New Miami Herald column: Dunn deal
I’ve got an extra column in the Herald this week, focusing on the deal the Miami commissioners extracted from their newly appointed colleague, Rev. Richard Dunn. Read it here.
Dunn wins D5 (dis)appointment
After nearly eight hours of deliberations and three votes, Rev. Richard Dunn was selected to fill the commissioner seat vacated by Michelle Spence-Jones, who is facing grand theft charges. The commission had deadlocked twice before the final result, with Commissioners Francis Suarez and Mark Sarnoff voting twice for Miami-Dade School Board Operations Director Pierre Rutledge, and Commissioners Frank Carollo (who said repeatedly that he wished the whole process would go away in favor of yet another special election,) and Willie Gort, the newest member, who just won his seat in the same January 12 special election that re-re-elected Spence-Jones, going for Dunn. Read more
The scramble for Spence-Jones’ seat
At left: Michelle Spence-Jones. At right: Richard "Ever Ready" Dunn
There will be a vote in the Miami Commission tonight (and you know it’s going to be dramatic,) to fill the seat that has been involuntarily vacated by Michelle Spence Jones. The special session starts at 4, and I’m assuming that the circus will begin well before that. Already this morning, there has been a prayer breakfast at which potential candidates strutted their stuff, and several losing candidates from November and January, including Dufirstson “66 votes” Neree, David Chiverton (Mr. 7 percent), and the Jay Leno of Miami Black politics (meaning he’s always hovering in the wings, waiting to take a fired politician’s spot if his current gig doesn’t pan out) — Rev. Richard Dunn, have begun making their pitch to commission members in hopes of securing the seat. The MSJ camp is pushing its own choices, school board guy Pierre Rutledge, who has the support of the guy who probably should be the nominee himself, but clearly doesn’t want it, Patrick Range Jr., and Erica Wright, who I can tell you from personal experience was a solid Spence-Jones supporter before the campaign. A group of D5 residents have even floated an open letter to the commission, via Blogging Black Miami. Read more
Judge denies Michelle Spence-Jones’ suspension stay request
A Miami judge quickly dispatched ousted Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones’ emergency order which sought to stop Gov. Charlie Crist from suspending her. (Video after the jump) Read more
On MLK Day, Spence-Jones gets downright defiant
Michelle Spence-Jones (far right) put on a full court press during the MLK Day parade in Liberty City Monday.
The politicians assembled across from the Wendy’s, their convertibles and constituent buses and vans lining 54th Street along 10th Avenue. It was about an hour and a half before the scheduled start of the Martin Luther King Day parade through Liberty City — an annual tradition, and THE parade according to insistent fans who brushed off the parades in South Dade and in Broward as knock-offs of the real thing. Women fixed their elaborate, feathered outfits, boys straightened their marching band uniforms, and a carload of kids from the 5000 Role Models looked smart in their crisp, white shirts and trademark red and black ties. There were candidates and politicians everywhere — Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, Democratic Senate contender Maurice Ferre, Miami-Dade District 2 Commission Dorrin Rolle, who wheeled up in a giant bus with his face emblazoned all over it, and State Rep. James Bush III, whose wife is running for his seat while he run’s for Kendrick Meek’s Congressional seat (one of about a dozen candidates to do so.) But that wasn’t the show.
The show was, at first, the guessing game over whether “she” would show up. And then, she showed up. Read more
Crist orders Spence-Jones suspended (again)
From the Miami Herald, confirmation of what Gov. Charlie Crist’s spokesman told me yesterday:
Gov. Charlie Crist on Thursday issued a new executive order to re-suspend Miami City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones, whom he suspended from office after she was charged in a corruption probe.
Crist immediately suspended the popular commissioner after state prosecutors arrested her in November for allegedly redirecting $50,000 in county money to a family business, before she won her first election. She denies wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty. Read more
Asked and answered: Crist v. Spence-Jones
A spokesman for Gov. Charlie Crist tells me the governor does indeed plan to go forward with suspending newly re-re-elected Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones. Spence-Jones won her seat back last night after being suspended previously by the governor over grand theft charges she’s facing. Spokesman Sterling Ivery told me Crist believes he does have the authority under state law to suspend Spence-Jones again, even though voters re-elected her with full knowledge of the charges against her. There has been some chatter that a suspension would constitute a usurpation of the will of the voters (most of it from the pro-Spence-Jones camp,) and with PULSE out there with protest songs at the ready, there’s always a risk of blowback, particularly for a Republican governor with a rare talent for being popular with black voters. Asked if the Gov worries about a possible backlash if he removes the commissioner again, Ivery added, “the governor feels he has the responsibility to uphold the laws of Florida.”
The suspension won’t happen today, since obviously there is a lot of other stuff going on (namely Haiti.) But could come at the time of Spence-Jones’ swearing in. The commissioner has filed papers with a state court seeking to block a second suspension, and legal eagles around these parts seem to believe she has a decent case. A hearing on the motion filed by the commissioner’s high priced attorneys is expected to take place next week.
Stay tuned!
No surprises in Miami: Spence-Jones wins
The unofficial official tallies, with all precincts reporting, show walk-away wins for both Michelle Spence-Jones in District 5 and Wilie Gort in District 1. Both fields were crowded, with nine candidates apiece. And after $300,000 expended by the citizens of Miami, the only change from last November’s result is that even fewer people voted (11.9% county-wide, or about 4,268 people in District 1, and 3,820 people in District 5 today vs. 4,854 in D5 last November 3rd), and this time Spence-Jones only got 53 percent, not 83 percent, of the vote. Rev. Richard Dunn, who gave Spence-Jones a run for her money in the “bad vs. worse” election of 2005, got just 601 votes, or just under 16%. David Chiverton did even worse this time than he did last November, getting just 3.6 percent of the vote, and attorney Erica Wright, who won the Herald endorsement, received just 284 votes, or 7.4 percent of the vote.) Read more
Decision day in Miami
Voters in Districts 1 and 5 get a chance for a do-over today, as they go to the polls to choose from nearly 20 candidates for the seats vacated by Angel Gonzales (who stepped down to avoid prosecution for getting his daughter a no-show job from a city contractor) and Michelle Spence Jones (the young, charismatic commissioner who has this strange habit of speaking about herself in the third person, and who seems prepared to do everything short of taking hostages in order to hang onto her seat amid accusations she pilfered grant money for her family business that was intended for other organizations.)
The polls are open. Let’s see how many votes show up …
Friends: Liberty City edition
Rev. Gaston Smith
Jury selection in Liberty City pastor Gaston Smith’s trial finally gets under way tomorrow, after a delay that placed its start after the Miami District 5 election, where its disclosures might have proved unhelpful to a certain suspended commissioner who refers to herself in the third person. The Herald counts down some of the unsavory details of the trial, which Michelle Spence Jones, for one, cannot be looking forward to (assuming it goes the distance): Read more
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