Miami City Hall has a vacancy. One candidate is the likely front-runner.
One seat on Miami’s five-member City Commission will be up for grabs after Keon Hardemon resigns in two weeks, though a front-runner is positioning herself as the likely appointee.
Hardemon is set to resign from his District 5 seat at City Hall on Nov. 17 after running for a seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission, a race he handily won Tuesday night. Regardless of the outcome, Florida law required Hardemon to leave his city post. The vacancy has left Miami’s other four commissioners with a choice: They can appoint someone to complete the last year of Hardemon’s term or hold a special election.
In October, commissioners decided to solicit applications for the next commissioner, a process that requires interested candidates to submit resumes and qualifying documents to the city clerk. The deadline for applications is Nov. 13, 2020. Commissioners are scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Nov. 18 to discuss replacing Hardemon. District 5 covers several of Miami’s majority-Black neighborhoods, including Overtown, Liberty City, and Little Haiti, as well as Wynwood and the Upper East Side.
One name has floated around City Hall for several months: Christine King, an attorney and president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Economic Development Corporation. Since April 2019, she has raised nearly $100,000 to mount a campaign to succeed Hardemon during the 2021 city election.
On Tuesday, King said the affordable housing crisis is a top issue facing District 5 residents, along with other economic hardships brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and neighborhood-level problems.
“Sea level rise and Biscayne Bay is of tremendous concern,” she said. “My neighbor’s pot hole or street lamp is also at the top of the list — there are so many important issues.”
On the county commission campaign trail, Hardemon touted King as a worthy successor, praising her work on radio appearances. King said she’s had the good fortune to work with Hardemon and other agencies to serve the community. In particular. she said the Martin Luther King Jr. Economic Development Corporation serves low-income families in Liberty City.
“Commissioner Hardemon did not encourage me to run, however, when I shared with him why I wanted to serve and how service became a way of life for me, my passion, he wholeheartedly supported me,” King said. “My parents encouraged me to seek office.”
King’s nonprofit has been the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in anti-poverty grants from the city, funds that have been directed in recent years by Hardemon. Critics have pointed out that Hardemon’s uncle, Billy Hardemon, is the chair of the nonprofit’s six-person board. He has been listed as a board member on and off for years, and as chairman since 2012, before Keon Hardemon ran for the District 5 seat.
Hardemon’s defenders maintain that the commissioner has no legal conflict of interest. Government grants have been given to the organization for decades, and Billy Hardemon is a volunteer chairman. The group’s tax forms list zero compensation for board members. Community voices have advocated for the nonprofit’s work in Miami.
Rap artist and community activist Luther Campbell recently wrote in a Miami New Times column that the organization provides “legitimate services to Miami’s neediest residents, such as teaching them financial literacy, assisting them with purchasing new cars for work, feeding and educating children in after-school programs, and funding trips for inner-city kids to places they otherwise would never get to see.”
Campbell added that the group has been receiving city funding “since Hardemon was a teenager and long before his political aspirations.”
King has met with multiple commissioners to vouch for her appointment or express her readiness for a special election.
“I think Christine King will do well for us,” said Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla, who plans to advocate for her appointment.
Commissioner Manolo Reyes told the Miami Herald he’s met with King to discuss her qualifications, but while he was impressed with her, he said he does not believe the commission should be appointing someone who intends to run for the same seat in a year. He said he’d be more open to appointing someone who can commit to not running next year, ostensibly with an incumbent’s advantage.
“I’m a firm believer that the City Commission shouldn’t be kingmaker,” Reyes said Tuesday morning. “I think the community is the one that has to decide it.”
Others see it differently.
“You can’t hold anyone to that,” said Commissioner Ken Russell. “There’s no legal way to bind them to that, and it’s simply campaign rhetoric to take stock in that.”
He added that anyone who is appointed would need to be more than simply a caretaker, and that their short voting records could be just as much of a liability as an advantage in next year’s campaign. Russell also said he had not made up his mind on King yet, and he encouraged anyone who meets the qualifications to apply for the seat.
“There are no agreements or commitments in any sense,” he said.
Commissioners will have 10 days to decided if they want to make an appointment. If they don’t come to consensus, the city would have to open a five-day qualifying period and then hold a special election between 38 and 45 days afterward, according to the city charter.
Mayor Francis Suarez noted that a budget crunch would make it hard for the city to justify the cost of a special election.
“We have a $33 million deficit,” he said. “So we’re talking about upward of $250,000, probably, for a district election.”
Tuesday morning, the Herald made a public records request for all applications for the District 5 seat so far. The city had not produced the records as of 6 p.m.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 6:45 PM.
