Will Florida City voters give their mayor a 38th year in office? Election is getting heated
On Tuesday, voters in Miami-Dade County’s southernmost municipality will return to the polls to do something they’ve done every few years over the last four decades: decide whether Otis Wallace should remain Florida City’s all-powerful mayor.
First elected in 1984 at the age of 32, Wallace, now 71, is seeking another four-year term as the city’s top elected official and administrator. In an interview, Wallace told the Herald this will be his final campaign for mayor.
“My reason for running this time — and this is the last time I will run for Florida City — is that I am in the middle of a whole lot of unfinished business,” Wallace said. “My focus for voters is to bring value back to the city in the form of outside resources.”
The election, a four-way race against former commissioner and mayoral candidate Israel Andrews, 62, former commissioner and teacher Avis Lloyd Brown, 72, and Rocquel McCray, a 20-year veteran of the Florida City police department, is a clear referendum on Wallace.
Not only are voters deciding whether to reelect Wallace, but they are also deciding whether to keep or amend Florida City’s so-called “strong mayor” form of government, in which the elected mayor runs the day-to-day operations of the city. A proposed charter amendment could designate a city manager to be the chief executive of the city in 2026.
Since Wallace was first elected, Florida City has more than doubled in population. Miami-Dade Commissioner Kionne McGhee, a longtime supporter of Wallace, said that under Wallace’s leadership, he’s seen the city “turn a corner.” He pointed to rising home values, business growth and low taxes as indicators that Wallace deserves another term.
The city, which bills itself as a gateway to the Florida Keys and Everglades National Park, sits on two popular tourist routes and gets a large amount of its revenue from a strip of restaurants, gas stations and hotels.
“They have started something great there in Florida City,” said McGhee, who represents Florida City as part of his district. “My intent is to help them continue on that track of prosperity.”
Should he win four more years, Wallace said he hopes to build more affordable housing, create new jobs and create ways to use new grant money to revive the city and help residents.
But Wallace has also become a character seen by his critics as a sort of strongman who has been investigated by the FBI on claims that he accepted bribes and sold votes. (Wallace has never been charged and has denied the accusations.) His city has faced gun violence, corruption allegations and, more recently, a planned eviction of residents from a city-owned trailer park in the last year.
The city, which was ravaged by Hurricane Andrew and is home to many workers who service the Florida Keys, is one of the poorest cities in the state with one of the highest crime rates. Even though 40% of the city’s roughly 13,000 residents live in poverty, according to the latest Census data, Wallace is among the highest paid mayors in the state, making more than $213,000 a year.
A long history in Florida City
When Wallace, a Florida City native, became mayor at just 32 years old, he was seen as a history maker, and was one of the first Black politicians elected in the state.
His election also signaled the political emergence of the city’s Black voters, who in 1984 comprised the majority of registered voters for the first time, the Miami Herald reported at the time.
Wallace came from a family of migrant farmworkers, who moved all over the country picking fruit and vegetables, according to Herald reports. While his parents worked, he and two of his six sisters lived with their grandmother in Florida City. He attended A.L. Lewis Elementary School, Mays Junior High, South Dade High School and was a member of the last graduating class of Mays High School.
From there, he attended Michigan State University and the University of Miami’s law school, where he graduated in 1977 and went on to work as a public defender in Miami-Dade County. Before becoming mayor, he spent eight years on the city commission as an outsider.
“I was the first to break up the old-time political gang that ran Florida City,” Wallace told the Miami Herald in 1984.
Now, Wallace is Florida City. And his opponents sometimes sound like he did all those years ago.
McCray, a former Florida City police officer who is Wallace’s most vocal critic, has been publicly challenging the mayor since 2018, when she took to Facebook after Wallace wrote a piece in a local community newspaper that McCray said painted an overly rosy picture of the department and its relationship with the community. She already had a following due to her longtime advocacy for those living with HIV, which her wife, Lilieth, has had for 31 years.
The department placed her on administrative leave for violating its social media policies, which McCray said didn’t exist. She was eventually fired in 2019 for, she says, speaking out on social media about the “life-threatening” working conditions she and her colleagues faced daily.
“I just wanted to show how corrupt they were,” McCray told the Herald.
Since she was fired, McCray has continued to speak out against Wallace and the police department’s leadership on her social media platforms, and she says she’s now facing harassment as a result. According to McCray, this includes strangers showing up outside her home, people stealing campaign signs and a recent visit by an investigator with the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s office following Wallace’s complaint that she is registered to vote in California.
It is not illegal to be registered to vote in multiple states. McCray said she is registered to vote in California because she applied for a business license in the state in 2018.
Her allies, including community organizer Carmen Tejeda, say she’s been unfairly targeted, and that Wallace is acting out of fear that he’ll lose his election for the first time.
“He knows the citizens are sick of him,” Tejeda said.
She said in 2022, “the mafia shouldn’t rule anymore, but they do in Florida city.”
Should McCray win, she said one of her first actions would be to cut the mayor’s salary and increase funding for police.
Wallace has dismissed criticism from McCray, 49, as “foolishness,” and says he is the only candidate with the experience to serve another term.
McCray wants more police funding
McCray, a graduate of Barry University, was the first Florida City police officer to have a master’s degree and served for two decades before cutting her career short. What troubled her the most at the time, she said, was that she and her officers often found themselves in dangerous situations without proper backup because the department wouldn’t pay enough money to put enough officers on the street.
Yet, according to McCray, the city’s police officers lack the proper equipment, including weapons, to protect themselves and the public.
“We didn’t have any equipment, we didn’t have any supplies,” McCray said. “Anything we wanted like that, we had to pay for it ourselves. ... We have nothing, and they fired me for speaking up.”
Wallace defended his record, saying that resources have been added as the city has grown in population, and that issues of crime and violence are not unique to the landlocked municipality.
He calls the accusations “last-minute blurbs by anxious politicians” and dismissed the promises made by opponents.
“I have a record to run on,” he said. “One of the beauties of running for office and never having served is you can promise everything.”
Things to know
Polling places are open 7 a.m to 7 p.m.
The two voting locations are Florida City/Homestead Neighborhood Service Center at 1600 Northwest Sixth Ct. and City Hall at 404 West Palm Dr.
Should a candidate fail to get 50% or more of the vote, a runoff election is planned for Feb. 15. The last day to request a mail ballot for a runoff election would be Feb. 5.
This story was originally published January 21, 2022 at 3:52 PM.