Will Diaz de la Portilla overcome criminal charges, suspension to win reelection?

A bitter campaign to represent a working-class swath of Miami is being waged in the shadow of criminal charges against suspended Miami Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla, who wants voters to give him another four years in office.

Accused of illegal campaign schemes and selling his vote for political contributions, the well-known politician has cast the corruption charges and his removal this September as Miami’s District 1 commissioner as political persecution. He pleaded not guilty to the charges last week — though he did not attend the court hearing because he was campaigning, according to his attorney.

The scandal looms large as voters decide between reelecting Díaz de la Portilla, 59, or anointing a new representative for Allapattah, Flagami, Grapeland Heights, the Health District and parts of Little Havana. With Election Day on Nov. 7, he faces four challengers: Miguel Angel Gabela, Francisco “Frank” Pichel, Mercedes “Merci” Rodriguez and Marvin Tapia.

Díaz de la Portilla could be vulnerable, despite widespread name recognition thanks to decades of campaigns, a previous stint in the Florida Senate and his brothers’ own political accomplishments. He’s endured multiple controversies since his 2019 election, and a once-healthy stream of political contributions appears to have dried up following his arrest last month.

There’s also the question of whether Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would suspend the commissioner a second time were he to be reelected, as then-Gov. Charlie Crist did in 2009 with then-Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones. (She was ultimately acquitted and then reinstated after charges from a second case were dropped.)

But he is confident, predicting that he will “win big.” He entered election season with as much as $1.5 million to spend. He’s flooding mailboxes, radio airwaves, television screens and text message threads with attacks on his opponents and the man prosecuting him, Broward State Attorney Harold Pryor.

DLP’s term

Díaz de la Portilla declined to share his top accomplishments or his plan for a second term with the Miami Herald.

In his four years at City Hall, Díaz de la Portilla led a push to regulate the use of motorized scooters, sponsored the expansion of a COVID-relief gift card program, and advocated for the city to drop its longtime opposition to medical marijuana dispensaries inside city limits.

He was a key vote in favor of a major redevelopment project in District 1, the plan to build a commercial center and Major League Soccer stadium to host home games for Inter Miami. The project, divisive among residents, did have support from some people who live in Grapeland Heights, the neighborhood directly next to the site for the redevelopment.

Díaz de la Portilla’s term has been marked by scandal. He was spotted at an illegal late-night party in February 2021, when Miami-Dade County still had a curfew in place to limit the spread of COVID-19. His presence at the unlicensed nightclub in Allapattah was revealed as part of a dispute with a code enforcement officer who accused him of “poking and pushing” her. Police body camera footage showed no physical contact between the two. The code enforcement officer was later fired.

Read more: Alex Díaz de la Portilla’s political career is marked by both power and conflict

In March 2021, the other commissioners unceremoniously stripped Díaz de la Portilla of his position as chairman of a tax-funded redevelopment agency amid another controversy. It was revealed that he had secured a $53,000-a-year job at the agency for a friend who had recently left federal prison, where she served time for mortgage fraud.

The friend, Jenny Nillo, rarely showed up for work, according to her former bosses. A Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation found that while on the clock, she drank beers in a city vehicle, delivered alcohol to Díaz de la Portilla’s home and picked up his dry cleaning. After Nillo was fired, Díaz de la Portilla hired her to work in his district office and defended her while pushing back against accusations that he abused his power as a commissioner. He currently faces a formal charge by the Miami-Dade County Commission on Ethics & Public Trust. The ethics case is pending.

Months before his election in 2019, a home Díaz de la Portilla owned with his ex-wife was foreclosed. After years of legal back-and-forth, the home is now set to go to auction on Nov. 15, according to court records.

Familiar opponent

When Díaz de la Portilla was a front-runner during his 2019 campaign, he would say he didn’t need to attack his opponents, remarking that it’s only in the movies that cowboys shoot backwards at their pursuers.

By his own measure, he’s at least looking over his shoulder this year.

So far, Díaz de la Portilla has focused more of his campaign on Gabela, an auto-parts salesman who specializes in repairing and restoring Jaguars. In attack ads, a political committee supporting Díaz de la Portilla claims that Gabela, 59, is an abusive landlord who earlier this year evicted a mother and two special-needs children from a duplex he owns. Public records, however, show an eviction was never carried out.

“She left on good terms. I want to make that clear,” Gabela said in an interview. “I did not evict her or ask her to leave.”

Gabela, who lost to Díaz de la Portilla in 2019, said he waited 10 months without receiving rent before giving his former tenant a notice to pay. He says he only initiated formal eviction proceedings after his tenant’s social worker told him it would help expedite the tenant’s application for emergency rental assistance from the city of Miami.

According to the city administration, Gabela received $14,270 in June to cover the tenant’s past-due rent. The Herald reviewed proof of payment provided by Gabela. Miami-Dade Circuit Court records show Gabela voluntarily dismissed the case after he and the tenant “amicably settled” the rent matter once the city program paid him. Gabela said the tenant moved out on her own volition on July 4.

The tenant and her social worker did not respond to the Herald’s multiple requests for interviews.

The unit, an upstairs apartment in a duplex Gabela owns, became Gabela’s new home in the middle of the legal battle over the city’s voting map.

In June, the City Commission, including Díaz de la Portilla, redrew the voting map in a way that excluded a single-family home Gabela owns from District 1. The new map was drawn under a court order as part of a separate, ongoing redistricting lawsuit.

His duplex is in the District 1 boundaries under the June map. After briefly advertising the vacant apartment on Craigslist, he moved into the unit in August, days before the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the map that includes the duplex in District 1 would be used for the election.

Gabela, now on his fourth bid for the City Commission, has been campaigning since February, and he’s calling for a back-to-basics approach to representing District 1.

“There’s a lot of work to be done in Allapattah, Flagami and Grapeland,” Gabela told the Herald. He said the district’s sidewalks, streets and storm drains need improvements.

Gabela is juggling the campaign with a lawsuit he filed to challenge the city’s map that drew him out of the district. The pending case will determine if votes cast for Gabela will count. A Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge ruled in Gabela’s favor, but the city appealed. Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal is reviewing the case.

New challengers

Díaz de la Portilla has drawn three new challengers who say they want to move the district and the city away from controversy and negative headlines.

“My biggest goal is bridging the gap between our commissioners and in our residents,” said Marvin Tapia, a 36-year-old business investor and political newcomer.

Tapia, the chairman of Miami-Dade County’s Hispanic Affairs Advisory Board and a spokesman for Viernes Culturales, said he’s a big advocate for the arts and that he wants more police on District 1 streets.

Another newcomer, Mercedes “Merci” Rodriguez, jumped into the campaign just before the end of the qualifying period in September. A longtime Miami-Dade County employee, Rodriguez said she would focus on expanding affordable housing and promoting economic development in District 1, which has some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the city.

“We have the issue of crime. We have the issue of lighting and sidewalks and infrastructure,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez has connections to Díaz de la Portilla that date back decades — she said their families attended the same grade school. He appointed her to the city’s planning board, the Miami River Commission, and the Bayfront Park Management Trust. She told the Herald she asked to be appointed to these boards, and her goal was to help to represent District 1. She said that Díaz de la Portilla was not aware she planned to run.

“I decided to run. I didn’t tell anybody. And when I did it, I did it very quietly. And yes he found out, and no he did not like it,” Rodriguez said. “I stood my ground. I believe that I am the best candidate.”

In 2017, Rodriguez filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which allows someone with regular income to develop a plan to repay all or part of their debts in three to five years. She was about $2,700 in debt to a Storage Mart in Southwest Miami-Dade. After taking a personal financial management course and paying off her debts in monthly installments that concluded in September 2022, the bankruptcy was closed in February this year, court records show.

In an interview, she said she had financial problems due to a medical illness.

Francisco “Frank” Pichel is also running for the District 1 seat again after a failed bid in 2019. Pichel is a licensed private investigator and former Miami city police officer who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2021.

In an interview, Pichel said he is running because the city is completely mismanaged under poor leadership.

“The whole system’s corrupt,” he said. “They’re not interested in serving the people. They’re only interested in enriching themselves.”

Pichel has a long, colorful history in Miami politics. During his 2021 mayor campaign, he was arrested in the Florida Keys after he was accused of impersonating a police officer while staking out a Key Largo home where Mayor Francis Suarez and his family were vacationing. Monroe County court records show prosecutors declined to file charges due to lack of evidence. The case was dropped in February 2022.

Pichel said he was investigating Suarez’s use of sergeants-at-arms, the mayor’s tax-funded police protection, who had traveled with him on his vacation. He said the city pressured Monroe County to file charges.

“The charges were dismissed, but they did it anyway,” he said.

While he was on the police force in 2000, he was suspended when was accused of instructing a public service aide to file a false police report to cover up a police beating that led to a prisoner’s death. Pichel was not charged. He was suspended again in 2003 after allegedly leaking information to the Herald about the city’s questionable handling of evidence during the search for a serial rapist. After being reinstated, he lost a whistleblower’s lawsuit against the city.

When he was a sergeant-at-arms in City Hall in 2008, he was accused of selling small amounts of steroids and Cialis, an erectile dysfunction drug. Prosecutors later dropped felony charges as part of a plea deal in which Pichel agreed to give up his police license.