Days before Miami-Dade's mayoral election, nobody cares who Kendrick Meek supports, and the Herald's Patricia Mazzei ignores Robaina's snub of NE Dade

Miami-Dade County mayoral candidate Carlos Gimenez talking about the taxpayer-built Florida Marlins stadium in Little Havana, Miami International Airport and the Port of Miami

http://youtu.be/2pSc09_FupM

Days before Miami-Dade's mayoral election, nobody cares who Kendrick Meek supports and the Herald's Patricia Mazzei ignores Julio Robaina's snub of N.E. Miami-Dade, especially the affluent, well-informed and habitual voters in Aventura.

Five days before the Miami-Dade mayoral election that nobody but Norman Braman could've predicted a year ago, nobody-but-nobody cares who former Miami congressman and 2010 Democratic Senate nominee Kendrick Meek supports in this important election, including the Miami Herald that endorsed him last year.

Meek has literally fallen off a cliff not only politically but in terms of being taken seriously, which as dutiful readers of this blog will recall, was always a problem of his that I have been writing and noting here in thsi space, since I'm as sure as sure can be that he STILL hasn't read the Obamacare legislation he voted for in the U.S. House.

Meek's inherent lack of gravitas is why so many Democrats, locally and nationally, felt completely comfortable abandoning him in droves last year for the false candidacy of Charlie Crist, a pig in a poke.

And it's also why so many of us consciously voted against Alex Sink last year, too.

Seriously, try to think of a well-known elected official in one of the country's largest states who has gone from being a U.S. Senate nominee to a nobody in less time. than Meek.

They haven't mentioned him in a serious article since...

And yet somehow, last year, the Mainstream Media, the beloved MSM, especially the Miami Herald, wanted us to honestly believe that Meek was a serious and viable candidate for the august U.S. Senate.

And seven months later, he's a complete non-factor in his base.

Just saying....

And speaking of being in the dark, why in the world is the poorly-edited Miami Herald, or more particularly, their biased reportorial loose cannon, Patricia Mazzei, whom I have rightly criticized here so often, showing her bad news judgment yet again on an important subject.

Of missing both the tree AND the forest.

I recently mentioned -exclusively here on the blog- how I'd discovered from Comm. Sally Heyman's office that former Hialeah mayor Julio Robaina wanted to have no part of any of THREE debates or forums to be held in northeast Miami-Dade County.

And those were just the ones they knew about Robaina ducking.

Perhaps there were more.

And yet, THOSE facts got repeated where exactly, besides among people who come to the blog and whom I emailed the news?

Yet now, all of a sudden, because former M-D commissioner Carlos Gimenez -whom I support- has consciously chosen NOT to debate Robaina at previously agreed-upon sites while he retains a lead over Robaina, the news that he won't be speaking before a largely Latin audience is now being treated as important news.

Really?

So why the obvious disparity in news coverage, David Landberg?

Is it that longstanding problem of the Herald's geographic editorial bias that I've alluded to many times before in this space, in describing how certain parts of South Florida get an excessive amount of news coverage from the Herald relative to what actually happens there, while other areas, say, Broward County, get a sliver of what they deserve, especially seeing as how it's 45% of the local market, and yet far too frequently gets zero coverage on weekends.

(The Herald's repeated ignoring of Broward-related news is a matter that will be the subject of a future blog post here with ample evidence to prove my point.

And then some!)

Especially when everyone knows that SO MANY -the majority?- of the debates and forums that have taken place have been held in venues and parts of the county where the audience was overwhelmingly Hispanic.

Yet not a peep from the Herald about the election debate redlining.

Hundreds of thousands of people who live in NE Miami-Dade never even got a chance to speak about their issues to the two candidates, issues that had nothing to do with residents of Westchester or Sweetwater or Doral or Hialeah or... yes, the Latin Builders Association.

The REAL STORY is not that one of the two mayoral candidates in an important election would consciously choose to limit his chances of screwing-up in the latter days of the campaign by eschewing debates, since that was entirely predictable and has happened too many times to count by any reasonable measure, the REAL STORY is that one candidate, Robaina, claimed he wanted to be mayor of the entire county and yet when he had the chance, had no interest in ever appearing in a large part of it and listening to the legitimate concerns of its residents.

There's your REAL STORY!

You know, in other parts of the country where I have lived, and probably many of you as well, THAT sort of deliberate action by a candidate to IGNORE an entire swath of the area would definitely count as news, and would've been written about and broadcast on local newscasts for days as it was happening, and hard-edged questions would've been asked of the party choosing

to duck an entire part of the voting area.

Yet here in South Florida, the Miami Herald and the rest of the local print and TV press corps have completely ignored it.

Like they have so many hundreds of stories and trends in the past.

Which is part of the reason I decided to start this blog in the first place, right?

To correct that oversight among people who have great resources at their fingertips and yet who STILL can't see what is right in front of them.

Thank goodness for Michael Putney, whom, if he didn't exist, we'd have to make-up out of whole cloth, since he remains the public policy/social conscience of the community, since on this past Sunday's This Week in South Florida with Michael Putney on Channel 10/WPLG-TV, featured a heated discussion of the issues between Carlos Gimenez and Julio Robaina.

TWISF can be seen here in its entirety:
http://www.local10.com/video/28297806/index.html

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http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/20/2276106/gimenez-withdraws-from-remaining.html

Miami Herald

Gimenez withdraws from remaining mayoral debates

By Patricia Mazzei

Published June 20, 2011 20:36:59 EDT

Saying he wants to spend the last week of the campaign meeting voters, Miami-Dade mayoral hopeful Carlos Gimenez has pulled out of debates scheduled this week against rival Julio Robaina.

Political debate season is apparently over for Miami-Dade mayoral candidate Carlos Gimenez.

After the former county commissioner was a no-show at a face-off Monday, his campaign canceled Gimenez’s appearances in a series of events scheduled this week against opponent Julio Robaina.

The surprise move came after Gimenez pulled ahead of Robaina in the race for the June 28 runoff election, according to a poll conducted last week for The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald by Bendixen & Amandi International.

As front runner, Gimenez appears to be adopting the political mindset that more debates may not help him — and may perhaps only give him more chances to make a costly mistake days before the election. While candidates often engage in posturing before agreeing to debates, it is unusual for them to cancel once they have agreed to take part.

Gimenez said the new strategy is intended to put him directly before voters.

“I’ve done 26 debates. Julio Robaina has missed more than half of them,” Gimenez said. “I may do one or two more. But the people are voting, you know. We need to get out on the street.”

The change of plans gave Robaina an opportunity to pounce on Monday, charging Gimenez with being afraid to face voters. “It’s shameful and disrespectful that we would not both be here today,” Robaina told several dozen county employees assembled at downtown Miami’s main library Monday afternoon as part of a debate arranged by the Hispanic Association of Public Administrators.

For dramatic effect, Robaina pulled out a red empty chair to represent Gimenez, who had backed out of the event a few hours earlier — shortly before Robaina unveiled a six-page county economic development plan.

Gimenez’s campaign also canceled a Wednesday debate organized by Miami Dade College and Miami’s Downtown Development Authority, and a Tuesday forum hosted by the Cuban-American Association of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Miami-Dade County Architects and Engineering Society.

“We are very upset,” said Carlos Gil, president of the Cuban-American civil engineers. Gil said his organization found out about the change of plans only after it called Gimenez to confirm details about whether the candidate would also be joining the groups for lunch.

“It was a total disrespect to the entire engineering community,” said Gil, adding that the organizations paid several thousand dollars to put the forum together. The forum, expected to draw about a hundred people, will still take place, he added, but only with Robaina.

The Wednesday debate has been scrapped completely, said Kelly Penton, a spokeswoman for the Downtown Development Authority.

“The DDA, as the lead agency for advocacy for the downtown area, thought it would be important to put together an event where the last two candidates would talk about what their plans are for the future of downtown,” she said.

One scheduled Spanish-language face-off, on América TeVe, may also move forward with only Robaina. The fate of another planned debate in Spanish, hosted by radio station WQBA-AM (1140) and the Latin Builders Association, is unclear.

Robaina spokeswoman Ana Carbonell said Gimenez’s absence from events will demonstrate “a profound lack of leadership.”

“If Mr. Gimenez is not willing to be accountable to the voters now as a candidate, how will be he accountable as mayor, and endure the multiple pressures that come with the job?” she said. “Gimenez has been claiming to be transparent, now he shows that means invisible.”

Gimenez’s campaign argued the opposite, justifying the about-face on the debates as a strategic effort to get Gimenez to early-voting sites to shake hands.

“We can’t afford to take our foot off the gas,” spokesman Tomas Martinelli said. “And if it means missing some debates, then so be it. I think people throughout this whole campaign have seen the differences between both candidates and are ready to make up their minds.”

Gimenez spent much of Monday visiting the Coral Gables Library early-voting site and calling donors in a final push before the campaign’s fundraising deadline. He noted that he appeared with Robaina in three televised debates over the weekend.

“I can’t continue to do this pace,” Gimenez said, adding that some early voters are still undecided and he could try to persuade Robaina voters to change their minds. “I can probably change some over.”

Gimenez still plans to attend a taping later this week for WFOR-CBS 4’s Saturday morning show News & Views with Eliot Rodriguez, but that appearance is not currently on Robaina’s schedule.

“We’re going to continue to work on our campaign,” Gimenez said.

----

Once upon a time... last year.

The Miami Herald recommends

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

At one time, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, 43, seemed to have the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate sewed up. That changed suddenly with the emergence of candidate Jeff Greene, 55, turning this race into a real contest dominated by the political slugfest between an eight-year congressional incumbent and a populist outsider with unlimited funds to promote his candidacy.

That's a plus for voters. Democracy works best when they have choices. A third notable candidate is former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre, 75, whose vast experience in government outshines both Rep. Meek and Mr. Greene, who has never held public office. Mr. Ferre is a serious candidate, but his under-funded campaign has failed to catch fire with voters.

The irony in the increasingly bitter race between Rep. Meek and Mr. Greene is that they generally share the same views on major policy issues. Both emphatically support the Obama administration's healthcare reform, and both believe Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire to bring in more revenue and balance the budget. They both support the trade embargo against Cuba.

The campaign has thus far been dominated by personal attacks. Mr. Greene made a fortune by betting against the housing bubble, which has made him vulnerable to accusations that he profited from the misery of others. That seems unfair. He was able to take advantage of the foolishness on Wall Street. Where's the shame in that?

The charge that he is a carpetbagger has more substance, and his boast of being a proven job creator in the private sector is, as a Miami Herald headline declared on July 15, ``hard to determine.''

Mr. Greene's candidacy cannot be discarded, but there is little to indicate he had any interest in politics up to now. That raises questions about his commitment to public service.

Mr. Meek's involvement with indicted developer Dennis Stackhouse, amply covered in this newspaper, is troubling, but generally a lapse in an otherwise honorable record of public service.

He has been a diligent representative, using his position on the Ways and Means Committee to fund community projects. He has also been a leading voice for Haitian Americans and was one of the first elected U.S. officials to set foot in Haiti following this year's devastating earthquake.

One significant difference between Rep. Meek and Mr. Greene involves their approach to ``earmarks,'' special-purpose appropriations for local districts. Mr. Meek boasts of a long list of appropriations -- including $600,000 for the Overtown Youth Center and $500,000 for a cancer screening program. Mr. Greene, on the other hand, recently pledged to end earmarks ``once and for all.''

Our choice in this race is for Mr. Meek, largely on the basis of his experience as a former state police trooper, state legislator and member of Congress.

In the race for the U.S. Senate, Democratic primary, The Miami Herald recommends KENDRICK MEEK.

-----

See also:

http://www.thecrespogramreport.com/

Recent news about South Florida super-lobbyist Ron Book you may not have heard about yet

Late Tuesday night while checking the Dashboard function of my Blogger.com blog, a place where all the other blogs I follow have their most recent posts sequenced for me to read in chronological order, I spotted a particularly interesting one about South Florda super-lobbyist Ron Book -father of Broward School Board candidate Lauren Book-Lim- over at Eye on Miami.

Titled Who is Ron Book Lobbying for in 2010? By geniusofdespair, it raised many questions that have often come up about in any discussion about him, a man that a lot of people swear by and many others swear about.
(You can find my previous posts on Ron Book by doing a search for him on the blog.)

Though I was pretty tired, I manged to stay awake long enough to share a thought or two that you might find of interest.
Or maybe not.
In any case, if you care to see what sort of anecdotal insight I added to one of Florida's most popular blogs, as well as a current list of whom he represents, here it is:
http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/2010/05/who-is-ron-book-lobbying-for-in-2010-by.html

I hope to see many of you in person on Wednesday at 3 p.m. and later at 7:30 p.m. at Hallandale Beach City Hall re agenda item #12-C:, the motion to terminate City Manager Mike Good.
http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/files/2010-05-19/Agenda%20Outline%20for%202010-05-19.htm
It should prove to be quite an interesting day, filled with lots of fireworks and histrionics, and perhaps, dare I say it, maybe even some long-overdue public accountability.

Below are my words of wisdom, such as they are.

----------

Dear Genius:
A correction to your list.

A few weeks ago, Ron Book's contract was NOT renewed by the City of Hallandale Beach -during the Florida Legislature's annual session no less!

That it was done in a very unprofessional way is par for the course in this very poorly-managed ocean-side city, but to do so during the Legislature's session only proves how truly myopic HB City Hall is.

I was already planning on writing about this subject later this week, but since you have sort of pre-empted me a bit, I will give you a few details.

Book's firm was hired by the city to replace former city lobbyist Larry Smith, the former South Broward congressman, a man I came to loathe after watching him in action up close for years while I lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and was spending LOTS of quality time on Capitol Hill.

(I was even there in the Rayburn Building on a fateful day during the reign of Bush 41, where during a long and torturous Foreign Affairs mark-up, Larry Smith voted against the State Dept.'s plan to sell certain missiles to Kuwait, because State and the Pentagon were afraid that Iraq would invade.
Well, we all know how that ended up, but what you and most South Floridians don't know -because nobody in South Florida's news media ever reported it- was that Larry Smith said that he was against the plan it because he knew the missiles would be used against -wait for it- Israel. Really.
So Smith and a couple of other super pro-Israel members of the Foreign Affairs Comm. -back when Dante Fascell was Chairman- voted it down.

FYI: The photo of Fascell at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Fascell is the very painting that hangs in the House Foreign Affairs Comm. Chambers.

I used to think about Larry Smith's foolish vote every time I heard about an American casualty during the First Gulf War, which since I lived in Arlington County, meant that I knew lots of people affected by that war.)

A few months ago, Book's firm was planning on sending some pertinent docs down to the city, but when they called, the person on the other end of the phone at HB City Hall said something along the lines of, "Uhh... don't you guys already know?"

Book's firm found out after the fact that WEEKS earlier, the city had decided they were history. Why?
That's a very good question.
Perhaps someone in South Florida's professional news media might some day think to ask Mayor Joy Cooper that question, especially now that they know.

I'll have more details on my blog soon, including the name of the person who had to tell Ron Book that he and his firm had been canned during THE most important time of the year in Tallahassee, but had never even been given the courtesy of a personal phone call to get the news.

That's just a snapshot of everyday life in Hallandale Beach under the Joy Cooper and Mike Good regime.

Know anyone who'd make a good City Manager?
I ask because well be looking for one very, very soon.

Upcoming 2010 Spring Cleaning Media & Blog Purge: Sleepwalking South Florida news media and lemming blogs to be tossed overboard!

There is just a tremendous amount of news and information that will be coming to this space over the next few weeks, much of it about political ideas and strategy and upcoming elections that will have the possibility of seriously shaking up the deplorable status quo hereabouts.

Things both long in the planning as well as items that I've, admittedly, sort of lucked-into by paying close attention while most of South Florida's news media continues their 2010 spring slumber, preparing for their 2010 summer-long siesta.

But that's how it goes when you try to keep your eyes and ears open, return emails and phone calls from others promptly, and try to remain on good terms with people in a position to either make news -or cover it- all over the county, state and country.

In fact, I suppose you might even call what I have in mind -and in many cases, already have written- a torrent, though given the Broward School Board's continuing sub-par performance, if there are any Broward high school grads reading this, that's your cue to right-click 'torrent' and see what Google says it means.

I've got some big changes in store for my humble little blog, as this weekend I'll begin my 2010 Spring Cleaning Media and Blog Purge, wherein I make some long overdue changes that I had originally planned on making after Christmas, but couldn't due to time constraints
and some family obligations.

It's my hope that these particular changes will improve the blog's functionality and topicality, though perhaps not to everyone's satisfaction.
C'est la vie.

Frankly, I don't spend any time worrying about what people I've NEVER met, actually spoken to or received an email from, think about the blog, whereas those who have taken the time to actually contact me with their thoughts know that I generally take their constructive criticism pretty well, and only wish that I could change it the way I want to.

In the case of the former, people who have never contacted me but who have heaping helpings of criticism, I refer to people who never seem to actually manage to attend South Florida govt. or public policy meetings in person, what most people in the country might call no-shows, and who seem to "cover" things almost entirely second-hand from their living room or dens.

As anyone paying attention knows, that's the exact OPPOSITE approach of Genius of Despair and Gimleteye at Eye on Miami, http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/;
Daniel A. Ricker at Watchdog Report, http://www.watchdogreport.net/;
Chaz Stevens at My Acts of Sedition, http://www.myactsofsedition.com/;
Michael Butler at Change Hallandale Beach, http://www.changehallandale.com/;
Sara Case at Balance Sheet Online, http://www.balancesheetonline.com/;
Bett Willett at Blog by Bett, http://blogbybett.blogspot.com/ and myself.

(In case you're unfamiliar with the situation involving my friend Michael being sued by Joy Cooper, the thin-skinned, anti-democratic mayor of our fair city -who calls her political opponents "Nazis" while at Hallandale Beach City Hall- for simply attempting to get some public records, YET ANOTHER story that the Miami Herald and all of the local Miami TV stations have completely ignored, please see the following:
1.) http://openrecords.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/michael-butler-sunshine-troublemaker-of-the-week/

2.) http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2009/10/mayo_why_are_taxpayers_footing.html )
3.) http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2009/10/judge_patti_henning_and_mayor_joy_cooper.php )

While I obviously don't agree with them on everything they might say about a particular subject,
I ALWAYS know that they are actually spending their time and energy to be physically present and accounted for when news could be made that's of interest to the discerning and concerned citizens of South Florida.
And they don't lie or intentionally misrepresent the facts.

Both are more than can be said for the large majority of South Florida's sad sack excuse of a press corps, who would be greatly improved if 75% of them were fired toute-de-suite, and simply replaced by some of the plucky and curious kids on the journalism farm at Ernie Pyle, Medill and some other places I could name, where curiosity is a prerequisite.
See http://journalism.indiana.edu/ and http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/

Then we'd see some serious Who, What, Why, When Where and How action in our local media diet, and improved verb subject agreement and proper verb tense, to boot, and less fluff TV stories on liposuction, women's clothes, Rapping Grandmothers, and Grade D celebs and celebutantes making paid appearances at South Beach clubs.

It's exactly like the sad and feeble approach employed over at WTVJ-6 -the News Nobody Watches- "who don't know what's going on, and send a cameraman (without a reporter) to an event at the last minute just so they can maintain the illusion they're a real news operation."

That particular tart quote comes from one of their most industrious TV news competitors, who told me that exact thing two years ago while we were both sitting in the Broward County Chambers for a Broward County Charter Review Commission meeting.

This comment about Channel 6 only served to confirm what I'd long felt since returning to the area from D.C., and when I shared this comment with other industrious reporters and bloggers I know, who have often shared their take on what ails South Florida and its incurious news media, they all seconded that emotion.

It goes without saying that if I knew then what I know now, I'd have perhaps made some different choices when starting the blog, perhaps going with TypePad instead of Blogger, or perhaps some other blogging platform, as many newspaper and TV friends of mine in D.C. had originally suggested. http://www.typepad.com/

Since many of you readers probably don't know this, with Blogger's software structure, unless I remove all the 'anchors' on it at the beginning, the photos and thoughts about the area, I can't physically move my most recent comments up to the top of the blog.
If I could, I'd have done that years ago.
But I can't, hence the upcoming changes.

But even with the changes I hope to make over the next few weeks, I know that I won't be matching the prodigious blog posting and video output of South Florida's number one Watchdog, Chaz Stevens, who surely must get less sleep than anyone in the 954 area code.

FYI, last night and early this morning, I downloaded all the video I shot from Tuesday afternoon's historic Broward County Commission meeting, where the plucky underdog activists from Hallandale Beach brought the Broward County development/lobbying machine to heel, 6-3, and hope to have at least some of it on my YouTube page on Thursday.

My personal take on what transpired yesterday will soon be here, along with photos, now that I'm finally starting to get caught up on all the sleep I've been missing the past few weeks.