Steven Meiner, Michael Góngora to clash in runoff for Miami Beach Mayor

The race for Miami Beach Mayor isn’t over yet.

Vice Mayor Steven Meiner and former City Commissioner Michael Góngora, the two biggest vote-earners on Election Day, are headed to a Nov. 21 runoff. They outpaced two other candidates, former Rep. Mike Grieco and former MTV executive Bill Roedy, a first-time candidate, but neither took a large enough share of the vote to win outright.

With 20 of 21 precincts reporting Tuesday at 8 p.m., Meiner had 31% of the vote and Góngora had 28%.

Roedy, meanwhile, had 21% of the vote, while Grieco had 20%.

Candidates in Miami Beach must receive more than 50% of the total vote to secure victory and avoid a runoff.

The technically nonpartisan race for Mayor generated more than $4.3 million in combined fundraising — and some hostilities between the candidates.

For voters, the biggest issue was public safety. In the past three years, Miami Beach has imposed curfews to curb violent disorder in the city’s nightlife hotspots after several shootings during Spring Break.

Also weighing heavily were concerns of overdevelopment, including the potential replacement of historical neighborhoods and buildings with new structures that, while more resilient, may be incompatible with the character of the neighborhood.

In a September forum discussion, all four candidates cited their past support of the LGBTQ community and gave examples to prove it. But they were split on the proposed rollback of alcohol sales from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. in Miami Beach’s entertainment district that a majority of voters backed through a nonbinding straw ballot item in 2021.

Grieco, a Democrat, and Meiner, a no-party candidate, said they supported the rollback. Roedy, an Independent, said he opposed it except during “high impact weekends like Spring Break, which must end.” He added that there isn’t much evidence showing the change would be effective year-round.

Góngora, a Democrat who voted against the rollback in 2021, told the Miami Herald he still was against the move, explaining that it “doesn’t address public safety issues we face around the clock.”

Miami Beach campaign finance rules prohibited real estate developers, lobbyists and vendors with pending matters before the city from making political contributions to candidates’ individual campaigns and their political committees. However, that rule did not extend to electioneering communications organizations (ECOs), which can run advertisements supporting or attacking candidates within 60 days of an election as long as the ads didn’t explicitly tell voters whom to support at the ballot box.

As detailed by The Real Deal, hundreds of thousands of dollars from real estate companies seeking business in the city poured into the race. Góngora and Grieco were the main recipients.

Meiner and Roedy, whose long-term residency in Miami Beach was called into question during the race, took comparatively little from real estate interests.

Meiner, a 52-year-old enforcement lawyer with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was elected to the Miami Beach Commission in 2019.

While in office, he distinguished himself as a tough-on-crime, locally focused policymaker. He supported efforts to expand a city prosecutor program, the arresting of people for filming police officers and jailing homeless people if they refused to go to a shelter.

He also backed adding more misdemeanor crimes to the city code, a pre-trial diversion program for people in need, a volunteer civilian patrol program and opposed bail elimination for misdemeanor crimes.

His campaign platform included prioritizing environmental protections for Biscayne Bay, which has been subject to fish kills in recent years, and protection against overdevelopment.

Meiner also wanted to implement a “traffic management software system” in the city, provide free ferry services to and from Miami, provide employment and mental health care opportunities to people living on the street and install new water and sewer piping to reduce leakage.

He proposed raising the required City Commission vote share from five of seven Commissioners to six of seven for approval of buildings larger than what is allowed under a given area’s zoning.

Meiner raised $86,600 through his campaign account, an overwhelming percentage of which came through personal checks. He was the only candidate running who did not solicit funds through a political committee or ECO and said his non-reliance on real estate dollars meant his City Commission vote couldn’t be bought.

The Miami Herald endorsed him, as did SOBESafe, a community organization focused on reducing crime.

For Góngora, 53, this year’s race was his second for the city mayoralty. He ran in 2013 as well, but was the runner-up to Philip Levine, Gelber’s predecessor.

Góngora finished his third stint on the City Commission in 2021, when he unsuccessfully sued Miami Beach to run for a third term. He’d previously served on the panel from 2006-2007 and from 2009-2013 before returning in 2017.

He argued in his suit that voter-approved term limits did not retroactively apply to his Commission tenure. A court sided with the city.

A lawyer in private life specializing in community association litigation, he has served on numerous county and municipal zoning, advisory, reform and enforcement boards. He also created the city’s Sustainability Committee, among other contributions.

Like his opponents, Góngora’s campaign platform encompassed several pressing issues in the city. He wanted to improve public safety by hiring more police, installing video cameras across the city and creating a “Real-Time Crime Center.”

He also vowed to accelerate sea-level rise mitigation projects, maintain the city’s stormwater master plan, upgrade infrastructure, improve roadway flow through traffic light calibration and back “responsible” development commensurate with the existing scale of neighborhoods and zoning strictures.

During his time in office, he helped lead efforts to initiate a citywide recycling program and backed an effort to push for more eco-friendly development.

He received endorsements from Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia, all three City Commissioners whose seats weren’t up for grabs Tuesday and a handful of former local officials.

The Miami Beach Fraternal Order of Police, Miami Association of Realtors and Miami’s Community News also backed Góngora’s campaign. So did The Victory Fund, a political action committee committed to increasing the number of LGBTQ people in public office. Góngora is the first openly gay person to serve on the Miami Beach Commission.

Within two weeks of Election Day, he raised $616,500 through his campaign account, inclusive of about $244,800 worth of carry-over funds from prior campaigns and $55,000 in self-loans.

His ECO, Leaders We Trust, collected another $200,000. Nearly all of it came from an ECO supporting his campaign called A Better Future for Miami Beach.

The fundraising included $50,000 from Location Ventures, a firm that fell under scrutiny this year amid revelations by the Herald that it had paid Miami Mayor Francis Suarez at least $170,000 in consultant fees while seeking approval of a project in the city. Those payments and other compensation Suarez received are now under federal and state investigation.

Funds supporting Góngora’s candidacy included $15,000 from the OKO Group, which is building a hotel and condominium in the city’s Faena District, and $10,000 apiece from Clara Homes and developer Russell Galbut’s Crescent Heights, the latter of which is building a 45-story residential tower on Alton Road.

Góngora was most at odds with Grieco, who secretly recorded a December meeting the two had at a restaurant in which Góngora bragged about Galbut’s support. Grieco told the Herald he recorded their conversation to ensure nothing he said would be misrepresented by Góngora, who he said was trying to keep him out of the race.

Grieco said Góngora’s claim about Galbut represented a campaign finance violation. Góngora argued it didn’t, noting that the money went to an ECO supporting his campaign, which is allowed. He countered that Grieco had violated state law by recording him without his consent.

Florida is a two-party consent state, meaning it is generally illegal to record someone without their knowledge. There is an exception when the person being recorded has no reasonable expectation of privacy, such as in a public place like a restaurant.

Grieco, 48, is a criminal defense lawyer and former Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney. He served as a Miami Beach Commissioner from 2013 to 2017, when he briefly ran for Mayor before resigning and pleading no contest to campaign finance violations.

He has long maintained that he had no knowledge of any misconduct and has pointed to his subsequent election to state office as evidence voters believed and supported him.

Grieco served as a state Representative from 2018 to 2022. He ran in 2022 to unseat Republican Ileana Garcia in Senate District 36, but dropped out of the race two months before the Primary Election, complaining of a lack of funding support from Senate Democratic Leadership.

In his second campaign for Miami Beach Mayor, Grieco touted his familiarity with the legislative process in Tallahassee as a boon to progress at City Hall, where he vowed to boost public safety, particularly during times of high crime and activity.

His website featured a seven-part strategy for dealing with the city’s “public safety nightmare,” including restricting public parking and access to Ocean Drive during peak periods.

Grieco’s campaign collected about $332,500 through Oct. 20, including $75,000 worth of self-loans. His political committee, Strong Leadership for South Florida, raised $390,000 since he left state office late last year.

Real estate-related donations to Grieco’s campaign include $40,000 from the operator of the Miami Beach Marina, which hired Greico as a lobbyist last year; $21,000 from Related Development CEO Steve Patterson; and $10,000 from companies linked to Arc Pe, a private equity firm headquartered in the city that offers real estate lending.

He received endorsements from LGBTQ advocacy group SAVE Action PAC, the State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Transit Workers Local 291, which represents thousands of public transportation workers in Miami-Dade.

Grieco’s 2017 resignation from the City Commission came after it was revealed he’d accepted $25,000 from a non-American donor, through another donor, while running for Mayor. He said he didn’t know the contribution had ties to an organization suspected of soliciting funds from foreign nationals.

Once a six-month probation barring him from running for office expired, he ran for and won the seat representing House District 113. Voters re-elected him in 2020.

But the incident still trailed him into this year. In January, a judge recommended that the Florida Bar suspend Grieco’s law license for 90 days as further punishment. So far, there’s been no action on the recommendation by the Florida Supreme Court, which is responsible for final judgment.

Grieco last month drew negative attention after leaked Miami Beach police footage showed he had lost a handgun at a city park on Aug. 13. The video, shared with news outlets, showed a woman turning in a bag containing several identifying items of Grieco’s and a loaded Glock 43 at a city police station.

Grieco said the bag “was stolen and within less than an hour found safely at the police station.” He added that the police video was released in violation of Florida’s Marsy’s Law, which affords crime victims confidentiality.

Another gun belonging to Grieco remains unaccounted for three years after he reported it stolen from a rental car he used to drive home from Tallahassee.

Roedy called for Grieco to drop out of the race. He said Grieco, an outspoken opponent of Florida’s new permitless carry law, displayed a “glaring lack of judgment” for a recently lost gun.

Scant polling data was shared this election cycle to indicate whom voters preferred in the Mayor’s race. A 2022 survey Grieco’s campaign commissioned and shared in February found Grieco held citywide favorability across political lines and demographics, particularly among Jewish residents and those 50 or older.

Roedy, 75, is a former entertainment executive who positioned himself in the race as a “political outsider.”

He was a first-time candidate going into Election Day and the only one for whom the Mayor’s job would be full-time.

Retired since 2010, Roedy was also the only military veteran in the race. He volunteered during the Vietnam War, serving there and at three NATO nuclear missile bases in Italy and reaching the rank of captain.

His prior government experience included service as the first ambassador of UNAIDS, a United Nations joint venture focused on fighting AIDS worldwide.

Roedy’s website boasted a broad campaign platform. He called for a 10% increase to Miami Beach Police Department resources, opening a real-time traffic center and the formation of a “detective force, inspired by anti-terrorism and crowd control” units, to deal with crime in the city.

He also wanted to impose a moratorium high-rise developments in Miami Beach until a new study of infrastructural, transit and environmental needs can be conducted; bring in the “best and brightest world-level experts” to strengthen city infrastructure against sea level rise; address roadway congestion through a “real-time traffic center” and limiting non-residential parking to garages; and prioritize construction of affordable housing for the elderly, disabled and low-income families.

Roedy was a largely self-reliant fundraiser. His campaign account took in $2.57 million. Of that, all but roughly $20,000 came from his bank account.

Meanwhile his political committee, Miami Beach Leadership in Action, amassed $83,500 from nine deep-pocketed donors, less than half of whom listed Miami Beach as their home address.

In early October, the Miami Herald questioned Roedy’s claim of being a long-term Miami Beach resident. Roedy graduated from North Miami High School, and his campaign website says he and his wife have lived in Miami Beach since 1999. But he also said in a 2021 podcast that he has British citizenship and lived in London for more than three decades.

He’s since told the Herald he spent “at least four months of the year” in Miami Beach during that span.

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