Last night's Candidate's Forum at the Miami Science Museum ended up being a District 2 Forum, as only the five candidates running for District 2 were there, originally Districts 1 and 4 were also to be part of it. The candidates, from left, are Kate Callahan, Michelle Niemeyer, current Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, Donna Milo and Williams Armbrister.
It seems to me that the audience members were already set on who they are going to vote for on election day (November 1), so it was only interesting during the arguments, and there were quite a few. The forum itself was blah. Most of the questions and answers were boring. The candidates droned on about impact fees, the CRA and parks and things that I don't think most people cared about but those were the questions the moderator threw at them. Oscar Pedro Musibay from the South Florida Business Journal was moderator, he told me that the questions came from the audience. People wrote down their questions earlier and handed them in.
Commissioner Sarnoff rattled off figures and spoke with authority in a snobbish way when he talked. Some people in the audience did call him out for being arrogant. They actually yelled out, "He's arrogant!" And he sort of portrayed that by shaking his head most of the evening as the others spoke. This made him appear as if he was trying to be superior, it didn't come across in a nice way.
Sarnoff was questioned on personal things by the moderator, where the others weren't. It was explained that it was because he is the incumbent and he should answer to certain things, but it did get personal and when someone talked about Sarnoff's wife (they said that he lied about something pertaining to her family), Sarnoff got upset and jumped up to protest. It's true, his wife should not have been brought in to the conversation, I have never known her to be anything but gracious and sweet and she should have been left out of the debate, she's not running for office.
Earlier in the evening, some guy was passing out those crazy photos of Commissioner Sarnoff, you know, the ones with him with the Pinocchio nose. The funny thing was that the guy didn't recognize Sarnoff and he actually handed a photo to Sarnoff. So later during the forum, Sarnoff called out John El Masry from the stage for being responsible for that. El Masry owns Mr. Moe's and he and Sarnoff have been at odds for years. There was a yelling match from the stage between the two that got a bit nasty.
El Masry and Sarnoff have been going at it since the 3 am/5 am issue in the Grove, regarding the last call times for bars. That issue did come up last night and it appeared as if all the other candidates are against Coconut Grove being singled out for 3 am closing time and they all agree that "same am" is the way to go -- meaning that every bar in the City of Miami should have the same last call time.
The new candidates all felt that every part of the city should be cared for, that there should be no special interests and no special favors or special laws and what one section of the city and district receive, the other section should receive -- all being treated equal.
It's not a secret that I have been behind Michelle Niemeyer. She's been my friend for years and quite honestly we just think alike. I feel that she is honest, caring, intelligent and a "real" person -- totally down to earth. You can see us around town hanging out and this was long before she started running for office, in fact, I am one of the people who always would try to push her to run. She had my vote long before she ever announced her candidacy because she cares about people and the same issues that I do and I feel she can be a great commissioner because she is not afraid to get up there and fight for what is right. She treats everybody the same.
But I was quite impressed with all the ladies last night. I could listen to Donna Milo talk for hours. I liked hearing what Kate had to say, too. They are both brilliant. All the candidates called out Sarnoff on his record, which is to be expected, and all had reasons for why they would be best for the job.
Sarnoff was attacked for the city's budget crisis and personally for his illegal law office at his house and his full time PR guy and his full time chauffeur, which they called the Sergeant at Arms. The other candidates felt it was a waste of taxpayer money. He addressed the law office only by saying it was not illegal but he moved it downtown rather than fight. He did not explain why a full time PR guy and a full time chauffeur needed to be part of his staff.
Back to the general issues, Donna Milo said that there is lots of discontentment from the public and that is why so many people are trying to wrestle the Commission seat from Sarnoff. Michelle said that the new commissioner should be a "positive force to make things happen" and that we need civility, which many felt was lacking on that very panel last night. Kate feels that the commissioner should be in the job full time and not treat the commission seat as a side job. They all felt that DERM (Dept. of Environmental Resources Mgt.) needs to be reined in and that the permitting process needs to be made simpler to allow for new businesses to open without so much fuss.
Since the candidates were preaching to their own audience last night, I think the issue now is to get the undecided voters to hear them and to get the voters out to actually vote.
John El Masry is setting up some sort of voter drive at Mr. Moe's, I'll clue you in on that when I know the details. But for now, nothing new was said last night, it was just the usual rhetoric that you hear from candidates. Perhaps it was just the lack of interesting questions they had to deal with.
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