Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Here’s a quick write-up of my first impressions of tonight’s candidate forum. I will post something much more detailed and somewhat less opinionated later. Be patient: It was a long event so it might take me a while. The event was recorded for Coral Gables TV so if you have cable, or can figure out how to navigate their web page, you can see the whole thing for yourself.

Coral Gables Commission races attract high-quality candidates. It gives you a degree of faith in democracy, one that participation in national politics can so easily leach away.

The Structure of the Event

Thanks in large part to the Chamber keeping the use of the clickers to a minimum, the Forum went off significantly better than I had feared: it wasn’t a circus. Parts of it were even informative despite the very short time-limits for candidate statements.

The focus on “decorum” and the prohibition of having candidates address each other directly turned out not to be a problem in the two Commission races where there is no incumbent.

Unfortunately, this ground rule did harm the discussion in the Mayor’s part of the program, as a significant aspect of the Mayoralty race is that it is a referendum on Mayor James Cason‘s tenure – and arguably that of Commissioner Ralph Cabrera too. As applied, the rule seemed like an effort to protect the Mayor from Cabrera’s criticism, and the moderator’s genial but yet slightly barbed banter with Commissioner Cabrera about his tendency to talk a lot (e.g “you just beat the over/under” for when he might go over time) might have raised an issue of partiality in the eyes of a suspicious watcher. Then again, for all I know, maybe they are all drinking buddies. I am not part of the Chamber and wouldn’t know.

Group 3

I was most interested in the first event, the Group 3 race, because I had to miss the previous debate. I came into the room thinking that the candidates I most wanted to see were candidate statements. Of these, I was maybe leaning a tiny bit towards Patricia Keon, just based on her c.v. and what other people had said to me about her, but I was mostly undecided. And, to be honest, I just hadn’t focused on Norman Anthony Newell at all.

Ms. Keon, to my surprise, was just not impressive. Fresh off the Herald’s endorsement, she was overly cautious and unspecific and just plain ducked some questions. Maybe this was a calculated caution strategy to preserve a lead, but it came off as either unwilling to commit, or just uncertain. It wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t vote for her, but it didn’t make the sale. Ms. Young also ducked and weaved, plus managed to be at times sound-bite grating and often needlessly patting herself on the back for her achievements both in scripted and unscripted moments. It was so bad that I won’t vote for her. Mr. Mitchell was also a bit of a disappointment: he was (over?) folksy, but for most of the event struck a one-note candidacy: pensionspensionspensionspensionspensions. There is more to being a Commissioner than just that one issue, especially as most if not all of the candidates seem in fairly broad agreement about it. Jackson Rip Holmes is not a serious candidate in either sense of the word “serious”.

In contrast, Mr. Newell was thoughtful and substantive (and seemed justifiably to chafe at the format). He didn’t duck the questions. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but he made the case that the Commission needs some new blood and he, the youngest candidate in the race, might be the person to provide it.

Bottom line: I left very impressed by Mr. Newell. I don’t know if he has a chance in this race, but even if he doesn’t win, maybe he ought to keep running until he does.

Group 2

On the whole there were not that many differences from the Coral Gables Commission Candidates’ Forum (Group II) meeting a couple of weeks ago. I thought Marlin Holland Ebbert did considerably better than the first time; I still thought Ross Hancock had the best policies (and he’s endorsed by the Sierra Club!), but he came off as a bit more pugnacious than last time which probably won’t help him with the average voter. He had the best and most detailed answer to the trolley question. Vicente Carlos Lago was more subdued than he had been. I had some trouble with his reply to the question about historic preservation which, although saying it matters, also seemed suggest an appetite for development that plays into the ‘special interest candidate supported by developers’ story that the other two candidates were selling with various degrees of gentleness. Mr. Lago also was the only candidate who ducked the hard part of the question about whether the Commission was right to site the Trolley garage in the Grove over the objections of local residents. (The other two said that at least we could extend the service to them, which I think is right.) Off the dais Mr. Lago is about as friendly and charming as a person can get, and I think he’ll be a great neighbor, Commissioner or not. But I don’t think what the Gables needs right now is a development boom (although I am persuaded it needs a downtown makeover of some sort), so that made me a bit nervous about adding another pro-developer vote to the Commission.

Bottom line: Still leaning pretty strongly Hancock, but feeling OK about all the candidates as individuals (the issue of their effect on the overall makeup of the Commission is something I’m only starting to think about).

Mayor

Again, the substance of this debate was largely a replay of last week’s debate. I was a bit shocked that incumbent Mayor Jim Cason again quoted Commissioner Ralph Cabrera out of context in order to try to make it look like he was ignoring the pensions crisis when in context the remark Cason seized on clearly meant the exact opposite. This is really a cheap shot. It has to make you wonder.

On the other hand, I was also surprised that Cabrera is still flogging the crime issue to the point that his campaign workers were handing out copies of my post Is Crime Up or Down in Coral Gables? Yes. (which would have been fine if they had included the Creative Commons copyright information) since that blog post suggests Cason’s numbers were on the whole better than Cabrera’s. I guess the crime issue polls well. I’d feel better about it if Cabrera had something more specific to say other than ‘we should give the police the tools they need’. What tools those are, he does not say.

Bottom line: Still undecided. Ouch.

Large cattle-call events are never a very good way to figure out who to vote for. Even so, tonight’s Coral Gables Commission candidate event at UM seems to have been expressly designed to be about as awful as possible.

Consider this trifecta of horribleness:

• The candidates have only sound-bite-size times to speak.
• The candidates are discouraged from responding to each other: the event is “not designed or intended to be an opportunity to engage and debate your fellow candidates”.
• Candidates are expressly encouraged to pack the meeting with partisans — and their responses will be monitored in real time with electronic clicker-style devices.

This is a recipe for a circus, not an meaningful moment of civic deliberation. Clicker rating of candidate statements makes sense if you have a panel of representative voters but not if the sample is biased by who bused in the most partisans (read, who has the most money to spend).

Shame on the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce for emphasizing the superficial and making meaningful discussion not just unlikely but nearly impossible. And shame of then again for going for glitz over meaningful data.

Here is the text of the ground rules circulated by the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce for the event tonight at the University of Miami Field House.

Based on the large number of candidates who have qualified, we will be modifying the format of the Forum slightly from our original plan. The new format is as follows:

1) Group III, which has 5 candidates, will take part in the first session, commencing at 6pm
2) Group II, which has 3 candidates, will begin at approximately 7:15pm
3) Group I, the mayoral candidates, will begin around 8pm

There will be a short break in between sessions to allow for re-set of the dais. Coral Gables TV will be televising the program, live to tape.

Each candidate will have one minute for his or her opening statement, 90 seconds for closing remarks and one minute to answer each question posed by the moderator. We strongly encourage candidates to use their time to promote their platforms and to share their ideas and experiences. The Forum is not designed or intended to be an opportunity to engage and debate your fellow candidates.

Each candidate is encouraged to invite his or her supporters to attend the Forum. We have included the event invitation for you to post and share (attached). Each candidate will also be provided a 6-foot table outside the venue to place campaign literature. No distribution of campaign materials will be allowed inside the Field House.

Appropriate decorum from all candidates and their supporters is expected at all times. Any disruption or outburst takes away from the seriousness of the occasion.

We invite each candidate to submit one question that will be asked, without attribution, to all the candidates in your Group. Please submit your question by Friday, March 22nd at 4 pm directly to Patrick O’Connell at [email address] for inclusion.

Our moderator will be Perry Adair, Incoming Chairman of the Chamber and Managing Shareholder of the Coral Gables office of Becker & Poliakoff. It will be his responsibility to make sure the candidates abide by the rules of the event, and in particular, the time allotted to each candidate for opening/closing statements and to answer each question. The moderator will have the authority to ask follow-up questions. If he does so, he will announce the time allotted for the candidates to answer the follow-up question.

This will be an interactive event. There will be real-time audience participation in the Forum via a “clicker” system. Much like the “ask the audience lifeline” we are all familiar with, members of the audience will be given wireless devices that they can use to give their input. For example, on some questions, the audience will be given an opportunity to indicate which candidate’s answer to the question was the best. At the beginning and end of each session, the audience will be asked to indicate which candidate they are leaning towards supporting.

Coral Gables deserves better than this.

One of the most contentious issues in Thursday’s Coral Gables Mayoral Candidate debate was about whether crime was up or not. Since at the end of the day this is a factual question, I thought I would try to get to the bottom of it. Here’s where I looked and what I found.

The most recent data I could find on a quick visit to the FDLE crime data web pages was for an earlier period, January – June 2012. There it shows a 6.5% increase for Coral Gables crime. If that is a six-month gain, then annualized it would be at at 13% rate as Commissioner Ralph Cabrera said in the debate and as has been claimed in anti-Cason mailers.

As an experiment I called the Coral Gables Police Department to get a copy of their crime data. I got shunted around a bit, but ended up with a public records clerk who took down my request for total crime numbers 2000-present at six month intervals (thus comparable to FDLE), and violent/non-violent breakdown. He told me it could take 2-4 weeks to respond to my request because they are very backed up. I asked if I could be treated like Press and get an answer before the election.

Eventually I ended up speaking to Officer Dean Wellinghoff, the Coral Gables Police Public Information Officer, who very quickly pointed me to a video of Acting Police Chief Scott Masington testifying to the Commission in December 2012.

I would suggest that for full context you play Item F-4, which is Cabrera’s set-up, and then H-2, which is the Chief’s testimony. The Chief’s presentation includes charts with a 5+-year comparison. According to the Chief’s testimony, and from what I was able to see from the fuzzy images of his charts, violent crime is quite low and generally stable, and usually involve parties known to each other. Robberies (which are distinct from burglaries) are declining. Assaults are more or less stable. Residential burglaries were up, but started to decline in June and were way down in the later months of last year; commercial burglaries are down. Larceny (simple thefts, including shoplifting), is maybe up a tiny bit. Vehicle burglaries (stealing from cars) are also up – although the Chief says the cops caught the guys behind at least 20 of the car burglaries in November. Auto theft is up. Vandalism is down.

I am not completely sure what to make of this. The bottom line total number is stability, or maybe a tiny decline. In a literal sense, though, both Cason and Cabrera are telling the truth: crime was up 6.5% in the most recent period covered by the FDLE data, which if you annualize becomes 13%. On the other hand, if you add in five more months of data, as the chief does in his December testimony, the total picture looks a lot less bad. The uptick in vehicle burglary and auto theft is largely counterbalanced by lower levels of other crimes. Given he’s using the more recent data, though, it would seem Cason has the better of the factual argument assuming the two data sets are comparable.

One other thing that comes out clearly from the H-2 video is that the Commission, at least by the end of a long hearing day, really is factionalized and is sort of dysfunctional. Plus, the City Manager really is out of line making political statements from the dias designed to undercut Commissioners. No wonder they don’t like him. And it’s likely mutual.

The Miami Herald — which IMHO has very little credibility in Coral Gables elections given the weirdness of its endorsements two years ago (Renee Alvarez? Really?), has chosen to endorse Cason, Lago and Keon. As I’ve said previously, I’m a bit torn in the Mayorality race, think Hancock won the debate in Group II, and am as yet undecided in Group III.

There was a time I thought the Herald’s electoral endorsements were useful input into my decisions, especially for more obscure races. Ever since I started doing my own research, I’ve largely abandoned that view.

I guess I will make up my mind after the next cattle-call style candidates’ debate.