Above, the email that was sent out by Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper on Sept. 25th with the subject heading:
Mayor Joy Cooper invites you to SUPPORT ALEX LEWY (Sep 28, 2010)
Just curious, how many of the names on the invite above are lobbyists?
That's a good question.
Well, at first glance there's Suzanne Friedman, of course, who has worked for The Village at Gulfstream Park and on behalf of the unpopular Diplomat LAC proposal to put a handful of very large condo towers on the perimeter of the Diplomat Golf Course in NE Hallandale Beach, where expensive upscale single-family homes and numerous low-slung condos have long existed in close proximity.
It was pushed by the owners of the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa in nearby Hollywood, the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union.
That proposal not only would've ruined the green views of HB residents who have lived there for years, but also threatened to make the current traffic disaster even worse, though the nearby roads already have the LOWEST possible ratings from FDOT they can have.
It's an area of Southeast Broward County with so much consistently congested traffic that former Broward County Comm. Diana Wasserman-Rubin admitted in a meeting with HB residents just days prior to that vote that she completely avoids the area because it's so difficult to get around.
Fortunately for Hallandale Beach and nearby Hollywood residents, the Broward County Commission decisively nixed that proposal the second time they looked at it this past Spring.
Alexander Lewy not only supported the unpopular and incompatible project, but has also received campaign contributions from some of the the folks behind it who were most interested in cramming it down the throats of HB residents.
Just saying...
Another lobbyist's name I recognize is lawyer Marty Cassini -said by everyone I know to be a really nice guy- who's a former staffer for former Florida Senate Minority Leader Steve Geller, and who is married to the mayor's daughter, Jaime.
As of a few weeks ago, Mayor Cooper's husband and son-in-law had contributed roughly about $1,500 combined to Alexander Lewy's political campaign.
And now on to my post for today, written ten days before the November 2nd election.
The title I've chosen today is particularly apt and gets to the heart of what so many Hallandale Beach citizen taxpayers and business owners -and other well-informed Broward County residents and civic activists- find so very unappealing and downright appalling about Alexander Lewy as a person and political candidate: "There's no there there."
"Lewy the Liar" - Alexander Lewy, Hallandale Beach's sycophantic, self-serving and insincere candidate for City Commission
Yes, I know, I know.
That quote about what is and is not "there" was first supposedly used by the author Virginia Woolf to describe the City of Oakland many, many, many moons ago, but it also accurately describes the lack of anything genuine about Lewy but his ambition.
His oleaginous insincerity positively knocks you out from the get-go if you are not careful, so beware.
He is, I'm afraid, one of those rather sad persons that I have met in my travels after growing-up in South Florida, in Bloomington, IN and then Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette, and then Arlington, VA and Washington, D.C., who NEVER quite seem to realize that by the time someone is close to age thirty, like Lewy, they should no longer have ambition as a substitute for a personality.
And yet they do, utterly convinced of their own destiny to be an important person.
Correct, this is the part where I channel some of the Midwestern values I assimilated over the years while living, learning and working in the Hoosier State and the Land of Lincoln, and say that it's better to be a person who does important things for others, rather than to be a person who thinks they are important.
What can I say, it's low-hanging fruit and I grabbed it, but that doesn't change the fundamental fact that it's completely true with respect to Alexander Lewy.
As I've personally observed him in person for years in his capacity as a staffer for U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a resident of Hallandale Beach, and now as a two-time political candidate, Alexander Lewy is completely insincere and self-important in ways that would make many veteran congressmen I could name -and knew in Washington- positively blush.
To give but one illuminating example of this, earlier this year at a public hearing on the Diplomat LAC project, a friend of mine who is not only, arguably, one of the most-respected persons in South Florida, but also someone who's frequently sought by the local South Florida news media for their opinions, asked Lewy if he'd be running for office again soon.
While I am not entirely clear one way or the other if Lewy quite knew whom my friend was, per se, or even their longstanding reputation for honesty and integrity, I am 100% positive that the answer he gave in response to that rather simple and harmless question was that he was NOT going to be running again anytime soon.
Well, the kicker is that I knew that Lewy's answer was completely untrue, and the reason I knew it was untrue was because Lewy himself had already made a change on one of his own social media sites to indicate that he'd be running again this year for the Hallandale Beach City Commission, having already lost here in 2008.
Question: Why would Lewy lie about something like that?
There's absolutely nothing to be gained, and very few people even cared in the first place.
Exactly!
It's who Alexander Lewy is, sad to say.
A person seemingly incapable of even a scintilla of honesty, no matter the subject matter.
The next time I happened to see this particular friend of mine again, when we were at yet another civic event (outside of Hallandale Beach), they eventually told me the strange-but-true tale involving The Ambitious Mr. Lewy.
When I informed my friend that they has been intentionally deceived by the very source himself, the only thing I can print here that they muttered in response to finding out they'd been lied to, face-to-face, is "Lewy the Liar."
Of such unexpected moments are insightful political slogans born.
"Lewy the Liar," indeed!
I have known this stone-cold fact about Alexander Lewy for many months, and am happy to finally be able to share the news with you here.
No comments:
Post a Comment