Chalk one up for reality. Two weeks ago, Coral Gables voters delivered a resounding victory to the incumbent city commissioner Maria Anderson in part because they knew that her challenger, Gonzalo Sanabria, lead many votes as a member of the county planning board in support of bad applications by developers to move the Urban Development Boundary. The Herald reports:
"The former member of the Miami-Dade Planning Advisory Board said ''negative mailers'' about his votes to move the Urban Development Boundary and the fact that he never voted in municipal elections in the city probably hurt him."
Yes and yes. As housing values fail to recover and taxpayer burdens become clearer to voters, I hope that Urban Development Boundary will become the important litmus test it should have been for the past decade. That would be a refreshing change.
Posted on Tue, Apr. 21, 2009
Money alone doesn't decide Coral Gables commission races
BY ELAINE DE VALLE
edevalle@MiamiHerald.com
The campaign war chests of the two Coral Gables commission races were as different as the margins of victory last week for the incumbents.
Commissioner Ralph Cabrera -- who easily defeated newcomer Richard W. Martin II by a 3-1 margin in votes -- raised 50 times as much for his race, according to campaign finance reports turned in the Friday before the election.
Cabrera raised $80,610 and spent about three quarters of it on advertising. Four years ago, he raised $35,000 in three weeks before he learned he would have no challenger. Then he returned the money to the contributors who would take it back.
He gave the remaining $2,000 or $3,000 to Actors' Playhouse, the fire department's Explorers program and the Coral Gables War Memorial Youth Center board.
Cabrera said Tuesday that he likely would have about $4,000 or so to dissolve after all expenses and that this year he would give it to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the March of Dimes.
Martin raised just short of $1,645, including $50 checks from residents Natalie Brown and Richard Namon, an activist who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2007, and a $500 check from a Boca Raton couple in real estate.
He spent almost $1,085, including almost $400 in yard signs.
The big money race was between Commissioner Maria Anderson and her challenger, real estate investor/developer Gonzalo Sanabria, a member of the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority and former president of the Gables by the Sea Homeowners Association. Anderson raised just over $113,000 and spent most of that, about $92,600, according to the reports, dated April 9.
Her contributions include two $500 maximum gifts from colleague Commissioner Wayne Withers and his wife, Cindy, and a $500 check from DYL Development, which wants to build a controversial condo and retail project on Le Jeune Road near the high school.
Expenses from March 21 to last week include almost $10,000 on a poll, more than $3,100 for a phone bank, more than $3,600 to Stan Adkins for one of her last-minute mail pieces and more than $30,000 to Community Power Builders, the firm owned by her campaign manager Irene Secada, for consulting, printing, mailing postage and T-shirts.
Sanabria raised $160,510, but $100,000 was a loan the self-made millionaire made to himself.
While Anderson raised more than $26,000 in the final two weeks before the election, Sanabria raised $14,400, including at least $8,000 in maximum $500 contributions from Hammock Drive residents.
He spent $126,800 in total as of April 9, almost $75,000 of that since March 21.
The expenditures include $2,500 to Armando Gutierrez, his campaign manager, and almost $54,000 for advertising and marketing to Creative Ideas Advertising, a company owned by Gutierrez's wife.
Sanabria said Tuesday that he is proud of his showing.
''We only fell short 323 votes,'' Sanabria said. ``That's not too bad, considering that I was running against three members of the commission, considering I was running against all the special interest.''
The former member of the Miami-Dade Planning Advisory Board said ''negative mailers'' about his votes to move the Urban Development Boundary and the fact that he never voted in municipal elections in the city probably hurt him.
``There's a whole lot of people that would like me to run again.''
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