Herald recommends Diaz de la Portilla for Miami’s District 1 commission seat | Editorial
The Miami City Commission race to fill the seat vacated by Wifredo “Willy” Gort has been the most heated race of this cycle.
Seven candidates threw their hats in the ring to win this influential seat, which takes in one of the city’s most coveted and controversial piece of land — the Melreese Golf Course, now the proposed site for David Beckham’s soccer stadium.
The general election pared the race to two candidates: former state legislator Alex Diaz de la Portilla and political newcomer Miguel Angel Gabela, who blew off meeting with the Editorial Board twice.
Our first choice for this seat, Horacio Aguirre, didn’t make it into the Nov. 19 runoff.
In passing on recommending Diaz de la Portilla in the Nov. 5 election, we conceded that he was the most experienced candidate, but we had reservations about his personal behavior and temperament, which most District 1 voters don’t seem to share. Diaz de la Portilla was the top vote-getter with 38 percent, or 2,489 votes. Older Cuban exiles who recognize his political family’s name are his bread and butter.
Diaz de la Portilla, despite spending 16 years in the Florida Legislature, comes with baggage. In a #MeToo world, the accusation in 2010 that he stalked his ex-wife after they separated seemed a deal killer. But not for voters.
In 2012, he was arrested in Boston after police said he acted “belligerently” when he and a female guest were told to leave after they ignored orders to stop smoking in a hotel room. Diaz de la Portilla has been involved in other minor skirmishes. No surprise there. In his younger days, he was known as a “bad boy” in Tallahassee. In addition: Public records show that in January, a home he owned with his ex-wife was foreclosed upon.
Diaz de la Portilla, now a political consultant, is running his fourth campaign in eight years. In 2012, he lost a run for state House. In 2017, he lost the Republican primary for a Florida Senate district. In 2018, he failed to make the runoff in the race to fill an empty seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission. The Editorial Board recommended him that year in spite of his messiness. Eileen Higgins ultimately won.
In his latest campaign, Diaz de la Portilla, 55, had the largest war chest, with almost $500,000 raised. He is not a bad fit for the district. While in Tallahassee, Diaz de la Portilla represented parts of Allapattah, probably the neediest section of District 1, which stretches from the medical buildings surrounding Jackson Memorial Hospital to the Blue Lagoon area across from Miami International Airport, south of State Road 836. It also takes in Grapeland Heights, where the city is negotiating with the Mas brothers to build a Major League Soccer stadium — a deal Diaz de la Portilla told the Board he opposes in its current form.
Diaz de la Portilla has solid and impressive plans for the district. He wants to address the affordable-housing crisis by creating a housing authority, a semi-autonomous city agency that can coordinate with county, state and federal government to steer dollars toward projects that would meet the community’s needs. Not a bad idea. Crime and climate resiliency are his other top priorities, again, on target. He doesn’t like how the city has handled the soccer stadium deal. “I’m bothered by the way it was pushed through. And I think the rent to be paid the city is too low.” He says, however, that he’s willing to work to find “common ground.”
Diaz de la Portilla also said he will help bring some decorum to the commission dais. Let’s hope so. He is friendly with drama-loving Commissioner Joe Carollo, a nemesis of Mayor Francis Suarez. Indeed, civility has been at a deficit.
If he wins this seat, Diaz de la Portilla will have to put down his baggage in order to reach out to all sides, like a real leader. That’s the only way he will truly merit the privilege of serving the public again.
The Herald recommends, with reservations, ALEX DIAZ DE LA PORTILLA for Miami City Commission District 1.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 6:00 AM.