Miami’s crypto bull is a metaphor for Mayor Suarez’s leadership — all flash, no action
There’s a Spanish word locals often use to describe impeccably dressed, fast-talking Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, these days both celebrated and mocked as “America’s crypto mayor.”
Postalita.
A poser, vain and preoccupied with the superficial (or personally advantageous) to the detriment of what matters.
I used to think the characterization was a bit harsh, cosa de la calle,a
street thing. But after Suarez abandoned to his luck the police chief he brought to the city and left him in the hands of the clown car at City Hall, I began to think maybe these Miamians had a point.
Things have only gotten more elusive when it comes to the mayor.
Where’s Suarez on important city issues?
Who knows!
Ask his nemesis, Commissioner Joe Carollo, who seems to have been left in charge of the asylum.
The flashier the issue, the more national attention it garners — using crypto currency as city tender, pursuing Elon Musk on Twitter to build a subterranean tunnel in a rising-seas city that can’t even keep resilience officers employed — the more Suarez is interested.
If his predecessor, Tomas Regalado, was the minutiaobsessed, pothole mayor, Suarez has veered to the other extreme. He’s the mayor for the outsiders coming to Miami with their schemes and dreams.
His latest photo op says best what he has become: “Bitcoin” Suarez’s leadership is all flash and little action on local issues that matter to residents.
But bring on the unveiling of the Miami Bull, a 3,000pound statue modeled after Wall Street’s iconic Charging Bull, at the the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami Beach, and he shines, he owns it, he’s the man.
“Welcome to the future of finance,” Suarez said, in Bitcoin-branded sneakers, as he disrobed the Transformer-like figure at the
Miami Beach Convention Center.
COPYCAT CHARGING BULL
Miami — the “capital of capital,” as Suarez called it — doesn’t need to copy Manhattan with a robotic Charging Bull sculpture as a declaration that we’ve become a financial hub. We already were.
Been there, done that in the 1980s, when Latin American capital (and the proceeds of the drug trafficking trade) flooded the town and fueled the development of enclaves like Brickell Avenue, which debuted international banking centers and brought to town wealthy new residents.
The city became known as the exotic multilingual Gateway to the Americas, a world-class wannabe destination, attracting the attention of Europeans and the mega wealthy, art-collecting crowd.
The evolution was truly innovative back then and the one thing that kept us from reaching even higher were the same ills holding us back now: Third World politics and corruption.
Suarez was supposed to be the mayor who modernized the provincial city hall environment, but he’s gone way overboard selling Miami to outsiders while he abandons the issues of longtime residents.
An example: The Black residents of Coconut Grove, descendants of founders, losing their electoral voice to Carollo’s personally motivated redistricting. From Suarez, silence.
He seems to have decided not to involve himself, at least in a public way, in the discussion of policy issues with commissioners or residents. He’s not being an advocate during meetings.
If he’s engaging with people, it’s behind the scenes or not at all.
But Miami’s most prominent salesman is out there peddling... the future — or a scam?
MAYOR’S CRYPTO GAMBLE
Cryptocurrency remains nothing but a high-risk gamble, whether it’s bitcoin or the contraption MiamiCoin that Suarez dreamed up in partnership with a nonprofit — and then saw it quickly lose its value. When he announced that the dividends would go to a resident rentalassistance program, the mayor was shooting from the hip.
No one had done any due diligence. The experiment tanked.
“Innovation doesn’t always work,” Suarez justified the failure to the Miami Herald.
But there’s concrete stuff he actually could do to tackle the city’s affordable housing crisis.
What has he done?
Not much.
That’s why the robot with the creepy glow-allday blue eyes and golden horns is an apt metaphor for Suarez’s leadership — all bull, no action.
ISSUES THAT MATTER
MiamiCoin isn’t Suarez’s only gamble.
The other endeavor taking up all his time — and, insiders say, the reason he’s not publicly taking on the commissioners — is the push to build a stateof-the-art soccer stadium and hotel-entertainment complex next to Miami International Airport on the 131-acre, city-owned Melreese Park site, the city’s only golf course.
Suarez needs four of the five commissioners to vote yes on the project to issue a 99-year, no-bid lease to a consortium of investors led by mogul Jorge Mas Santos and his brother, Jose.
He’s not going to annoy them — in particular, Carollo — over the voting rights of a historic Black community. Or over the high rents in Flagami and Little Havana, or where the municipal pool will be built in Morningside.
All Suarez’s courage, bitcoins and MiamiCoins are riding on the soccer fantasy “Freedom Park,” named for all the emotional currency that can be extracted from the manhandled word “freedom.” Ironic, when the only thing free about this is the appropriation of public land, a city asset, for the private project of rich people.
Meanwhile, the historic downtown Olympia Theater (the Gusman for those of us who have enjoyed performances there for decades) is falling apart. The Marine Stadium restoration isn’t advancing, and needed drainage projects sit idle, Miamians complain.
But the mayor is busy riding the bulls of bitcoin, tech and soccer.
Somebody’s gotta wake Suarez out of his delirium and tell him: All that bullish testosterone can be put to better use, mayor.
Try leading on issues that really matter.
Fabiola Santiago: 305-376-3469, @fabiolasantiago