Medley’s mayor isn’t on the ballot, but election still a battle between him and rivals
Medley Mayor Roberto Martell isn’t on the ballot in the town’s Nov. 8 election, but the race for two town council seats is still a referendum on the town’s top administrator and his political clout.
The election pits two incumbents who frequently oppose Martell — Edgar Ayala and his daughter Lizelh Ayala — against three first-time candidates who would potentially fortify Martell’s already-strong political position: Ariel Carballo, Yenny Lorenzo and Stephanie Otero.
“The key for the mayor in this election is to at least see if he can get one of the council members [named] Ayala out of the council,” Edgar Ayala, a decade-long rival of Martell on the council, told the Miami Herald.
Martell is endorsing Lorenzo, a town employee who works in social services and helps lead Medley’s after-school programs, and Otero, who owns a local dance studio.
“They’re hard workers and they have a lot of willpower,” Martell said of the two candidates in an interview.
The top two finishers among the five candidates will serve four-year terms. Each council seat is at-large, representing about 1,000 residents in the tiny industrial town of warehouses and mobile-home parks in Northwest Miami-Dade.
While Martell has been a constant atop Medley’s government, the town has faced a period of political turmoil in recent years.
Lizelh Ayala joined her father on the council in November 2020. Mobile-home park manager Yesenia Martinez also won a seat in 2020, allowing critics of Martell to seize a rare council majority, Edgar Ayala told the Herald.
But it didn’t last long.
Martinez resigned without public explanation about a month after her election. Lily Stefano, a longtime Martell foe who had resigned her council seat to run for mayor, won a special election to return to the council in March 2021, but she was arrested last November for allegedly using a nonprofit created by ex-NFL star Santana Moss to profit off donated food. She has pleaded not guilty and was removed from office.
Stefano was replaced in a special election this past January by Karina Pacheco, who won by just two votes to defeat Stefano ally Lourdes Rodriguez. After that election, a former town attorney claimed there was a “disturbing pattern” of non-Medley residents casting ballots, but the results stood.
Chaos has continued in the months since, with turnover in several key administrative positions, including the return of Michael Pizzi as town attorney and the controversial firing of the town’s human resources director.
“We haven’t had a lot of stability,” Lizelh Ayala said. “It’s just been very polarized to a point that it’s affecting the everyday of our town.”
Otero said she would look to bridge gaps on the divided council.
“When there’s division in anything, nothing prospers,” she said. “We all have to put our differences aside.”
Lorenzo echoed that message.
“Everything is separated by their own personal issues,” she said of the council. “The residents are the ones suffering for it.”
Carballo could not be reached for an interview.
This story was originally published September 26, 2022 at 4:50 PM.
