It’s ‘Lying Larisa’ vs. the ‘Nightmare Neighbor’ in Nov. 16 race for Sunny Isles mayor
On Tuesday, voters in Sunny Isles Beach, a resort town known for its high-rise condos and Russian ties, will again cast ballots to decide who should succeed former Mayor and OneBlood CEO George “Bud” Scholl, who resigned in August.
Commissioner Dana Goldman and interim Mayor Larisa “Laura” Svechin, on the ballot Nov. 16 after surviving a Nov. 2 special election, have an acrimonious relationship that dates back years. The tension is finally coming to a head as they fight to fill the remainder of Scholl’s term, which ends next November.
The candidates portray the election as an inflection point in the young city’s history.
Scholl’s resignation and the subsequent vacancies left by the two candidates have left the city’s five-member commission with just two sitting members. Though Commissioner Alex Lama told the Miami Herald the vacancies haven’t affected day-to-day business, Goldman says the situation has led to “government by fiat,” and accuses Scholl of trying to hand his position to Svechin in “a backroom deal.”
Svechin says Goldman “creates lies and confuses voters.”
The run-up to the election has been colored by dueling websites hosted by political committees calling Svechin “Lying Larisa” and Goldman a “Nightmare Neighbor,” and mail ads alleging that the candidates lie about voting records, fail to pay bills, accept developers’ money and want to kick residents out of aging buildings.
“I am shocked,” said Svechin, the former vice mayor who took over as mayor per the rules of the city charter after Scholl resigned. “I didn’t expect this ... when there is dirt on you, your opponent makes things up and stretches the truth. This has been stretched way too far.”
During the Nov. 2 election, Goldman, who outraised Svechin by about $30,000, captured about 41% of the vote. Svechin received 37%. The runoff caps what Goldman, in old emails made public this year through a public records lawsuit, called “a power struggle for the mayor succession.”
“The campaign has been about as expected,” Goldman said in an email.
The ‘city is at stake’
Svechin was first elected to the commission in 2016, and was reelected in 2020. She immigrated with her family to Miami Beach from the Soviet Union in 1979 through religious asylum and moved to what is now Sunny Isles in 1987. She grew up in Sunny Isles Beach and left for college and spent years in New York working in advertising. After her first two children were born, she moved back to Sunny Isles to be closer to her parents in 2010.
Svechin says she is the first Russian-speaking mayor of the city, an increasingly popular haven for Eastern Europeans.
Goldman, a real estate attorney at Shutts & Bowen LLP’s Miami office, filled a vacancy on the commission in 2014 and won a special election in 2015. She was reelected again in 2016 and 2020. Goldman was raised in Miami Beach and left to attend college. She worked on Capitol Hill as a legislative assistant to former U.S. Sen. Al Gore and as a legal intern to former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, and moved to Sunny Isles Beach in 2000.
The city is densely populated, home to about 22,000 people in a less-than-two-square-mile stretch north of Bal Harbour and south of Golden Beach. It’s a major beach destination with roots dating back to the 1950s, where low-rise motels were a staple of the Collins Avenue stretch.
When the city incorporated in 1997, developers like Gil and Michael Dezer took heed, playing a crucial role in transforming the city’s main strip into a wall-to-wall destination of luxury buildings with names that now include the Residences by Armani/Casa, the Ritz-Carlton Residences Sunny Isles Beach and the 60-story Porsche Design Tower Miami, where Barcelona star Lionel Messi has a $5 million condo. In April, Messi’s father bought a $7.3 million property in Sunny Isles’ 39-story Regalia building.
The area has attracted the likes of former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and billionaire Carl Icahn, who lease office space in the 14-story Milton Tower at 16690 Collins Ave. For the fifth year in a row, Acqualina Resort at 17875 Collins Ave. was named the best waterfront hotel in the country.
And while one can catch an occasional glimpse of daylight between gleaming high-rise apartments and luxury hotels, both candidates say they are fighting “over-development.”
Svechin has touted her support for a one-year moratorium on new buildings on the west side of Collins Avenue, which is home to mid- to high-rise buildings and low-rise shopping centers, a contrast from the other side of the thoroughfare, which is walled off with oceanside condos.
Goldman did not support the moratorium, telling the Herald that it was filled with loopholes. She has voiced her distaste for “unreasonable developments” on the west side of the city, such as the controversial proposal for a 15-story mixed-use building in the Town Center district, which sits on the west side of Collins between 172nd Street and Sunny Isles Beach Boulevard.
Goldman declined a phone interview. She wrote in an email that her priorities will be addressing busy streets with stricter police enforcement, wider sidewalks and lower speed limits, as well as reining in city expenses and reducing beach litter.
“The future of our city is at stake. We need to decide what our city will be like in 5, 10 and 15 years,” she wrote. “Our city is now an incredible mix of people who are used to a certain quality of life.”
Svechin says other goals for a next term would include working with the Florida Department of Transportation on safety and traffic precautions along Collins Avenue, focusing on re-certification of aging condo buildings and working on commercial development on the west side of town, where she said there is room for growth, even if “not necessarily vertically.”
Policy, though, hasn’t necessarily been the focus of the campaign.
Attacks in recent weeks
Svechin and the political committees “Safe Streets Miami,” chaired by husband Steven Hildrew, and “Winning Florida,” run by Fort Lauderdale lawyer Jason Blank, have attacked Goldman for voting against the moratorium on new building plans. Hildrew’s committee recently sent a mailer blaming Goldman for “reckless behavior,” citing Miami Herald reporting that Goldman’s husband name-dropped his wife to police in June after backing into a parked car at Bal Harbour Shops and, according to a police report, leaving the scene.
The candidates and their allies have also traded allegations of wrongdoing that date back years and even decades.
In incendiary emails circulated to residents at the Poinciana Yacht and Racquet Club, where Goldman lives, HOA president Greg Capra, a former political foe of Goldman’s, wrote that Goldman “has done nothing to help” residents and encouraged them to vote against her.
He accused her of harassing the condo’s property manager and installing an air conditioner without permits. Goldman sued Capra and the rest of the condo associations’ members in 2012 and again in 2014.
Goldman and her husband, Michael Gates, alleged Capra and 10 other members of the condo association board conspired to force them to move out after the couple started asking questions about the board. They allege the board members defamed them in writing and began engaging in threatening activity like towing their car and leaving a dead rat “with its entrails exposed” on their porch, according to a 123-page complaint.
Both cases were dismissed in 2016.
Goldman, in an email to the Herald, called Capra “psychopathic.”
Svechin has faced attacks of her own.
Goldman and the political committee “Citizens Action, Inc.” have noted that Svechin is a named defendant in four separate foreclosures. According to foreclosure records, the cases all involved Svechin’s aging parents’ two-bedroom condo at Winston Towers 600 and took place between 2010 and 2016.
Her parents, Grigory and Anna Svechin, bought the condo in 1992 for $106,000, records show. In 2001, they transferred the deed to their daughter. Her parents were both working class people, Svechin said, and she pulled money out of her 401(k) to help them pay the costs of their mortgage after the foreclosures.
Svechin said she has set up a temporary space on 171st Street and Collins Avenue, where she speaks to voters ahead of the runoff election to “clarify the untruths out here.” She was especially concerned with a Spanish-language mailer that suggested she was working with developers to raze older buildings and leave tenants homeless in light of the Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside.
“People believe what they see, what they read,” she said. “Yesterday, I sat with three ladies for over three hours. They had all these concerns and had been reading about me ... One woman said, ‘this could give someone a heart attack.’”
Goldman said she wasn’t responsible for some of the attack ads sent about Svechin, but that they were “on target.”
“She truly is clueless on the issues and tone deaf to residents,” she wrote in an email. “Nothing seems to be working for her, which is why this so-called incumbent couldn’t crack 40 percent yet I did.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 4:22 PM.