Disclaimer: This post is the product of extensive research, investigation, and information provided by highly trusted sources. Nevertheless, due to the intentionally opaque nature of the recall effort, I cannot definitively verify the involvement of Messrs. Bittel, Garcia, and Perez as postulated below. Their participation in the recall should not, therefore, be considered a matter of fact by virtue solely of what is written here, for I do not present it as such.
I do, however, stand behind this post and am willing to stake my credibility on its accuracy.
Let’s start with a simple assertion, the truth of which I hold to be self-evident. There is no way—absolutely none—that the individual pictured below was able to initiate, organize, and secure funding for a municipal recall:
Notwithstanding the fact that she obviously lacks the wherewithal to have gotten such a complex operation off the ground, you know well and good that an authentically Cruzchevian recall would have been announced during public comment at a commission meeting and involved a minimum of two Fidel Castro references, a feather boa, and one of those old cordless phones as a prop: “Weee the peeeople, Meester Maaayor, are pressing the reeecall button on youuu!” And you just know that the full extent of the follow through would have been one fold-up card table placed outside the entrance of St. Augustine Catholic Church with free snickerdoodles and a stack of petitions.
All half-joking aside, if nothing else, the fact that the recall campaign hit the ground running with a well-timed but astonishingly uncurious Herald article, televised interviews, expensive social media ads, a splashy website, T-shirts, paraphernalia galore, a horde of for-hire canvassers, e-blasts, and mass texting—most of which appeared before the committee responsible for the recall was formed and permitted to accept monetary contributions—should tell you that there is some serious financial and political muscle behind it. The $64,000 question is, of course, whose?
The men behind the curtain
According to my sources, that muscle belongs to none other than Stephen Bittel of Terranova Corporation—the infamous mega developer and largest property owner on Miracle Mile.
Bittel, for those who don’t know, is a man of both local and national notoriety—think Harvey Weinstein meets Boss Tweed. Once the chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, he was forced in 2017 to resign after being accused by six women of demeaning and sexually inappropriate behavior:
I strongly recommend reading the linked Politico piece—co-authored by Coral Gables’ very own Marc Caputo—for all the sordid details. But here are some highlights:
“There was a lot of boob stuff in his office,” said a woman who was a fundraiser years ago and had to interact with him. “I was told by other women not to go into his bathroom. I was warned.”
“He’s just so f----ng creepy,” said a former female party staffer, anger palpable in her tone. “He just leers at you, and stares. I don’t know if you know what that feels like, but he just leers at you. I don’t know how to describe the feeling.”
“The biggest thing I will say is that it became a policy that women, especially junior staff, were never to be left alone with him in his office, plane or house,” said a former party staffer.
“The most suggestive thing he does is invite women on his plane or over to his home when his wife is not in town,” she said. “It is not like these things are in the eye of the beholder, the suggestion is very clear… His reputation is very clear, and it has been there since before he was party chairman.” Bittel was elected to the job earlier this year.
Poor fella, he couldn’t even make it one full year as party chairman. Then again, sometimes an ignominious end is but comeuppance for an ignominious beginning:
Apparently, when he’s not busy perving he’s exploiting. From the Observer article (emphasis mine):
“I helped integrate the local DEC along with State Rep. Gwen Cherry in 1974, so I’ve been around for 54 years. I’ve never seen shenanigans like this,” Christian said in an interview. “In reference to Bittel and the resignation of Bret Berlin, it was already predicted in the newspapers that someone was supposed to give up their seat.”
An email leaked to the Miami New Times revealed that before DNC State Committeeman Bret Berlin resigned six days after he was elected, lobbyist Stephanie Grutman was already soliciting support for Bittel to run for the seat. This raised suspicions that Berlin was coerced to resign in order to provide an opportunity for Bittel to become eligible to run for Florida Democratic Party Chair. Bittel won the committeeman position with overwhelming support from the Democratic establishment, and admitted in an interview with Orlando Politics that Democratic Party officials “created a path” for him to run.
So it’s well established that Bittel is a sexual predator with impulse-control problems who’s known for his very lowdown and dirty brand of politics—a man with the F-you attitude to match his F-you money. In other words, he’s exactly the kind of guy you would expect to team up with this charmer:
That’s Jeff Garcia, former chief of staff to Joe Garcia, who according to the Miami Herald “served jail time for illegally requesting hundreds of absentee ballots for oblivious voters in 2012, and admitted to creating a phony tea party candidate two years earlier to siphon votes away from his boss’ Republican nemesis,” and who was described by his own attorney as “the poster boy for crossing the line.”
This is the man, according to credible sources, Bittel tapped to run End the Corruption’s recall effort. He’s the genius, it’s said, who thought it was a good idea to hire Ven Vamos to run the illegal canvassing operation. Because who wouldn’t tap this guy to connect with the good people of Coral Gables?
Nothing like having someone who once got slapped with an out-of-state fugitive arrest warrant to run your grass-roots campaign. But I’m sure he carefully screened each canvasser before hiring them to knock on your door.
Means, opportunity, motive…and irony.
We know that Bittel, a man who was described by one journalist as a “billionaire donor,” has the means to launch a recall effort. Moreover, thanks to the rise of KFC and their awfully convenient new obsession with vaguely defined corruption, he has the opportunity. The only question is motive. What on earth could the Gables’ most notorious living developer have against a mayor who is allegedly in the entire industry’s pocket? Why would the largest property owner on Miracle Mile want to destroy a man like Vince Lago?
I’ll give you a hint:
More to come in Part 2…
As I mentioned in previous comments, it seems that Ariel Fernandez is following the Banana Republic Dictator Handbook by the letter. Now, this initiative to recall Mayor Lago is a scripted version of the Lenin Communist Revolution handbook: create uncertainty about the current leaders, combine facts with lies, advocate higher moral principles, promise a better future, propose to take down the current leaders, take power, enrich the new political class, spend in highly visible projects with low economic value, target business people and entrepreneurs as greedy parasites, squeeze money from everybody until everything collapses and everybody is much worse. This is the story of the Soviet Union. It could be the story of the future of Coral Gables.
Thank you for this insightful article. I appreciate you shedding light on this topic.