Miami’s mayor has raised $4.6 million. He has no real challenger.
The City of Miami has an election for mayor in November, three months from now. For all practical purposes Mayor Francis Suarez is running unopposed. There are a couple of people challenging him who have been hard to identify, even in their own homes. So, Suarez should breeze to reelection come November.
Yet, he’s still collecting campaign contributions hand over fist. Last cycle Mayor Suarez reported more than $4.6 million in campaign contributions, money meant to defeat the invisible man or woman that we have yet to see in the race. And still, more and more money not only goes into Suarez campaign coffers, but also to dark money groups established by Suarez allies able to skirt the law and raise tons of cash from unknown sources and with no limits to how much can be contributed.
A broken system that breeds corruption
Mayor Suarez is not breaking the law when he accepts campaign contributions. But I question any politician running for political office (basically unopposed) who continues to raise money at a clip of almost $5 million to date; money he does not need to win a race that only he can lose.
It leads me to ask where will all that money be spent?
This is the Francis Suarez who years ago, and as a Miami commissioner, led the charge and helped close a legitimate Miami entertainment business, right off Calle 8 and a block west of 27th Avenue, simply because they occasionally provided musical entertainment provided by groups visiting from Cuba. Francis comes from a Cuban family, his father, was also mayor of Miami.
Francis, born in Miami, has no idea what it means to be Cuban; has never visited the island where his parents were born; and I bet could care less what happens in Cuba. But stopping Cuban music from being played in Miami helped his bonafides as just another hateful “Cuban” American politician who wants to liberate the island from the coffee window at Versailles Restaurant.
It’s the same Francis Suarez who on July 13 said, “What should be contemplated right now is a coalition of potential military action in Cuba.” This was his reaction to the protests going on throughout Cuba since July 11. In a later interview he told Miami Herald reporters that he planned to ask President Biden to consider military intervention in Cuba.
Francis Suarez is 43-years-old. He has never served in anybody’s army. He appears to be young and fit. If he deems military intervention in Cuba a solution, is he willing to enlist and lead the charge? I doubt it. Francis Suarez is simply a demagogue willing to say convenient things, in Miami, which at this time will win him votes… But as for military service? Are you kidding me. Suarez is like the thousands of Miami’s cafe-con-leche Cuban ‘patriots’ who have swaying flags on their cars in support of Cuban protesters risking their livelihoods in the streets of a very hot and steamy Havana and other Cuban cities. Of course, the Miami flag wavers expect the U.S. marines to carry out the mission they don’t have the balls to perform. All they seek is regime change and the establishment of a new government led by corrupt Miami politicians and under the heavy boot of the U.S. government.
Francis Suarez would have been a perfect fit more than one hundred years ago while Cuba lived under a Platt Amendment where Cubans played a secondary role in deciding their own future — and under that same heavy U.S. boot pressing on its neck.
I’ve been told by persons who know him that Francis is talented and charismatic. Maybe. Possibly. I’m not sure about the talented part, but Donald Trump also has a type of charisma, and look what that got us.
Francis Suarez is a grown man acting like a spoiled child willing to say what certain people want to hear — all for his own good, not the community he’s supposedly serving. As for the $5 million dollars collected from persons, some who have contributed hundreds of thousands… I still wonder what Francis will use this money for?
One last thought: In the United States, at least, people don’t give politicians large amounts of money just because they like them, or approve of the job they’re doing.
The political law of the land is tit for tat.
