Miami, Latin Builders Association and Florida's Presidential Primary, by gimleteye

For decades, from the time Hispanic builders began to profit from construction of low cost housing in Miami Dade farmland, the Latin Builders Association has been the de facto political arm of south Florida construction and development interests. They gained hundreds of millions in profit by manipulating zoning codes and permitting; using local legislatures and appointed boards to direct public tax dollars for infrastructure servicing new platted subdivisions in the hinterlands.

The results required circumventing regulations protecting the environment, under the lazy eye of mainstream environmental organizations; if not by hacking from outside, then gutting from within. Regulations are only as stiff as the backbone of regulators; few in Miami Dade have been able to resist the pressure of building industry lobbyists, elected officials in their back pockets, or the revolving door between government and private industry engineering and consulting firms who stick close to their LBA affiliations.

Courting LBA political money by presidential candidates requires a willful disregard of the systemic degradation of representative democracy. This is not exactly how it was reported in The Miami Herald last Friday, “GOP Hopefuls perform for Hispanic Builders”.

“The wooing was at full force at the Latin Builders Association, which managed to score all four candidates in a single day…”, reports the Herald. Of course it did. While Democrats certainly have their four score and twenty contributors from the champions of sprawl, the Republicans did it more better.

From their Hialeah political fortress (although the wealthiest live in gated estates in Coral Gables, South Miami and Pinecrest), the LBA ensures political orthodoxy in the Cuban American voting bloc.

The LBA exerts its influence through a well-lubricated campaign fundraising apparatus, wringing maximum contributions not just from its members but the entire supply chain--from suppliers of urinal biscuits to rebar, investing in election day street operations, and also through members’ payments to Spanish language AM radio hosts—whose conservative, anti-Castro fury obscures any criticism that could emerge from public disaffection with the underlying political structure that serves LBA interests.

The organization links home grown production homebuilders to large national corporations, like Lennar, that prefer not to dirty their hands in local politics. The most successful, Sergio Pino, grew a plumbing supply business into a major production home developer and a bank with more than a billion in deposits, all branded under the name "Century".

None of this, of course, will ever appear in a Herald story. (Interesting how the NE 15th access Miami Herald is named Alvah Chapman Way—and intersects at the stretch of Biscayne Boulevard named for Jorge Mas Canosa. The Cuban American National Foundation, that Mas Canosa founded, was the foreign policy analogue to the LBA.)

Long ago, Anglo public officials in Florida with roots in farming and development, like the family of former Senator Bob Graham, ceded political control of South Florida to the Latin builders. (This is the view-finder through understand how in 2005, Graham family interests attached several hundred acres of property to a LBA backed application by developers to move the Miami Dade urban growth boundary in Hialeah, that required a major zoning change by a super majority of the county commission. The county commission allowed the Graham family development corporation to latch onto the highly controversial LBA project, but not before a strong measure of condescension from the dais.)

According to the Herald, “In his bid to court the builders, Romney painted their industry in patriotic terms. ‘What you are doing in creating jobs is not just putting money in your pocket, as important as that it is. It also, perhaps unbeknownst to you, keeps America a strong land." How the LBA chieftains in the audience must have smiled; "unbeknowst", is that a joke?

The LBA is a gifted special interest, wrapping up the political fortunes of African American leaders like Carrie Meek, Barbara Carey Shuler, and others like James Burke and Barbara Jordan. (The one African American leader to resist the LBA, Arthur Teele, paid the price while he lived.)

In the Herald report, Rudy Giuliani "talked about declining home sales and pledged help, citing what he said was his turnaround of New York City…. ‘I know how to fix this problem. I've seen it before, I fixed it before, and with your help, I will go to Washington and fix it together," he said.”

In fact, Giuliani is dead wrong. There is no simple fix for the massively overbuilt markets that benefited LBA members in the past decade.

The Latin Builders Association and its lobbyists here and in Washington, DC played a historic role in the inflation of the housing boom, allied as they were with Governor Jeb Bush, who principal goals as governor were to secure infrastructure planning and investments to accommodate more growth and more campaign contributions from the Republican faithful.

Miami Dade, more so than California’s Central Valley, claims title as the epicenter of the national housing bust.

Miami is the epicenter, heaving under the weight of mortgage fraud, foreclosures, and billions in debt spun from derivative confections, because LBA interests perfected the formulas to push suburbia into farmland, wetlands, mangroves at Biscayne Bay, through control of local zoning councils, state and national politics that fit with new forms of structured finance and mortgages like an iron hand in a velvet glove.

If the LBA runs Miami Dade county until sea level rise, and it would serve the place, right.

But the softening core of the national economy spells trouble for the status quo.

Presidential candidates who have beaten their way to the LBA door should be wary collecting fairy dust from those who bear much responsibility for the economic distress afflicting the national economy. It is a whole new ball game.


Here is the full Miami Herald article:

GOP hopefuls perform for Florida's Hispanic builders

By Lesley Clark and Marc Caputo | McClatchy Newspapers

Posted on Friday, January 25, 2008

MIAMI — Cocktails with John McCain? Breakfast with Mitt Romney?

The four leading Republican presidential candidates courted South Florida's Hispanic vote Friday, paying homage to the influential Latin Builders Association as they jockeyed for votes days before Floridians go to the polls on Tuesday.

Romney appeared for breakfast, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the lunchtime speaker and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee spoke just as the dessert and coffee were rolled out.

But Arizona Sen. John McCain stole the show with a happy-hour appearance, snaring the backing of Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., a Cuban-American who was born on the island.

"I understand that he is ready on day one to lead this nation, and I would trust the future and the security of this nation to this man," Martinez said as he introduced McCain. And, he added to applause, "I would not endorse someone that I didn't have total confidence is going to be (Fidel) Castro's worst nightmare."

Martinez, who'd been expected to endorse McCain last week but delayed his decision, said Friday that he talked the issue over with his wife, Kitty, and decided: "I couldn't sit on the sidelines. John McCain is a good man. He needs to be our next president, and I basically just decided I couldn't sit idly by."

The backing came as a blow to Giuliani, who's been close to Martinez and had hoped to win his support.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney's rival campaign called the endorsement a ''good get." So did political observers.

"It's a big deal," said Gus Gil, the immediate past president of the construction association. "It's very important for the community. And it's great for McCain."

Martinez's endorsement could help McCain with a key demographic: the Hispanic vote. About 400,000 of the 3 million Republicans in Florida are Hispanic, most of them of Cuban descent like Martinez. But it could cost McCain points among Republican critics of the immigration plan that Martinez championed and McCain supported and which opponents denounce as "amnesty."

Romney downplayed the endorsement, saying it likely would affect the election only "in a modest way."

But Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party and a key Romney adviser, said the campaign had courted Martinez, as had the others.

"I was under the impression he was going to sit this one out," said Cardenas, who added that the endorsement would have minimal impact so close to the election. "There's very little wooing you can do at this point."

The wooing was at full force at the Latin Builders Association, which managed to score all four candidates in a single day.

With Romney hammering away on the economy in recent days, his appearance before the developers — whose livelihood has been hobbled by a soft housing market and a mortgage crisis — was the perfect platform for the multimillionaire businessman to lay out his plans for an economic turnaround.

He touted his successes, such as his venture capital firm's role in the early days of Domino's and Staples. He also noted that one of his company Bain Capital's first group of significant investors came from a pool of Hispanic businessmen based in Miami — singling out Salvadoran businessman Ricardo Poma.

In his bid to court the builders, Romney painted their industry in patriotic terms.

"What you are doing in creating jobs is not just putting money in your pocket, as important as that it is. It also, perhaps unbeknownst to you, keeps America a strong land," he said.

Giuliani talked about declining home sales and pledged help, citing what he said was his turnaround of New York City.

"I know how to fix this problem. I've seen it before, I fixed it before, and with your help, I will go to Washington and fix it together," he said.

Huckabee turned on the homespun charm, telling the builders that he believes the nation needs to invest more in infrastructure, including roads, a crowd pleaser in an audience of developers.

"It would not only create American jobs, but would do something about traffic bottlenecks that desperately needs to be done," Huckabee said. "Believe me, having been here the last few days, that's something you need to do."

(This story was reported by Miami Herald staff writers traveling with the candidates: Marc Caputo with Mike Huckabee, Oscar Corral with Rudy Giuliani, Tere Figueras Negrete with Mitt Romney and Casey Woods with John McCain.)

McClatchy Newspapers 2008