Coral Gables Watch

When Miami Mayor Francis Suarez shoveled dirt in January at a Coconut Grove groundbreaking ceremony for new luxury condos, he wasn’t just a mayor promoting growth in his city — he was a paid consultant for the developer building the project.Suarez quietly worked for a Coconut Grove developer for at least eight months from August 2022 through March 2023, earning a minimum of $80,000 for a previously undisclosed consulting side job, according to a former real estate executive who is suing his ex-employer.

The job, which Suarez had not disclosed until questioned about it by the Miami Herald on Wednesday, came to light in a lawsuit filed against Location Ventures, LLC by the company’s former chief financial officer, Greg Brooks.It is not clear how long the two-term mayor has worked as a highly paid consultant for an affiliate of Location Ventures. He refused to discuss the length or terms of his contract with the company, or divulge anything about the nature of his consulting work. His annual disclosure forms through 2021, the last year available, have not revealed any income from the company.

Even though he won re-election with no opposition, Lago worked hard to get his cronies elected. He called people and asked them to put signs in their yard. He texted people to remind them to vote for his candidates. Friends say he was obsessed with the commission races.And the people rejected him.

This Coral Gables election is not just a contest between like-minded candidates who want to protect and improve the City Beautiful. It’s a referendum on Mayor Vince Lago, who ran unopposed and has campaigned for his two handpicked pocket votes.If Lago gets his way, and Ivette Arango O’Doski and Alex Bucelo are elected, he will have the three votes to do anything he wants for the next two years. No doubt about it, they will be rubber stampers. Not that he needs them. Commissioners Rhonda Anderson and Kirk Menendez have been very amenable. There is nobody to challenge the mayor on the dais.

“It shows desperation,” Fernandez said. “Alex had commited to not going negative. We had a handshake and we were going to stick to the issues. “Our differences are striking when it comes to the issues.”

Over the past decade, a liberal faction within America’s colleges and universities, corporate America and the media has promoted goals of diversity, equity and inclusion, endorsed regulations restricting “harmful speech,” encouraged the ostracization of dissenters and sought to grant enhanced status to the previously marginalized.

Now, in reaction, come the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, his allies in the state legislature and Republican politicians across America with a blunt-force counteragenda that uses the coercive power of government to impose its own speech code and ideology on education, including higher education, as well as on private businesses.

In this, DeSantis and his emulators are demonstrating that the hard right is willing not only to jettison the conservative principle of restrained government but also to endanger the accreditation of a state system of higher education — a crucial pillar of economic growth — in order to promulgate their own repressive version of permissible language in America’s universities and colleges, which have traditionally been bastions of academic freedom.