Looking for votes in senior centers, Miami Beach campaigns hire the ‘queen maker’
She has been described as a “mercenary.” A “queen maker.” A political operative with the influence to sway elderly, Hispanic voters to support her local candidates and causes.
And in Miami Beach’s low-turnout elections, just about everyone seems to have paid for Liliana Martinez’s services.
This year alone, Martinez has worked on at least eight campaigns in the city’s fall elections, receiving more than $50,000 to court elderly voters in senior buildings with raffles and food distributions, candidate meet-and-greets and by activating her roster of “capitanes” who live in several of the Beach’s senior centers. Sometimes, she works for competing campaigns.
Ask her, and she can detail how many votes she won for her clients: about 500 for Mayor Dan Gelber, another 500 for former Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and 600 for Planning Board member Alex Fernandez in Nov. 2 races that drew fewer than 13,000 voters.
She continues to represent Rosen Gonzalez and Fernandez as they campaign to win a Nov. 16 runoff contest likely to draw even fewer voters.
“All the Hispanic votes were mine,” Martinez, 62, said of her work on Gelber’s campaign.
In off-year local elections, where the Beach’s low turnout means as few as two votes can sometimes sway a race, the demand for Martinez’s work is a reflection of the value that reliable senior voters, particularly those who occupy apartments in senior housing complexes, hold for candidates. And the whispers about how she secures votes — some of them from former clients — are a reminder about the underbelly of Miami-Dade’s elections, in which little-known actors can sometimes yield big political victories.
“She’s a mercenary, essentially,” said Greg Branch, who hired Martinez to help his city commission campaign before he dropped out to take a TV gig. “Does that get us a true democratic outcome in our elections?”
Martinez rejects accusations that her methods amount to paying for votes or that she is somehow a boletera, or ballot broker. She said she never touches other people’s ballots or forces anyone to vote for her candidates, and no one has offered evidence to the contrary. She said it’s her charisma and the deep ties she’s formed with the senior and Hispanic communities that make her so popular come election time.
She said her candidates find a captive audience at the senior centers, where sometimes the elderly residents are learning about the candidates for the first time.
“Sometimes they don’t even know who [the candidates] are but because of me they believe in what I’m saying,” Martinez said in Spanish.
Something of an institution
Martinez, whose Facebook page is littered with photos of her posing with candidates, has become an institution in Miami Beach’s political circles. She is a member of the city’s Hispanic Affairs Committee and in May, after she was hospitalized with COVID-19, the City Commission honored the Mount Sinai hospital workers who treated her.
Over the years, she has become the go-to person for campaigns in need of voter outreach — even if the causes she supports sometimes conflict with one another.
She worked for a coalition of South Beach bar owners opposing a referendum seeking to end alcohol sales at 2 a.m., while at the same time working for Gelber, who was campaigning for the 2 a.m. ban to pass. She also briefly worked for Fernandez’s opponent in the Group III runoff, Stephen Cohen, prior to Fernandez’s entering the race.
Martinez, a native of Colombia who has lived in Miami Beach for 22 years, said since first getting involved in the city’s politics about 13 years ago while working on former Mayor David Dermer’s campaign, only one of her candidates has lost a race.
This year, Gelber and Commissioner Mark Samuelian, whose campaign also hired Martinez, both won reelection (Samuelian automatically won after a judge disqualified his only competitor). Rosen Gonzalez and Fernandez, candidates in Groups I and III, respectively, led all candidates in their races in the first round of voting and are now heading into runoff elections. She did lose the 2 a.m. referendum, which voters approved last week.
“She’s been helpful,” Gelber said in an interview after appearing at a senior event with Martinez at Four Freedoms House last month. “I think she’s a real community activist. Sometimes I think she’s working, sometimes I think she’s just helping. I don’t know where the lines are in terms of that but I know for me I think we definitely compensate her.”
During the Four Freedoms event, which included a raffle and lunch, Martinez implored the crowd in Spanish to support Gelber for re-election even if he doesn’t share Hispanic “customs.”
“We need to vote for 262 on Nov. 2,” she said, referring to Gelber’s ballot number. “It’s not for Liliana Martinez or the captains that are here. We are going to vote for the right people. Honest people. Even if they don’t have the same customs we have.”
When she isn’t working on campaigns, Martinez said, she acts as a resource for seniors who need a ride somewhere, have trouble navigating government services on their own or who are struggling to pay their bills. She said it’s a way to repay seniors for putting their faith in her when she presents them a candidate to support.
“I thank them for trusting me,” she said.
For her work for Gelber and Samuelian, Martinez said she was paid monthly by their shared campaign consultant, Christian Ulvert, through his firm EDGE Communications.
“She does outreach, like a lot of folks,” Ulvert said.
Clients-turned-critics
If her political success has made her a name on the Beach, her tactics have also earned her criticism from those who accuse her of harvesting absentee ballots or buying votes with raffles, including a recent event for Gelber that included a flat-screen TV.
In an interview with the Herald, Martinez became emotional discussing rumors about her work, saying she is a retired employee of Standard Parking but continues working in politics to make ends meet. She said every candidate does raffles and that the senior population is “vulnerable” and deserves to be treated well.
“It doesn’t scare me, I’m not doing anything illegal,” Martinez said.
This election season, her most outspoken critics are former clients like Branch, who after paying Martinez $13,000 to work on his campaign now questions whether that money went to paying for votes.
Branch, who dropped out of the race before Election Day, said in an interview with the Herald that his monthly payments to Martinez included about $150 per month to each of her captains working the seniors centers. When the meet-and-greet parties are over, he said, the captains use their 24-7 resident access to the buildings to remind their neighbors who to vote for once absentee ballots get mailed out.
“The captains go door to door even when you’re not there,” he said. “The captains live in the buildings.”
Branch said he was complicit in going along with Martinez’s tactics but would not hire her if he were to run for office again. During the campaign, he said, he justified employing Martinez by telling himself that he was the right candidate for the Group III seat. Having Martinez on his side, he was told, could net him either a couple hundred or a couple thousand votes.
But since leaving the race, he said, it has become clear that Martinez can get any candidate votes from the senior community regardless of who they are or what they believe in.
“The audience is already bought and paid for with the raffles, and the free bread donations and the gift bags,” he said.
Martinez called Branch a “hypocrite.”
The two had a falling out, which ended in Martinez switching to Fernandez’s campaign. Martinez paid back about $4,500 to Branch after they stopped working together.
Stephen Cohen, a candidate in the Group III runoff against Fernandez, also employed Martinez earlier this year before they ended their arrangement. Cohen said he let Martinez keep the $1,000 he paid her up to that point. He said Martinez’s methods are “unethical,” but “whether she is buying votes is a matter of opinion.”
He once described Martinez as a “queen maker.” Now he believes that she perceives herself to be one.
“I don’t think it’s true if the candidate works hard,” he said.
Cohen said his concern with Martinez is that he thinks she may have “special access” to senior buildings. He pointed to photos Martinez shared to Facebook of her taking Fernandez door to door at Stella Maris House with goody bags and campaign literature despite the building administration’s ban on campaigning during the pandemic. He also shared photos of Branch outside Council Towers South days after Cohen said his campaign was told no campaigning was allowed at the building.
“There’s no doubt in my mind I think that’s unfair,” Cohen said.
Kenia Infante, property manager at Stella Maris, confirmed to the Herald that the building has not allowed campaigning during COVID-19. She said candidates have visited the building after hours and over the weekends, and that they have been informed to not come back or she will call the police.
“We’ve had an issue with that,” she said.
Martinez said she never visited Stella Maris after hours. She said she met with Infante before visiting the building with Fernandez and was allowed to go inside. Infante told her, she added, that she needed written permission next time. Martinez said she has seen campaign fliers from other candidates inside the building.
“No one can say, ‘Liliana went in.’ Everyone has gone in and put their fliers there,” she said.
Fernandez told the Herald he did not know campaigning was prohibited at Stella Maris and that Martinez told him they had permission to be there.
At Council Towers South, Martinez said, no campaigning was allowed inside the building but she and Branch met with residents outside.
Martinez said the criticism comes with the territory.
“When someone has so much popularity, people attack them,” she said. “When they’re scared of you, they make up lies.”
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 3:58 PM.
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