Charlie Crist: double-crossed ... by gimleteye

I'd like to know what Charlie really thinks. In The Miami Herald oped page this morning, Michael Putney takes aim at off-course Charlie, running for US Senate in a tight primary race against Miamian, Marco Rubio. The Herald reported a recent editorial board meeting where Charlie (that would be Florida Governor Charlie Crist) appeared distracted and lackluster. Putney's editorial concentrates on a recent event-- pulling together both sides of the contest to be the next US Senator from Florida-- for the benefit of Miami's politically powerful Cuban American community.

While Charlie has reason to be distracted-- his opponent has surged, his erstwhile campaign contributors are major embarrassments-- Putney missed the root of Charlie's problem. Like the rest of the Miami Herald editorial board and writers (with the exception of Carl Hiaasen, an increasingly distant force), Putney writes around the determinative factor in local politics: Cuban American developers and the supply chain feeding into the Growth Machine.

Putney discloses a major double-cross involving the withdrawal of the Crist endorsement by brothers and congressmen Diaz Balarts. He attributes the retraction to their commitment to the Meek family. Congressman Kendrick Meek, a Democrat, has closely followed the lead of his Republican congressmen on Cuba, Putney reports, and as a result the Diaz Balarts will "sit out" the 2010 US Senate contest. But there is more to the double-cross than this, Putney surely knows. In politics, it is always "follow the money": where it came from and where it will come from, in the future.

In a long career as a member of the Florida House of Representatives, since 1978, and a senior member of the Florida congressional delegation, Carrie Meek was closely affiliated with the Miami-based Growth Machine; represented by the directors of the Latin Builders Association. These Cuban American business leaders started as field workers in Homestead tomato farms in the 1960's and worked their way out, using county contracts to leverage their way into the prime business ventures that would secure their foothold in South Florida and, then, state politics: it was all about converting Miami farmland and wetlands into suburban sprawl. The landscape tells the story.

Meek, representing a poor African American district in Miami-Dade, proved willing and able at zoning decisions that favored Cuban American developers: it is all in the public record. As we've written about often on Eyeonmiami, the mother's milk of zoning and permitting decisions is what really defines the relationship of African American politics to the dominant majority. When the Diaz Balarts sat down with Carrie Meek and her son, Kendrick, that was the scenery backdrop.

As reported by Putney, Crist took the opportunity of addressing the Cuban American audience in Miami by throwing away his bullet points and sticking to the message that he, too, understood the value of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps: his own father had started life in America as a shoe-shine boy. What Crist was saying, I hazard to guess: listen, guys, we don't speak the same language but we all started at the bottom of the ladder.

What Crist didn't say: that in recent sessions of the legislature, Crist has gone even further than his predecessor, Jeb Bush and his acolyte, former House majority leader Marco Rubio -- who was pushed forward to the governor's mansion by Cuban American developers-- in delivering streamlined zoning and permitting through new state laws. These, of course, benefit those at the top of the ladder today: Cuban American production home builders and their supply chain who are burning through cash or not paying mortgages on land purchased at speculative values.

If Charlie Crist feels like he is wandering in the desert, it is because he knows the public is unlikely to pick up these complexities, or, how the Cuban American insiders might be steamed at recent decisions by the Crist administration to uphold the Urban Development Boundary. The mainstream media, that missed entirely the hyper-development and origins of the housing market crash in Florida, is still reticent to talk candidly about the underlying weave of quid pro quos. And it doesn't help that at the same time, the Crist campaign -- a machine at fundraising-- is grinding down sources of political money that have turned out to be corrupt.

In sum it has been a tough year for Charlie Crist. He started it by saying sunnily that it was a great time to invest in Florida real estate, he spent time and energy helping to knock down regulatory barriers to more growth and development-- "jobs, jobs, jobs"-- and now finds himself at the short end of a double-cross by Cuban American insiders who need to set roots in opportunities, in Cuba, more than ever.

While the Growth Machine might be angry at the Crist administration and the agency that has stood up for the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade, the future profits are there, 90 miles away in Cuba, not in wasted wetlands or new suburbs west of Kendall. And for that equation-- where Kendrick and Marco both fit neatly--, Charlie Crist doesn't have a solution. But there is still hope for Charlie Crist. He could be the populist candidate for US Senate in 2010. For more on how to do that he would have to pick up the phone and call me, or, he could click into the website, Florida Hometown Democracy.