This post is the conclusion to part one, naturally. I added some content pertaining to the commission and budget meetings that took place after part one was published. Thanks for reading.
The Matryoshka
I’m sorry to say, but any attempt to cajole Ariel into a harmlessly ceremonial role is liable to prove a failed enterprise. For underneath that amusingly absurd veneer lies a gravely serious tenacity and a series of darker elements that illustrate the fact that while he is not especially complex, he is layered; better yet, he is nested, like a flesh and blood matryoshka, a real-life Russian doll.
The outermost Ariel is the figure depicted in part one, the ultimately harmless curiosity. It is the middle-aged man with the decidedly grandfatherly aesthetic who is paradoxically afflicted with a teenage girl’s obsession with social media. It is the superficially affable and slightly overeager goofball who posts unnecessary PSAs and cringe-inducing selfies taken in moments of such deep and selfless thought that his right hand spontaneously snatches his phone and thrusts out to his side to snap a poignant photo:
This Ariel is so vapid and so silly that if he were only slightly less maladroit I could be convinced that it was all an act of cunning and guile, a Machiavellian mask, a brilliant strategy of camouflaging the sinister with the silly. But, alas, I think not. I think this layer represents a part of him that is as real as any. I think this is indeed who he is. But I do not think this is all he is.
Stolen Valor
All it takes is a little shake and you will hear something else rattling inside Ariel. Pry him open and you will indeed find a noticeably less innocuous version of the man. You will discover someone determined to mock and antagonize his long and ever-growing list of enemies. But worse, you will find a shameless opportunists and, dare I say, a thief.
The mildest version of what one could call Dark Ariel materialized most recently amid the passing of a beloved community icon, a sad and moving development that Ariel somehow managed to make largely about himself. Whether it involved choosing one of his patented selfies for his tribute to the deceased (at least Lago and Anderson had enough sense to leave themselves out of it), tackily claiming credit for how City Hall was lit in her honor, or posting a series of tawdry selfies taken at her memorial service as though it was the VIP section of a Taylor Swift concert, every arc of Ariel’s energy during this somber time ultimately flowed right back to the source.
But a more perturbing example of his depravity lies in his growing affinity for taking credit for the work of others. I am not only referring to his habit of vicariously filling potholes or repairing power lines by standing next to the good men and women who are actually doing that work. I am talking about his brazen attempt to directly associate himself with projects he had no hand in, projects that were spearheaded by the very colleagues he openly disparages on the dais. Consider the following:
To make sure you fully understand, this is a photo of Ariel posing in front of the dog run at Salvadore Park, a project that Anderson has been doggedly shepherding (pun intended) for years, a project she effectively owns. To the uninitiated and blissfully naive, this post from Ariel might register as a harmless and well-intentioned update on a relatively small city project. But to those even vaguely familiar with the social graces of politics (Ariel chief among them), this sort of thing is strictly verboten. They will see this post, replete with Ariel’s Cheshire-cat grin and cheesy hashtags for what it truly is, to wit: a wanton expropriation of Anderson’s pet issue and a big middle finger jabbed straight into her eye. And if you do not believe me, notice that even Anderson herself, perhaps the most unflappable member of the commission, found it necessary to take to the comments to correct the record, so to speak.
The Unstable Core
Then there is the most dreadful version of all, the innermost version, the version that Ariel does not—if you can possibly imagine—want you to see. It is Ariel the shadow-worker, the saboteur, the character assassin. It is the Ariel that invents what he thinks are career-ending rumors about his adversaries and plants them in local media. It is the Ariel that leveraged Gables Insider as a kind of for-hire propaganda outlet for local politicos. It is the Ariel that cruelly duped a gullible political candidate into switching races at the last minute in order to suppress voter turnout. It is the Ariel who has brutish henchmen send harassing text messages to colleagues on the commission in hopes of intimidating them into obedience. It is the Ariel who, even as a sitting commissioner, continues to submit dirt-digging public records requests aimed at fellow commissioners and highly respected residents who he publicly and disingenuously calls “friends” (see Ariel’s request to the city clerk for Anderson’s texts with Withers—the request itself is public record).
It is the most ruthless, vile, and dangerous Ariel of them all. But it is also the most undisciplined Ariel, the version that shouts down his better angels while impelling him to impetuousness. It is the version that was behind his many early blunders, and the version that dissuaded him from pursuing a gentle and unobjectionable early agenda that his colleagues could support, one that would have created a pattern of immediate successes upon which he could have built trust and rapport. It is the version that is responsible for such idiotic decisions as this:
The man on the bottom left of the photo above appears to be David Winker. I do not know much about David Winker the person. For all I know he is a splendid guy. But I do know David Winker the attorney, the attorney who has spent a considerable portion of his career representing the adversaries of local governments in legal or quasi-legal disputes—the Gables being no exception. I do not know precisely how much money the city has spent on Winker-involved matters, but I can assure you it is a pretty penny. How is it not, therefore, an example of spectacularly poor judgment for a sitting commissioner to post photos from family outings with someone like Winker the City Slayer? It’s as if Ariel cannot decide whether he wants to be a fiduciary of the city or the Ché Guevara of CGNA. My guess is that it is a little of both. In any event, Ariel’s behavior in this instance is as grotesquely stupid as it is foreboding.
The Gradual Meltdown
For a vivid and recent example of Ariel’s tendency toward self-destruction, look no further than this week’s combined commission and budget meetings. The all-day event deserves a post of its own, but suffice it to say Ariel did not fare well (you can always tell when things go badly for the revolutionaries when a certain local blogger swoops in to do cleanup for her benefactors with what is usually a good dose of doth-protest-too-much enthusiasm).
The bad news began when Ariel’s unprecedented and abjectly stupid attempt to prevent Anderson from removing her own appointment, Claudia Miro, from the planning and zoning board exploded on the launchpad after Miro resigned at the eleventh hour—at least someone knew how to cut her losses. To make matters worse, Ariel botched his exchange with Anderson’s chosen replacement, Chip Withers, in incredibly embarrassing fashion. Somehow Ariel managed to expose himself as both woefully uninformed and thoroughly disingenuous in the midst of a brief conversation—a mere formality in the lead up to a vote that Ariel knew he would lose—with one of the mildest and most affable guys in Coral Gables.
But Ariel took his biggest blow in the battle over the election date, as he allowed himself to be one of only two members of the commission to vote against a motion that would modestly reduce the length of his term. This despite all the amateurish media pressure from Ariel’s proxies accusing Lago of wanting to extend his own term. Well, just like Ariel’s friends in the media, I, too, have trusted sources, and every last one tells me that Lago had championed reduced terms from the start. Besides, does anyone actually buy the notion that a politician as cocky, aggressive, well-funded, and kinetic as Lago would choose to allow his most despised adversary to enjoy a roughly six-year term unchallenged? Please.
While we are at it, does Ariel realize that while debating the zoning item that was taken up just before the election discussion, he himself was critical of the fact that said item was being heard in August rather than in September? Does he not recall delivering the following admonishment, “this [E6/E7] should have been done after the summer, not brought up in the summer when residents aren’t even in town to have a discussion”? I only ask because just a few minutes later, Ariel was pushing to move the city’s elections to August. You know, when residents aren’t even in town. Residents First but Democracy Last, I suppose.
Lastly, there was the kerfuffle over the millage rate. That was when you saw Dark Ariel emerge in earnest. Sensing a real humdinger of a gotcha moment, Ariel turned into something of a relentless heckler, taunting Lago for not presenting a spending plan that would accomodate the reduction in revenue. Maybe Ariel forgot, but when Lago first announced his desire to aggressively cut taxes, Ariel was conspicuously nodding and yupping the entire time. He even broke protocol by jumping to the front of the discussion order just so he could be the first to OMG SAMESIES Lago’s announcement. Anyway, it will be fun watching Ariel and his sock puppet have to awkwardly explain how they were “for tax cuts before they were against them” when they run for reelection.
The Fallout
And there you have it, the constituent parts of a most peculiar politician, or at least the parts one can glimpse from afar. Who knows, maybe there is something pure and positive and generous nestled deep inside Ariel, just beyond the seemingly fractal sequence of pathologies. I suspect there is. I hope there is.
But the parts one can see from some distance, the versions of Ariel that connive and corrupt and cynically capitalize on every opportunity for personal advancement are not pretty. They are petty and poisonous.
That poison, mind you, appears to be spreading, corrupting institutions and people alike. Take Kirk Menendez, who has become a different person lately. He exuded more gloomy and dour energy in this week’s meeting than he has in all his years as a commissioner combined. He looks angry and curmudgeonly. He has even become combative, abandoning at times his customary set of dad jokes in favor of thinly veiled barbs. But worst of all, he appears to be adopting Ariel’s unwise method of political calculation. The Menendez of a few short months ago would not have batted an eye over moving the election to November, it is clearly a net positive. Yet the just-barely “yes” he offered at Tuesday’s meeting was practically dripping with bizarre reluctance. Some say he intends to use his upcoming vote on this item—the vote on second reading—as leverage against Lago and Anderson. How uncharacteristically unwise that would be. Lago and Anderson like November, but they do not love it. They can live with April just fine, they have so far. What they cannot live with is being squeezed quite so flagrantly. They won’t stand for it, and my educated guess is that they will declare war accordingly. Scorched-earth war. Mark my words.
In any event, it has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 100 days for Ariel. And before you give him a pass because, gee, it is early still, you might want to reflect upon the fact that Ariel himself would disagree. For Ariel, fortune favors the bold and there is no time like the present to effect change. It is why he stuffed every big-ticket campaign promise into his earliest commission agendas. The only problem is, he blundered them all away. It is why he has not pursued legislation ever since. It is why the only business he places on the agenda these days are discussion items—mostly about the projects other people are working on.
100 days is more than enough time to score a win or two. It is also more than enough time to put together an embarrassingly long string of losses—that much has been proven. No, Ariel is not waiting for anything. He is not warming up. He is only failing.
Moving the elections to November makes perfect sense. Not only will it streamline elections but it will boost voter turnout for local elections while saving the City money. This is a win win for voters.
Spot on analysis, Aesop. Anyone who wants to see the dark Ariel at his darkest need only make a public records request for all "resident Ariel" emails to anyone at the City through the years. You will see that a good number of them reflect a sense of over the top entitlement and overbearing abusive behavior that no human being should be subjected to. They are so offensive that you may not want to read them, lest they ruin your most recent meal.