Make plans to attend tonight's important Hollywood Mayoral and District 1 City Commission candidate forum at the Hollywood Beach Culture & Community Center at 7 PM, 1301 South Ocean Drive

Writing this post to remind you about tonight's important Hollywood Mayoral and District 1 City Commission candidate forum at the Hollywood Beach Culture & Community Center at 7 PM, 1301 South Ocean Drive.

I will be attending it and hope that as many of you as possible can make it as well to let the candidates know what you and your neighbors believe are the top local concerns and priorities of Hollywood residents and Small Business ownwers -esp. in the Hollywood Lakes and District 1 community- and let them and any pundits and reporters who attend get a sense of what they all collectively ought to be talking about, writing about and considering as voters as Election Day draws near.

As you might guess, I'm working on some questions of my own, and am hopeful that the local Miami news media will take full advantage of the opportunity to show up and perhaps do some LIVE stand-ups for the 6, 10 or 11 pm newscasts.

I have been to two candidate forums so far, each of which drew very large crowds of residents and interested parties. First was the joint candidate forum on September 16 at the Fred Lippman Community Center that featured the City Commission District 2 and mayoral candidates -minus District 1 incumbent Patricia Asseff- and last week at David Park in Hollywood Hills featuring all three mayoral candidates: Asseff, Joshua Levy and Eleanor Sobel.

In theory, tonight's forum should give District 1 candidates Debra Case, Victor Debianchi, Stacey North Kotzen and Luis H. Prada plenty of time to draw attention to their particular priorities and make a case for their candidacy, given that District 1 has traditionally had a lot of influence on what happens in the city because it includes the beach area that has long served as the economic engine of the city, via tourism.

So far, to my mind, based on what I've seen and heard, all the District 1 candidates have thus far been talking too much in cliches and platitudes, and really need to give some specificity and nuance to the voters to give them some sense of what they are for -and what they are against.

I do have some news to share with you that I suspect few of you have caught wind of yet, and that is that I learned recently that former Broward County Sheriff and Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth and former Broward Commissioner Sue Gunzburger have officially endorsed Victor Debianchi in the District 1 Commission contest.

As many of you know, the Dolphins at Bengals game tonight is slated to kickoff at 8:20 and I was hoping to miss as little of it as possible after the candidate forum is over, so depending upon what time it's over, and knowing that they'd like to close up around 9 pm, I may be there a bit after the forum if there's a TV showing the game.

So if you don't get a chance to come by and say hello before or during the forum, swing by afterwards and let me know what you think.

Also, you might be interested in knowing that tonight is Comm. Asseff's 49th wedding anniversary, and yet because she cares so much about the city and its residents, instead of celebrating the anniversary, she'll be there tonight to listen to the residents and Small Business owners of Hollywood, and explain her goals and priorities for the city moving forward.

See ya there!

Dave

All August and September 2016 photos below by me, South Beach Hoosier. © 2016 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

From political cipher and unknown to possible successor to Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate in no time at all, there are a myriad of legal & political choices confronting Florida Lt. Governor Carlos Lopez-Cantera, as he seeks to define himself to Floridians before rivals pounce and do it for him. @LopezCantera

Eyeing U.S. Senate bid, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera has decision to make: Stay or go? http://t.co/ypZdwePWwj via @TB_Times

— Steve Bousquet (@stevebousquet) July 4, 2015

Tampa Bay Times
Eyeing Senate bid, Lt. Gov. Lopez-Cantera must decide whether to stay or go
By Steve Bousquet, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Saturday, July 4, 2015 6:00am

TALLAHASSEE — After 18 months in Gov. Rick Scott's shadow, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera has to make his first big decision.

Before he enters Florida's wide-open race for the U.S. Senate, he'll reach a political crossroads as the state's No. 2 executive: Should he stay or go?

Lopez-Cantera won't say, and the public probably would not notice the difference

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/eyeing-senate-bid-lt-gov-lopez-canteras-must-decide-whether-to-stay-or-go/2236092

Roll Call
The Mystery of a Possible Florida Senate Candidate
By Stuart Rothenberg

Posted at 4 p.m. on April 21

A handful of Republicans are currently being mentioned as possible Senate candidates for the Florida seat being vacated by Marco Rubio, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination.

Former Rep. Bill McCollum, who has run repeatedly (and often unsuccessfully) for statewide office, is mentioned, as are a handful of House members, including Rep. Ron DeSantis, a tea party favorite.

Perhaps the most interesting, or at least unusual, candidate for the Republican nomination is the state’s current lieutenant governor, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a former Florida House member (and majority leader) and Miami-Dade County property appraiser.

What makes Lopez-Cantera, who was appointed to his current post in January 2014 by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, so unusual is that he is a Cuban-American Jew who was born in Madrid

Read the rest of the article at:

http://blogs.rollcall.com/rothenblog/carlos-lopez-cantera-florida-senate-heritage/

Nearly everyone I know and respect in South Florida who knew Carlos Lopez-Cantera when he first decided to run for the not-exactly-sexy position of Miami-Dade Appraiser -in an area of the country we know from experience is NOT exactly known for accuracy and truthfulness about tax dollars or numbers- told me that their take was that he was merely biding his time, waiting for a larger opportunity.

According to them, perhaps a run for the position of Miami-Dade County Mayor AFTER he'd been in office as Appraiser for about 6-10 years, and had actually acquired some reasonable amount of name recognition and power, to say nothing of perhaps even making some tangible improvements in his office that he could tout to what would surely be legions of skeptics.

Well, they're just as surprised as anyone that someone whom just three years ago, most South Florida political junkies and reporters had either never heard of or ever met him before in person, might now be 1 of 100 votes in Washington in just 18 months time.
I know because I'm one of those surprised people.

There's no higher-ranking politician in Florida whom I -and most people I know- actually know less about. than Carlos Lopez-Cantera.
That fact is abetted by South Florida's current lackluster crop of print/TV reporters and columnists, most of whom can be charitably described as apathetic and sleepwalking zombies in the best of times. And this is clearly NOT the best of times for serious new consumers in Florida.

Dave
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth
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A fatal flaw for which he'll never recover: lack of gravitas. LA's outgoing mayor was not a full-time mayor or even part-time mayor but more a when-I-get-around-to-it kind of mayor -LA Weekly report proves that Antonio Villaraigosa only spent 15% of his core time on city business

This report, which I originally saw cited via Breitbart News, does not comes as news to me.
I'd heard this from well-informed and reasonably well-connected friends in the Los Angeles area for years.

Frankly, they always wondered why nobody ever tried to get ahold of the mayor's schedule to connect-the-dots via a Public Records request that wasn't geared towards finding out who he was dating -like a TV reporter or anchor.
Well, someone did -the LA Weekly.  

Right, as if his more well-known personal tics, problems and hang-ups weren't enough...

LA Weekly

How L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Spent His 12-Hour Days in 2012

By Patrick Range McDonald 

May 22 2013 at 3:52 PM 

In 2008, L.A. Weekly obtained Mayor Villaraigosa's official work schedule and discovered that he spent only 11 percent of his time on direct mayoral work. Critics dubbed him "the 11 percent mayor." Four years later, as he leaves office, we revisited his calendar. We found that Villaraigosa is deeply devoted to photo ops, ceremonies and travel, spending just 15 percent of his day on core duties such as deciding upon policy or weighing laws. He spends 42 percent of his working hours traveling outside Los Angeles.

See the rest of the post at:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/05/antonio_villaraigosa_schedule.php