC that got $50K from Ultra Music Festival

Remember when Miguel Gabela was going to clean up City Hall?

He was the reformer. The outsider. The guy who was going to expose the spending excesses, drain the Bayfront swamp, audit everything that moved and drag the ghosts of the Joe Carollo era into the sunlight.

Good times.

Now comes an awkward little press release from the Downtown Neighbors Alliance that raises a question Miami voters seem to ask every few years: How long does it take for a government reformer to become part of the machine?

Apparently not very long.

According to public records highlighted by the DNA, Jose Sanchez-Gronlier — Gabela’s taxpayer-funded office counsel — also serves as the chairperson and registered agent of a political committee called Advance Miami, which has raised $338,500 in just April and May, according to the most recent campaign finance records.

That includes $50,000 from interests connected to Ultra Music Festival: $20K from Event Entertainment Group and $30K from their longtime lawyer, Sandra York. Both checks are dated May 5. That’s 10 days after the commission approval April 23 of the 20-year contract that Gabela advocated and voted for.

Now, before everybody starts hyperventilating — or Gabela gets his PAC-paid attorney to send Ladra another cease and desist letter — let’s be clear. Nobody has alleged anything illegal. Nobody has alleged a quid pro quo. Nobody has alleged that Gabela’s district office attorney did anything improper.

But in politics there is a reason people constantly talk about “the appearance.” Because appearances matter.

Especially when you’re the guy who ran on changing them.

“When a commissioners’ own staff attorney is running a PAC taking money from interests tied to major city business, the appearance is impossible to ignore,” said DNA President James Torres. “Whether legal or not, this is exactly the kind of arrangement that leaves residents cynical about City Hall. It fuels the perception that insiders play by one set of rules while ordinary taxpayers play by another.”

After all, Sanchez-Gronlier isn’t some outside consultant or campaign operative. He works inside Gabela’s publicly funded office, paid by the city $130,000 a year as his legal and policy advisor, while simultaneously serving as the treasurer and chairman of a political committee collecting money from interests that have business before the city.

Legally? Perhaps perfectly fine.

Politically? Let’s just say it lands with all the grace of a piano falling from a fourth-floor balcony on Brickell Key.

And here’s where things get especially uncomfortable: This comes as questions continue to swirl around spending under Gabela’s watch at Bayfront Park Management Trust and inside his District 1 office.

Questions about Atlantis Solutions and Elandor, two PR outfits making tens of thousands of dollars. Questions about branding contracts. Questions about communications spending. Questions about invoices that seem to generate more questions than answers.

Questions that Gabela and his team have shown remarkably little interest in answering.

Which is becoming a pattern. Calls aren’t returned. Text messages aren’t returned, Neither Gabela nor Sanchez-Gronlier responded to specific questions about this seeming conflict of interests. Eddy Leal, a former District 2 commission candidate who is also, allegedly, Gabela’s city-paid legal advisor at $75,000 a year — because por supuesto he needs two — also did not return a call or text.

Requests for explanations disappear into the same black hole apparently storing Bayfront Park’s growing collection of logos.

Appearance may not be everything. But when your office counsel is running a PAC taking money from interests tied to a deal you championed for one of the city’s largest and most controversial special-event agreements, the appearance is doing an awful lot of the talking.

Again, maybe everything is perfectly legal. Maybe every contribution is proper. Maybe every relationship is above board. Maybe every spending decision has a reasonable explanation.

Maybe.

But transparency isn’t something public officials get credit for talking about during campaigns. Transparency is what happens afterward. It’s what happens when reporters ask questions. It’s what happens when residents want answers. It’s what happens when records raise eyebrows.

Instead, Miami keeps getting silence. And silence has a funny way of making perfectly explainable situations look a whole lot worse than they might actually be.

The most remarkable part of this entire saga may be how familiar it feels. Because Miami’s political history is littered with elected officials who campaigned against insiders before eventually discovering the many conveniences of becoming one.

First they promise reform. Then they promise accountability. Then they stop returning calls. Then they start explaining why everybody is being unfair. Then one day they wake up and realize they’ve become exactly what they ran against.

The irony is almost poetic.

Gabela entered office promising to expose questionable spending and insider politics. Instead, he’s spending more and more time explaining why taxpayers shouldn’t worry about either.

Welcome to City Hall. Miami style.

This kind of independent, government watchdog reporting is crucial to transparency and democracy. And more so every day. Help shine a light on the darker corners of our community with a contribution to Political Cortadito. Click here. Ladra thanks you for your support.

Miguel Gabela’s D1 counsel runs PAC that got $50K from Ultra Music Festival added by Ladra on June 17, 2026
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