The Picture of Melissa Castro (Part 1)
Selling your soul is easy. Keeping it is much harder.
A cautionary tale
Given my habit of treating Ariel and Castro as one and the same—which is easy enough to do when everywhere you look, there they are, the two of them traipsing around town hip-to-hip as if in a three-legged race at a corporate retreat—I thought it high time to devote more focused attention to the manifestly lesser half of that duo, to Ariel’s mostly (and mercifully) silent partner. This post will serve as the first of two that will examine the incurious curiosity that is Melissa Castro.
Whereas Ariel’s origin story is a hero’s journey, one man’s lifelong and somewhat manic pursuit of power and status (it’s a surprise he didn’t issue a press release upon exiting his mother’s womb), Melissa Castro’s is a fairytale, one of a mysterious figure who more or less bippidy-bobbidy-booed out of thin air, casually waved her wand at the nearest pumpkin, and saw it magically transform into a commission seat. But as effortless and haphazard as Castro’s victory was, it definitely wasn’t the product of extraordinary political talent, unless you consider shadowing Ariel for a few months while occasionally muttering “what he said” to be extraordinary political talent. Nor was it the product of sheer serendipity. No, everything about her out-of-nowhere success screams transaction.
Which is why I think Castro’s fairytale could take a fairly dark turn and morph into a cautionary tale of a different kind, into that familiar allegory that warns against greed, hubris, and making deals with the devil. A ruthless man possessed like Ariel is not going to share the fruit of his life’s labor out of the kindness of his heart, he is going to expect something meaningful in return. That something could be a reliable second vote, the occasional bellyflop onto a political grenade, or unwittingly playing the role of permanent patsy. It could be all of that, in fact, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is whether Castro has the will or ability to hold up her end of the bargain.
The Craigslist commissioner
As a candidate, Castro could easily have been a punchline. Compared to O’Doski, who was both qualified and pedigreed, her community resumé was so comically thin one could be forgiven for thinking it was satire. No community boards, no history of advocacy, no presence at commission meetings, nothing that would suggest a sincere interest in the community beyond a few obligatory dalliances with a handful of local nonprofits—just straight to the top, baby! But the best part, I’m talking the chocolate crumble in the middle of the Carvel cake, is the fact that the April 2023 election appears to mark the first time Melissa Castro has ever voted. Eh-ver! Roll that around on the palate for a moment so that you may fully enjoy how deliciously Millennial that is.
As a commissioner, she’s hardly been any better. Unfortunately, elected officials have to do a lot of talking, and talking isn’t exactly Castro’s strong suit. There is a visible discomfort that visits her face every time she opens her mouth, as if she is struggling mightily to hold back the torrent of “likes” and other Miami-isms that want to come rushing out. It’s one of several reasons why, I think, she is so quick to turn to her laptop and read prepared remarks (or are they remarks fed to her as the meeting transpires?). But even then, she holds forth with the ease and fluidity of an eight-year-old reading Twelfth Night. Still, style is only so important. I’ve met brilliant thinkers who can barely string a sentence together and gifted speakers who couldn’t reason their way out of a paper bag. A silver tongue is only so useful. It’s substance, after all, that matters, and in that regard Castro earns her lowest marks.
Take the issue of building permits. Saying that pulling a permit is frustrating is like saying water is wet—it’s just the way it is. Nevertheless, with Castro being a permit expeditor, we were told, and told, and told, that she was therefore equipped with a very special insight that would allow her to solve this timeless conundrum. That’s like saying I worked as a teller at a Bank of America therefore I can cure inflation, but ok, I’ll hear it. Needless to say, we didn’t get the goods. Castro’s brilliant strategy to whip the building department into shape was…a guy at a desk in the lobby. She didn’t seem to be taking the issue seriously.
Dumb like a fox?
But maybe she was taking it seriously. Initially, I dismissed her ankle-deep insight as pure flimflam, as yet another politician leveraging her profession as a differentiator without the ability to back it up, e.g.,“I’m a businessman therefore I’ll run the government like I run my business.” Yeah, we’ve all heard that one before.
But then I got to thinking, isn’t Castro’s permit-expediting company located in Coral Gables? Doesn’t it do business in Coral Gables? Didn’t her company do the expediting for the developers who built The Plaza, the largest development in the city’s history at seven acres and 2.25 million square feet? Doesn’t having an enormous capacity to shape the building department’s policies and procedures stand to benefit her business, a business that is paid to navigate those policies and procedures? Is Castro going to continue pulling permits at the very department she is so insistent on reshaping? Is she capable of safely navigating the minefield of conflicts she’s stepping into? These are questions we’ll take a closer look at in part two.
For the record, I don’t think Castro is dumb. I think she is just ignorant and way out of her depth. I think she is an intellectual carpetbagger whose clumsiness on the dais stems from her desperate struggle to conjure insights into issues she hadn’t heard of, much less contemplated, until yesterday. A little Arva Moore Parks would go a long way.
She has shown a few brief glimmers of political consciousness, after all, like the several times she’s become visibly annoyed with her colleagues, which I suppose is evidence of some kind of sentience. But the biggest sign, I think, the highest spike on the political brain monitor, is the way she looked when Ariel went full cocaine bear on day one and tried to fire the manager with only two votes. She looked more than uncomfortable, she looked almost mortified, like a passenger trapped in the back of a carjacked Uber. She seemed to understand that what was happening was either morally or strategically wrong, if not both, which is more than could be said for Ariel.
A deal with the devil
Still, politics is perception, and Castro looked from day one like a fish out of water, a candidate who simply didn’t belong in the race much less on the dais, but a candidate that Ariel and his backers pulled along nonetheless. She exists because of them, and that’s how you know something is up. Despite all the fish in the sea, Ariel and company went with the very first clump of seaweed their line brought up. That’s not for nothing. They saw something in her, probably ambition, naiveté, and a few great places on which to attach strings.
Maybe Castro understands this, maybe she doesn’t. But the devil doesn’t care about your capacity to contract, he just wants your soul. Somewhere, in some dusty attic in the Gables, is a portrait of Melissa Castro, growing ever duller, ever dimmer with each passing day.
Interesting your comments come out as the Mayor’s HIDDEN financial interest continue to come out every day. His shady dealings mirror his lifelong buddy’s, self admitted “cousins”, like a carbon copy. I can only think these comments come in effort to distract from his fiasco and try to smear the new kid. She is doing fine and will come into her own. Lago, on the other hand, needs to start looking over his shoulder for the guys in suits.