Carlos Gimenez’s well-connected daughter-in-law to run for Coral Gables commission
Miami-Dade is infamous for its political dynasties. On the ballot this year, Miami voters saw familiar names up and down the ballot: Suarez, Hardemon, Barreiro, Regalado, Diaz de la Portilla.
Now, the Coral Gables city commission is getting its own injection of family affairs.
Former Miami-Dade mayor and new U.S Rep.-elect Carlos Gimenez’s daughter-in-law, Tania Cruz-Gimenez, has filed her paperwork to fill the Group 2 seat left vacant by Coral Gables Vice Mayor Vince Lago, who is running for mayor against Commissioner Patricia Keon.
Cruz-Gimenez, Democrat and wife of prominent lobbyist C.J. Gimenez, said she’s more than her husband’s and her father-in-law’s name and is running on her own ideals.
“I’d like voters to see me as a resident of the north Gables who is raising her family here, who owns a business here and who loves this city,” said Cruz-Gimenez, 45, who filed her paperwork Tuesday afternoon for the April election. “My father-in-law is Carlos Gimenez and I’m Tania Cruz-Gimenez. They should get to know me.”
Cruz-Gimenez, an attorney, 14-year Gables resident and mother of two, will be facing a long list of candidates, including one from another political family. Coral Gables Mayor Raúl Valdes-Fauli’s brother, Jose Valdes-Fauli, filed to run in February.
Valdes-Fauli, a retired bank executive, LGBTQ advocate and former president of the Florida Grand Opera and The Bass museum, has raised $26,505 since February, including a $5,000 loan to himself.
He told the Miami Herald that his candidacy “has nothing to do with my brother,” who isn’t running for reelection.
“I have always wanted to be involved. I never was able because of his being on the commission, being the mayor,” he said. “I was always working on the sidelines in different projects, and different areas.”
He hopes to bring his financial expertise to the commission, and says he could help the city deal with its looming pension deficit and budget shortfalls.
“My expertise in finance could be tremendously helpful in that,” he said.
Other candidates for the seat are attorney Rhonda Anne Anderson, downtown property owner and attorney Jackson “Rip” Holmes, former Miami city manager’s staffer and one-time president of the Women’s Republican Club Miami, Federated Claudia Miro and University of Miami graduate Alexander Luis Haq.
Born in New Jersey to parents of Cuban heritage, Cruz-Gimenez spent two years at New York University and traveled Europe before ending up in Hawaii, where she finished her degree and later attended law school. She worked in various academic jobs in Hawaii before she eventually made her way to Miami to work at a firm where she’d previously interned. She liked Miami because it was “a little faster than Hawaii, slower than New York, but I could still be in the sun.”
She met her husband at a Marlins game event for summer associates in 2003, where she was introduced to him by an acquaintance as “a communist” because of a law review article she was writing at the time about the Bush administration. Gimenez defended her.
“He said, ‘Just because she’s questioning something, doesn’t make her a communist,’ ” she recalls. “I liked him. I disagreed with him, but he could back up his positions.”
They were both in relationships at the time, but when she came back to Miami to study for the Bar the next year, they were both divorced. They got closer, and Cruz-Gimenez remembers not knowing that his father was into politics until he ran for county commissioner shortly after. She became intrigued. They disagreed but had lively debates in which she said she learned a lot about who’s who in Miami politics.
While Cruz-Gimenez has never campaigned herself, it’s not her first job in politics. She worked on Alex Diaz de la Portilla’s failed state Senate bid, consulted for former Miami commissioner Joe Carollo on his campaign (and later represented him in court) and was hired by Ultra Music Festival organizers to help set the terms of a proposed deal with the city of Miami. She also worked as a consultant for the group that sent attack ads against the failed strong-mayor proposal on the Miami ballot in 2018, which would have made the Miami mayor the city’s chief administrator. Gimenez, her father-in-law, strongly opposed the “strong mayor” plan.
She has never lobbied the City of Coral Gables.
Cruz-Gimenez runs Eclipse Consulting Group, which has an office in Coral Gables and was registered in 2019 as an LLC in Delaware. She is also listed as an officer on her husband’s consulting firm as well as her own firm, which went inactive in September.
She was also the listed manager on three other consulting groups, all which went inactive in the last three years, according to state business records.
She said in a statement to the Miami Herald that the first thing she hopes to achieve on the dais will be confronting the tax increases, reduced services, development and traffic residents face. She added that addressing pandemic-related hardships will also be a focus.
“As much as we love our city, the unforeseen events of recent months have put our stable community in jeopardy,” she said. “The impact of the COVID pandemic and resulting closures of numerous small businesses threaten to forever change the very fabric of our community in coming months.”
This story was originally published December 16, 2020 at 11:22 AM.