David Rivera: A momma’s boy
By Fred Grimm
There are places where a title like “strategic director” would not seem so ambiguous.
In Miami, at least in David Rivera’s Miami, “strategic director” of a $6.7 million gambling referendum translates, vaguely, into “Momma’s little helper.”
Flagler Dog Track, desperate for slots money, mistakenly figured they had hired state Rep. Rivera to run the pro slots campaign for Miami-Dade in 2006. The Herald’s Scott Hiaasen and Patricia Mazzei perused a $510,000 contract with the dog track that named Rivera both strategic director and “Top Leader of Chain of Command of All Campaign Consultants And Campaign Activities.”
In some places, that sounds like “boss.” Not in David Rivera’s Miami.
During his successful congressional campaign last fall, Rivera insisted that he had only helped out with the gambling referendum. As if his contribution was as modest as a volunteer stamp licker, envelope stuffer, phone bank caller. Just another unpaid helper.
NOTHING TO REPORT
If Rivera was an unpaid helper, that would explain why he reported no income from the slots campaign on financial-disclosure forms he submitted to the state ethics commission in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
The money, instead, was paid to an entity called Millennium Marketing. An attorney for Flagler (known lately, in all its slotty glory, as Magic City Casino) told Hiaasen and Mazzei that it was Rivera who insisted on running the money through Millennium.
Perhaps it is only one of the coincidences peculiar to life in the Magic City that Millennium happens to be run by Rivera’s 70-year-old mother and his godmother.
Strategic Director Rivera, according to the contract, was to have spent 75 percent of his time on the campaign. The track attorney said Flagler “wanted to make sure they retained David’s personal services.”
Millennium? Not so much. Yet checks of $50,000, $210,000 and $250,000 for Rivera’s services went to Millennium’s bank account.
UNPAID `SUCCESS FEE’
Hiaasen and Mazzei stumbled across another confounding oddity in the Rivera-Millennium contract: The track-turned-casino still owes Millennium and Momma’s little helper an additional half-million dollars for a “success fee.” The would-be recipients have never bothered to collect — another mysterious aspect of the ever-enigmatic Rivera.
On his sworn disclosure to the Florida Ethics Commission, Rivera listed his employment as a consultant for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Yet USAID has no record of working with Rivera. He later explained that he meant he was working with a subcontractor of USAID, though he has remained elusive when asked to name the subcontractor.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, however, has developed a keen interest in the puzzling employment history of David Rivera, along with his obtuse disclosures and meandering explanations. (On a Miami radio station Friday, Rivera called The Herald report detailing his secret contractual relationship with Flagler “completely false,” though he failed to explain how his signature came to be fixed to the contract.)
It could be that this whole mess evolved from a tough Miami politician’s reluctance to admit publicly that he’s really just a momma’s boy.
One does wonder whether, out of the $510,000 payoff, Momma gave her little strategic director a nice allowance.
