Mudslinging has reached Main Street as never before

Election Day can’t come soon enough for some people in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. Or Pembroke Pines. Or Delray Beach. A Town Hall meeting in LBTS ended Tuesday with harsh words from outgoing Mayor Chris Vincent. He held up a mysterious piece of political mail with various accusations against three town candidates he supports. The piece ripped Vincent for endorsing them, too.

“This is divisive, delusional, illegal and intellectually irresponsible,” Vincent said.

The mailer was a response to one that Vincent himself had co-signed, promoting the same trio because all are Republicans.

Such tactics are increasingly common in municipal elections, which used to be crushing bores about drainage and code enforcement.

The mudslinging has reached Main Street as never before.

The flyer carries the disclaimer of “Concerned Citizens for Lauderdale-by-theSea,” but under Florida election law, that group must be registered with the Division of Elections, so the public can see who’s paying for the message (it isn’t).

Not registering is against the law.

The committee’s business address must be listed with the disclaimer, and it wasn’t. The front of the mail piece shows a bulk mail permit in Dallas.

Slimy stuff. Voters have no way of knowing who was behind it. But this mixture of a little bit of fact and a lot of innuendo and half-truth reflects the increasingly shrill, highly partisan tone of municipal elections in South Florida.

“Concerned citizens” targeted the three town candidates who are backed by the Broward County Republican Party, mayoral hopeful Edmund Malkoon and commission candidates John Graziano and Richard DeNapoli.

Malkoon is a town commissioner, and one of his opponents is fellow Commissioner Alfred (Buz) Oldaker.

Asked about the hit piece, Oldaker told us in an email: “I did not have anything to do with it, nor do I know who sent it.”

Another mailer, full of thin political accusations about mayoral candidate Ann Marchetti and circulated by email, carries a disclaimer of LBTS Concerned Citizens, 5200 N. Ocean Blvd., Apt. 208. No such PAC can be found anywhere.

Marchetti is recommended by the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board. Read our endorsement for a balanced account of the three candidates for mayor in the March 19 election.

Voters, beware of mystery groups who claim to be “concerned citizens.” They’re somebody’s hired guns.

Do your homework. Don’t fall for anonymous attacks. Be especially wary of candidates who talk more about their opponents than about themselves.

In Pembroke Pines, opponents of city commission candidate Maria Rodriguez spread texts and flyers with a photoshopped image of her appearing to be standing in front of a sign that said “De-fund the police.”

A total fabrication, Rodriguez said. The flyer carried the disclaimer of Conservative Voters PAC, whose listed treasurer in state records is local GOP activist Jay Narang, with a Davie address.

Rodriguez sent us the original photo, showing her at the grand opening of El Balcón de las Americas, a Colombian restaurant in town. She also circulated a photo of her alongside a city police officer at a “Coffee with a Cop” event.

“I will always stand with our police and first responders and support funding them fully,” Rodriguez said.

For sheer volume, no local political contest can match the slugfest for mayor in Delray Beach between Vice Mayor Ryan Boylston and former Commissioner Tom Carney.

This race features a third candidate, former Commissioner Shirley Johnson. The high vote-getter on March 19 becomes mayor, with or without a majority.

At least in Delray, the candidates are personally standing behind their messages.

Carney, a lawyer and self-described “numbers guy,” emphasizes how the size of the city budget has ballooned during Boylston’s six years in office, in an email to supporters.

A Boylston mailer calls Carney a “failed politician” who raised taxes during his tenure.

Another Boylston piece dredged up Carney’s two minor motor vehicle accidents in 2007 and 2016 and referred to both as “hit-and-run” crashes, a loaded phrase.

No one was injured in either accident, and you have to read Boylston’s footnoted fine print to see that “charges were dropped” in one case.

This race may turn on the perennial issue of development, and each man’s vision of the city.

Carney is the only candidate who can say he voted against what he calls the “monstrosity” of the Atlantic Crossing project. (Boylston and Johnson were not in elected office at the time.)

But Boylston was a Downtown Development Authority member who spoke in favor of Atlantic Crossing at a 2014 meeting.

His grainy videotaped comments about how the city is “no longer a village by the sea … we are a mini-metro,” have taken on new life in this race, as Carney has recycled the snippet to portray Boylston as pro-development.

There were signs this week that the decade-old “no longer a village” remark has drawn blood, because Boylston rolled out an email blast about “our village by the sea.”

“There is always more to learn,” Boylston wrote. “I’m proud to say I have grown, and continue to grow, taking each lesson I’ve learned serving in a new role and applying it forward.”

Such tactics are increasingly common in municipal elections, which used to be crushing bores about drainage and code enforcement.