Local buzz — Miami District 5: You’ve been punk’d
Well knock me over with a feather… Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones, having just cruised to re-election with Saddam Hussein=style margins on the strength of $180,000 in developer-related campaign cash and a lot of boxed chicken dinners at the senior centers — and after fewer than 10 percent of the 40,000 voters in District 5 (which a colleague of mine has dubbed “Zombietown”) bothered to show up at the polls — is alleged to be under investigation … again. Surprise!
IN OTHER LOCAL BUZZ: Miami police chief John Timoney quits — new mayor wants chief “promoted from within.”
I’ve been hearing rumors about something of this nature for weeks, but unfortunately, nothing I could report on the record. When Ms. Spence-Jones was asked about the legal buzz today, the day before her swearing in, she brushed it off as vicious rumors being spread by mean people out to ruin her wonderful re-election:
(WSVN-7) “It’s absolutely not true,” said Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones about some serious criminal allegations that have yet to be released to the public. All that can be revealed at this point is that there is an active criminal investigation, though City Hall is buzzing with speculation that an arrest is imminent
“I’m not even sure where this is coming from. Unfortunately there are people out there who want to create this negativity around my great win. It’s obvious that the people elected me at 82 percent,” said Spence-Jones. “If there was something that would be happening to me, I would be the first to know.”
Uh-huh. Well, if it turns out to be true, and I have every reason to believe (based on the calls I’m getting this evening) that it is — the fact that it’s happening now, and not, say, before last week’s election, says three things about Miami, and about the state of black politics down here, none of which are good:
1) Kathy Fernandez Rundle is a wimp, who would rather be liked, than feared. Why not drop this bombshell before the election, and spare the citizens the potential political turmoil? Well, the state attorney, like Ms. Spence Jones, is a politician. More to the point, she is a white politician who typically carries the black vote (though she rarely has an opponent), and who’s all palsy-walsy with the “elders” of Miami black politics. (Her track record on failed political takedowns includes former county commissioner Barbara Carey Shuler, for whom the statute of limitations ran out.) So what does Kathy fear more? Being picketed by black Miamians accusing her of being out to get their leaders (and not being able to appear in black churches at election time,) or her own reflection in the mirror?
2) Politics is the art of putting yourself ahead of your community. With all the rumors that I’ve heard swirling around these parts in the last few weeks, I find it hard to believe that Spence-Jones (as she calls herself, in the third person…) had no idea she was the target of an investigation before the election. And yet she was willing to put her district through yet another round of her legal psychodrama. Don’t be fooled by the scale of her win. Ms. Spence-Jones fought for that seat like she was facing Barack Obama. When I interviewed her and her opponents on the radio two weeks before the vote, she was so agitated, I thought she was going to jump through the telephone and start swinging at her opponents. Why fight so hard for a seat you may have to give up anyway? Who knows. Maybe she knows she’s entirely innocent of any wrongdoing and merely desires to serve. Or … maybe she’s familiar with the tendency of this state attorney’s office to allow politicians to resign rather than face jail time (the deal Kathy Rundle is cutting for yet another shady commissioner, Angel Gonzales) whereas mere civilians have to face the music.
3) The people of District 5 might actually BE zombies. The saddest part of this story is that Ms. Spence-Jones has had her ethics questioned so often, and so consistently (including in a case involving her own pastor) that the people who re-elected her must have known at least something about it. And yet, she was resoundingly returned to office. What would it take, then, for a such a person NOT to be re-elected? And if this news HAD come out before the election, there’s a very good chance that most people in District 5 would have dismissed it as lies designed to take a black woman down, and re-elected her anyway. It’s enough to make you give up, especially when you drive through decimated neighborhoods like the ones Ms. Spence-Jones represents, and realize that those most in a position to change their circumstances, the people who live there, have either given up, don’t care, or seem to like the leadership they’re getting.
It’s time for black people in Miami to have a “come to Jesus” moment. We’re either going to demand good leadership (it’s out there folks — look at Miami Gardens) and put our money, and our votes, where our convictions are — or we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.
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