Miami’s political godfather Joe Carollo,
Unfazed by $63M beating, can’t wait for next fight
During a festive Friday night at Domino Park
Plaza in Little Havana, on a stage decorated with red and gold balloons, singer Diveana — the Madonna of merengue — performed a bouncy encore with her band, swinging her hips and blowing kisses to the crowd. Joe Carollo danced beside her.
Carollo, not a graceful man in movement or manner, looked even more ungainly in his baggy gray pants and monogrammed city of Miami windbreaker next to a smooth, sexy professional in latex leggings.
But Carollo didn’t care. His skin is tempered like a boxer’s.
His distinctive monotone, used to harangue and belittle those who challenge him, lifted into song. His lips, typically clamped in a rigid line, curled into a smile.
Imagine that. Commissioner Joe Carollo, for a long time the most powerful politician in Miami, aka “Crazy Joe,” happy.
His footwork was heavy but playful. When he wore orthopedic boots as a kid, and got mad at his cousins, he kicked their shins until they were black and blue.
Looking down on his realm — a city infested by corruption scandals multiplying like mold spores — Carollo embraced the applause. Socked with a $63.5 million judgment in June and portrayed in November’s election as a cockroach to be squashed, Carollo was undismayed.
“See? Am I the monster depicted by my enemies?” he asked.
It is rare to find Carollo in a state of joy. Conflict is his cafecito. Bad blood nourishes him.
“He thrives on turmoil,” said the second of Carollo’s three ex-wives, Mari Ledon. Carollo was charged with simple bat
tery and spent a night in jail as mayor when he threw a tea container that hit her in the head in 2001. “His passion is destroying people.”
Now in his fourth decade as godfather of Miami’s serial political drama, Carollo, 68, is destroying the city, too, say his critics, whom he calls “haters.”
At the end of a stormy year even by Miami standards, Miami is in crisis. Mayor Francis Suarez is under FBI investigation for allegedly accepting payments from a developer who needed help with a stalled project in Coconut Grove. Ex-Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla was arrested and charged with taking bribes. City Attorney Victoria Méndez and her husband are accused in a civil lawsuit of exploiting an elderly man in a houseflipping scheme.
Most ominous, the city faces two lawsuits similar to the one Carollo lost in the most resounding defeat
of his career. The two Little Havana businessmen who sued Carollo claim two dozen city officials followed Carollo’s orders in a vendetta to ruin them. They’re seeking $85 million in damages. The city has paid $2 million in attorneys’ fees for Carollo, who plans to appeal.
Eight weeks of testimony at Carollo’s trial showed how he rules the city by wielding fear of retribution like a machete. You cross Carollo, he crosses you out.
He is, once again, directing the show at City Hall. Suarez has been an absentee mayor, out of town for weeks at a time, running a longshot presidential campaign that flopped and recruiting clients in the Middle East for his law firm. Díaz de la Portilla, Carollo’s former ally, charged with accepting $245,000 in bribes, lost November’s election to Miguel Gabela, who vows to clean up city government. Gabela’s first
resolution at his first commission meeting was to fire Méndez. It was deferred.
Carollo has survived because he’s never been charged with using his office to get rich. He’s greedy for power, not money, his accusers say.
“The people who call me a bully are the true bullies, laughing in the face of residents, trying to get away with illegal things until I caught them,” Carollo said. “Their problem is they can’t buy me.”
Business owners Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla beat Carollo in federal court by proving he deployed city officials from the building, legal, code enforcement, fire and police departments in a harassment campaign to shut down their popular Ball & Chain club, and unplug the green neon sign that’s been a beacon of Little Havana’s renaissance.
Carollo has also turned Miami’s signature downtown bayfront park into a battlefield, calling its neighbors “old farts and rich elitists” as