Of course, the potential for fiasco follows Carollo like a hungry bear. He has a knack for the half-baked, half-cocked and insensitive remark, and the black community especially has reason to be wary.

Time will reveal Joe's true self. Sixteen months from now Miami will get a chance to re-elect him, or once again banish him to obscurity.

It's entirely possible that (as his enemies have muttered) Joe Carollo is a sneaky crook, or a nut case. Miami has had its share of both. It's also possible that he's in it just for the glory and honor.

In any case, he is the mayor—and 81 percent of the city's voters have no room to bitch. Enjoy the birthday party and pray, between chili dogs, that history will judge you kindly.

It won't be hard to fill Miami's 'Crooked' seat

July 31, 1997

The long-anticipated indictment of Commissioner Humberto Hernandez leaves open, once again, the designated crooked seat on the Miami Commission.

Long held by Miller Dawkins, now imprisoned for taking payoffs, the post was won by the controversial Hernandez last fall. The lawyer's lopsided margin carried a message from voters:

We'll always hold a place for sleaze in our hearts, and in our government.

Hernandez was hardly an unknown commodity by Election Day. It had been well publicized that he'd been canned as an assistant city attorney for basically operating a private legal practice out of City Hall.

Much had also been written about the buzzardly antics of his law firm following the Valujet crash, and the complaints lodged by heartsick families of victims.

Similar hard-to-miss headlines had been devoted to Hernandez's prominence in an FBI investigation, and to the fact that agents had visited his office to confiscate files.

So it shouldn't have surprised a soul when the commissioner was formally charged Tuesday in a 27-count indictment involving ambitiously devious bank fraud.

Prosecutors say the plot centered around a Key Biscayne condo, The Pyramids. Phony condominium sales allegedly were set up as a means of securing inflated mortgages, often never repaid. Agents say some of the bogus deals were used to launder millions in dirty Medicare money.

Future-commissioner Hernandez served as an attorney in some Pyramids transactions, and as a buyer in others. (Under oath he once asserted he didn't know the name of a client for whom he was holding almost $1 million of real estate.)

In subsequent testimony, Hernandez developed a fondness for taking the Fifth Amendment.

If convicted on all charges, the commissioner could be sentenced to several lifetimes in prison. His political career will now be put on hold while he strives to avoid joining his predecessor behind bars.

The governor suspended Hernandez on Wednesday, which means the crooked seat on the commission must be filled temporarily. The challenge is to find a suitable replacement, someone who brings to the task an equally shady cloud over his head.

Potential candidates could be chosen from FBI wiretaps and videotapes, but the screening process would take months. Why wait when there's such an obvious choice:

Carmen Lunetta. He's local, he's experienced, he's tainted by scandal—and, best of all, he's available!

The former boss of the Port of Miami, who retires today, could be a worthy successor to the Dawkins-Hernandez legacy. He quit under fire, leaving the port owing taxpayers $22 million.

The heaping debt had piled up as Lunetta spent thousands on golf outings, travel and other goodies. Many thousands more were funneled through a port-contracted company to political candidates.

Lunetta left port finances in such a mess that the new pro basketball arena is in jeopardy, as is the cruise-ship expansion known as Maritime Park.

Although Lunetta is the only person with a clue how the seaport runs, Metro-Dade Mayor Alex "Mister No Fun" Penelas is leery of hiring him as a consultant to help sort out the books.

That leaves Lunetta with loads of free time, at least on those days he's not meeting with his lawyers. A Miami Commission seat would keep him near his beloved port, and intimately involved in the high-stakes Maritime Park negotiations.

It's the worst place imaginable for a man at the center of a major federal investigation, which is all that Miami voters need to hear. Come next fall, it'll be Carmen by a landslide!

Dead men voting couldn't do any worse

November 30, 1997

Miami's laughingstock mayoral race is in the hands of a judge, who eventually could decide to order a new laughingstock election.

Defeated incumbent Joe Carollo and the newly chosen mayor, Xavier Suarez, are battling over the mishandling and forgery of absentee ballots, which resulted in at least one verified dead person, Manuel Yip, casting a vote.

In many U.S. cities, this would qualify as an embarrassing scandal, one worthy of vigorous prosecution. But in Miami the term "tainted election" is a whimsical redundancy, and nobody ever goes to jail for stealing votes.

Moreover, judging by the outcome of this fall's political races, you can make a pretty strong case that dead people in Miami ought to be allowed to vote. How could they possibly make worse choices than the living?

Example: 6,063 persons, all allegedly alive and conscious, overwhelmingly re-elected Humberto Hernandez to the City Commission.

Humberto is the adorable young shyster once fired from the city attorney's office for doing outside legal work on taxpayer time. Later he got in trouble for chasing grief-stricken relatives of the Valujet crash victims, a squalid little hustle that Humberto blamed on overzealous staff members at his law firm.

Most recently he was indicted by the feds on multiple counts of bank fraud and money laundering. The governor dutifully suspended Hernandez from the City Commission. On Nov. 4, Miami citizens enthusiastically returned him to office with 65 percent of the vote.

Fittingly, it was Hernandez's support that later pushed Suarez to victory in the mayoral playoffs!

Which raises the obvious question: Is there really much difference between a brain-dead voter and a physically dead voter?

Consider: Miami has spent a year reeling from a bribery scandal and teetering on the brink of fiscal ruin. Nobody in their right minds would, amid such turmoil, willingly put the city's fragile budget within reach of an accused swindler—yet that's exactly what living, breathing voters did.

It's a persuasive argument for throwing elections open to everyone, regardless of pulse rate.

Usually when ballots of long-dead residents turn up, forgery is the presumed explanation. I'm not sure that's automatically true in a place as occult as Miami.

Here it's remotely possible that some dead citizens are so appalled by what's happening that they supernaturally find a way to vote from the afterlife, if we give them a chance.

And maybe we should, because I'll bet there aren't 6,063 dead people who would have been caught … well, dead voting for a guy like Humberto Hernandez.

Admittedly, the plan has a few problems. Since deceased persons would by necessity use absentee ballots—they are, after all, the ultimate absentees—the possibility of fraud cannot be ignored. (Perhaps signatures could be checked against those on their Last Wills and Testaments.)

Political purists might contend that even if the dead would vote, they aren't as constitutionally qualified as live people. That position is hard to defend, given what happened here at the polls.

Turnout among living voters was so disgracefully low that participation by the deceased should be welcomed. And no voter is less susceptible than a dead one to a politician's grandiose promises, smear campaigns or cheap scare tactics.