Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s bid to become most powerful person in City Hall fails

Voters decisively rejected Francis Suarez’s “strong-mayor” proposal to make him the most powerful person in the city’s government, dealing the mayor a significant defeat just one year after ushering the political scion into office.

The 41-year-old real estate attorney sought to expand his authority over Miami’s large bureaucracy, through the voters’ blessing, so he could become City Hall’s top shot-caller.

With early voting, vote-by-mail and 96 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, the strong-mayor question was heading for failure with only 36 percent of voters in favor. The measure needed a simple majority to pass.

Suarez campaigned to be granted control of the city’s $1 billion budget, supervision of the 4,000-person municipal workforce and power to recommend who should get city contracts — powers he described as responsibilities that would make him directly accountable to the voters.

Suarez has long argued a strong-mayor system would bring stability and accountability to the city government by placing the levers of power in the hands of an elected mayor instead of an appointed city manager who could be fired by either the mayor or the five-person City Commission. On Tuesday, voters rebuffed his vision and likely left a dent in the political clout of Miami’s 37th mayor, the first born in the city and son of former mayor Xavier Suarez.

Speaking at the results party for the proposed soccer stadium plan — an initiative Suarez supported that won voter approval Tuesday — the mayor said he wants to eventually reintroduce a different version of the strong-mayor concept.

From the outset, Suarez faced sharp opposition from inside and outside his own government. Commissioner Joe Carollo accused him of wanting to become a dictator. Carollo sued to block the referendum, arguing the petition process was done illegally. A circuit judge dismissed the complaint. An appeal was pending, though Tuesday’s results likely deflated that case.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez (a strong mayor himself) called the proposal an overreach. Both Gimenez and Carollo, longtime political allies, raised money and campaigned against the ballot measure in a battle waged through political ads and the media, widening a rift between the Suarezes and the Gimenez-Carollo alliance.

Tuesday night, Gimenez said Suarez should seek less power when he pursues a similar proposal in the future.

“If the mayor wants to try again, I think he ought to just try again with something that doesn’t go that far,” Gimenez said.

The referendum’s failure preserves City Hall’s status quo, where the most powerful person in the government is City Manager Emilio Gonzalez.

Suarez has sought to create a strong-mayor system for years, making Tuesday’s referendum a disappointing end to a quixotic pursuit he placed at the top of his first-year agenda. Because the power shift required a change to the city charter, the measure needed voter approval.

Another one of the initiative’s opponents, Commissioner Manolo Reyes, told the Miami Herald it was time to get back to the business of governance now that the voters decided.

“The people have spoken and they do not want one single person to have absolute power,” he said. “This is a clear mandate by our residents that our current structure of government is working.”

As a commissioner pushing legislation, Suarez has won some and lost some. But Tuesday’s result marks the first Election Day loss at the ballot box for Suarez, a two-term commissioner who cruised to election in every campaign he’s seen through to the end (he backed out of a 2013 bid for mayor when two campaign staffers received probation for ballot fraud and he and his wife found out they were expecting their first child).

Late Tuesday, Suarez reflected on a bitter campaign that saw him become the target of attack ads and strident criticism.

“We got sued by everybody. I mean, I got attacked personally,” he said. “At the end of the day, all I wanted was a better system of government for my residents.”

This story was originally published November 6, 2018 at 8:35 PM.