Opponents of Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernández want him out of City Hall

Fernando Godo, an unsuccessful candidate for the Hialeah City Council this month, has launched a campaign to collect more than 5,000 signatures requesting a recall vote against Mayor Carlos Hernández.

The request for a referendum, which accuses Hernández of “abuse of power and mismanagement,” was filed Friday by attorney Lorenzo Palomares with the Hialeah clerk’s office.

Hernández, who has two years remaining in his term, said former Mayor Julio Martínez was behind the recall campaign.

“I believe Julio Martínez is once again trying to fool the people of Hialeah and does not accept his complete rejection at the ballot box,” Hernández said Tuesday. Hernández beat Martínez, a former mayor, in the 2013 mayoral race.

Hernández added that Martínez’s “cheap political clowning” has cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars and said that he “once again wants to misspend city money with his puppets and circus.”

Godo said the recall petition was launched Friday, the day that newly elected council members were sworn in.

The signature collection campaign will last 30 days, Godo said. The signatures will then be reviewed by the Miami-Dade County Elections Department to determine whether there are enough valid signatures to call a special election.

Hernández would then have five days to announce a decision. “If he does not resign, we go to a referendum, a special election where voters will have the last word,” added Godo.

He said the campaign is not financed by any particular person, like Miami millionaire Norman Braman, who spearheaded and paid for the successful campaign to recall Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez in 2011.

“We only want volunteers who join willingly to dismiss a person who abuses power,” he said.

This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 2:30 PM.