A CRESPOGRAM SPECIAL SERIES

In 2015, the 6 candidates who ran for Village Council raised a total of $113,895.49, for a position that paid $1 a year, came with no staff, no office, no phone, minuscule expense reimbursement, and contrary to the belief of many residents in the Village, little if any real power over the day to day management or oversight of the Village administration.

This time around, three of those same candidates are running again, only the amounts raised so far are considerably less, although Mac Glinn, like before has raised more money to date than any 4 of the other 5 candidates.

Glinn has raised at total of $21,840.00, while Liangy Fernandez-Calli who is in 2nd place has raised $8729.20 and Jonathan Meltz in 3rd place has raised $8500.00. In fourth place is Sean Brady with $4200.00, Bill Davis is next with $3986.00, and coming in last is Eddie Lewis with $1500.00.

Most of the donations are in the $20.00 to $100.00, range, and Brady, Fernandez-Calli, Lewis, Meltz and Davis all opened their campaigns by loaning themselves money. Lewis's campaign is solely financed by personal loans made to himself.

Meltz loaned his campaign the most with $2500, Fernandez-Calli was second with $2492, and Brady loaned himself $2000 and Davis loaned himself $100. Lewis has loaned himself the entire $1500 he's reported.

Glinn on the other-hand seems to have not needed to loan himself any money, and more than all of the candidates combined, he has received 8 donations of a $1000.

While one could argue that anyone who gives money to a political candidate does so because they want something in return, the fact of the matter is that Mac Glinn received campaign contributions from individuals and companies that political insiders would classify as "the usual suspects."

For instance, of all the candidates, Glinn was the only received who received a donation ($500.00) from the Village lobbyist in Tallahassee, Fausto Gomez. Gomez was hired this year to replace Bob Levy who had been the long-time lobbyist for the Village and who died last year.  

Gomez over the years has been tagged for questionable behavior, and just this year an appropriation that  was intended to be a repeat of a secret appropriation last year given to a company run by his wife was blocked by the Senate Budget Committee Chairman.

It'll be interesting to see what the Village gets for the $24,000 that we're paying him.

Glinn also received a total of $2000, in 4 - $500 donations from attorneys with the law firm of Weiss, Serota, Helfman Cole & Bierman, a firm that provides legal services of some kind to the Village, that I'll be tracking down as soon as I get the outstanding documents on other matters squared away.

Glinn also received $1000 from Garth Solutions, "a management consulting firm that delivers targeted, strategic business solutions to a diverse portfolio of clients encompassing both the public and private sectors.," which is government speak for a company that generates case studies and reports like the RMA study that was the subject of both my story about Vice Mayor Steven Zelkowitz's vote for a company that had hired him as a private consultant, and that generated the report on the financial feasibility plan to redevelop the downtown properties owned by the Village.

Given that there is still one more week to raise campaign donations, there is every possibility that Glinn will match if not top the monies he raised in 2015 - which would make his cost per vote somewhere between $25-$30 per vote.

No other candidate will come even close to that, which either means that Glinn is that much more popular in Miami Shores than all the other candidates, or that as a "usual suspect,"  he's getting money from outside the Village from folks and companies who we can expect to see show up at Village Hall with their hands outstretched if he gets elected.

In poitics, a popular religious hymn whose words often get paraphrased a lot in relationship to campaign contributions is, "What a friend we have in Mac..."

TO LOOK AT ALL OF THE CANDIDATES CAMPAIGN REPORTS, CLICK HERE