Category Archives: Coral Gables

Because Coral Gables does not have run-off elections, there is always a risk in multi-candidate Commission elections that a person might elected with less than a majority vote.  Indeed, this has happened more than once in recent memory, with the most recent case being now-Commissioner Slesnick who was elected with 32% of the vote in a six-candidate race.

A run-off, however, would be expensive, and also risks declining voter participation. Voter participation is already low enough in the April off-year election. One solution would be to move the election to the ordinary primary date in August, and have any necessary run-off in November. I have detected very little appetite for this among Commissioners and other movers and shakers in the Gables. The reasons vary. Some people think that too many people are on vacation in August. Others think that too people who don’t care much about local government would vote (the polite term for this is ‘fear of low-information voters’). Still others think that the non-partisan character of the race would be overrun with the partisan fervor of the regular election. And yet others fear that come November UM students would have too much sway. I don’t agree with most of these views, but they’re out there.

Fortunately, there a solution to the problem of running a fair multi-candidate election that produces a majority winner without having to change the election date or having a second, runoff, election. The solution is to switch from the current first-past-the-post voting system to Single Transferable Vote (STV), also known as Instant Runoff Voting.

With the very able help of my research assistant,  Steven Strickland, I’ve written a memo which outlines some of the advantages of using STV and sent it to each of the five members of the Coral Gables Commission. I hope that Coral Gables will consider changing to STV for future elections to ensure that our elected officials have the support of the majority of the electorate, and are seen to have that support.

The text of our memo, reformatted to make it more web-friendly, is below.
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Coral Gables mayor Cason and commissioner Quesada re-elected, joined by newcomer Slesnick:

With 27 of the city’s 27 precincts reporting, Cason won 57 percent of the vote to Ralph Cabrera’s 43 percent. Quesada, 35, an attorney seeking a second four-year term, posted a commanding lead over Enrique Lopez, 62, an IT consultant and lobbyist: 73 percent vs. 27 percent.

And in the highly contested Group V seat … Jeannett Slesnick garnered 32 percent of the vote in the crowded field. Her closest opponent was Tony Newell with 25 percent of the vote, followed by Sandra Murado with 19 percent, Ariel Fernandez with 16 percent, P.J. Mitchell with 6 percent and Jackson Rip Holmes with 1 percent.

At some point I’d like to work out how much these correlate with campaign spending. Just eyeballing it, the correlation looks pretty high, which is sort of sad.

Update: Detailed results at CoralGablesCentral.com.

There are six candidates for Coral Gables Commission Group V, so it will not take many votes to get a win in what has recently been a low-turnout election. There is no run-off (there should be). We’re fortunate to have so many candidates who mean well, and want to devote a substantial amount of their time to helping run the city.

Forget the so-called crime issue. The important questions are development and infrastructure. Personally, I am sort of middle-of-the-road on the development question. I am not against a substantial amount of development so long as the City manages it properly: demands parking, anticipates and resolves traffic bottlenecks, keeps spillovers away from residential areas, and generally beefs up City infrastructure to anticipate the new demands from all these new homes, offices, and businesses. Elections, however, don’t do nuance well.

One candidate stands out for his pro-development stance: Tony Newell (see Tony Newell is Not a Libertarian). If that’s what you want and can overlook the anger management moment from the second debate, I suppose that he’s your candidate. But he isn’t mine.

I’ve again decided not to vote for perennial candidate and convicted felon Jackson Holmes even though I’ll admit he does grow on you a bit over time.

I’ve also decided that I will not be voting for Ariel Fernandez (see Ariel Fernandez – a Grass Roots Candidate With a Past).

That leaves three candidates to pick from: PJ Mitchell, Sandra Murado, or Jeannett Slesnick.

Two candidates stand out for their anti-development stances: Jeannett Slesnick Jeannett Slesnick: the Big Name in the Race) and PJ Mitchell (see PJ Mitchell — Sincere and (Too?) Frugal).

Sandra Murado is the wild card. She’s tough, smart, and a diverse group of voters seem to like her enough to recommend her. But she’s also hard to figure out. (See Sandra Murado’s Confusing Candidacy.)

Slesnick seems committed to process values and brings a long knowledge of the city; Mitchell’s selling point is that he comes off as a really sincere person.

The negatives on Slesnick are (to some) her husband’s Mayoralty, to others her campaign warchest, and to yet others her age. None of these are good arguments. A better argument against her is that she hasn’t been an impressive public speaker and seems to be running as much on her experience as any particular program or vision; balanced against that is her demonstrated ability to put the development issue on the agenda.

PJ Mitchell is an outsider candidate. He also presents as one of the more conservative candidates; part of that might be his soft, slightly southern, accent, but part of it seems to be an instinctual aversion to spending.

All three of them make a credible case for our votes.

Who are you voting for, and why?

I haven’t blogged about the Coral Gables Commission Group IV race because I think it’s a done deal and that Frank Quesada will win.

Voters who are happy with rapid development, and happy with a Commissioner who often, but not always, votes with Mayor Cason will be comfortable voting to re-elect Frank Quesada.

Voters who want a strong anti-development vote will likely find that Enrique Lopez says things more to their taste. Indeed, on several issues such as development and environment I might be closer to Lopez than Quesada, although I find Lopez to be a bit too anti-change for my taste.

But it turns out in this one, I find that for me the issues aren’t the main thing.

I would certainly have been prepared to overlook much of Enrique Lopez’s public bombast. I might maybe have been prepared to overlook Lopez’s association with the dubious Dade Medical College (although then again, maybe not). But my very limited personal interaction with Mr. Lopez, consisting of email I regret he has not given me permission to reprint, have convinced me that he’s not the sort of person I want anywhere near my government, thank you very much.

Vote for Frank Quesada. Too pro-development, too pro-Cason, but by most accounts a decent guy.

Group I is the Mayor’s Race.

This is the easiest vote in the election. I have never been Ralph Cabrera’s greatest fan, far from it, and I think his campaign’s focus on the so-called crime issue has been something between lame and ludicrous. But get Cabrera off that poll-tested issue, and he actually makes quite a lot of sense. Yes, he’s a bit prickly. But so is incumbent Mayor Jim Cason. And, as I’ve said many times before, I cannot forgive Cason for supporting the former City Manger’s undermining of the democratic process; once it was proved that the Manager was hiding information from the Commission he had to go – and Cason couldn’t see that. So Cason has to go.

Don’t let the absence of a better choice dissuade you: Vote Ralph Cabrera for Mayor. Cason Must Go.

Read about my interview with Ralph Cabrera.

The Coral Gables Commission Election is tomorrow. Many will have voted by absentee, but some us insist on voting in person.

The mud is certainly starting to fly. Mayoral candidate Ralph Cabrera filed an ethics complaint alleging that “staffers from Mayor Cason’s political campaign are holding themselves out to be agents of the city and are actively identifying constituent complaints and then using the Mayor’s public office to generate official action by the Coral Gables Public Works Department in an effort to garner votes.” The Herald article reporting the comlaint also notes the creative math that Cason used to calculate he’d been to 5100+ “events” as Mayor — turns out that includes meetings in his office — including meetings with City staff!!! Couldn’t Cason at least lie better?

Blogger and paid Cabrera campaign adviser Elaine de Valle (aka “Ladra”) attacks Mayor Cason’s advertising. Meanwhile de Valle herself has been the subject of some muckraking (see April 13, 2015 entry).

The family mailbox continues to be filled with all sort of mailers, many of them negative. (For an earlier installment see Tis the Season…For Negative and Misleading Campaigning.) Some of these have been fair or nearly fair (and signed by opposing candidates), some very unfair. Let’s start with the unfair ones (click on any photo for a bigger version).
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