If Trump’s ‘swamp’ is a real thing, South Florida is neck deep in it | Opinion
It may be hard to connect the dots between South Florida politics, the rise of Donald Trump, Jan. 6 and the threats to our democracy. But the Miami Herald’s continuing reporting about influence peddling in local politics and the sketchy relationship between a developer and the mayors of two of our biggest cities points to why some Americans are growing disillusioned with representative democracy.
Wealthy people have always tried — often succeeding — to buy influence through political donations and by schmoozing with elected officials. But lately, it seems that Miami politics have come to resemble what Trump would call the “swamp,” where politicians appear to trade their influence for financial rewards.
The Herald reported in late December about developer Rishi Kapoor’s steps to cozy up to Mayor Francis Suarez by hiring him as a $10,000-a-month consultant while Kapoor’s company tried to change city rules to build a $70 million residential and retail complex in Coconut Grove. Kapoor bragged about dinner and cigars at Suarez’s home and told investors the mayor would help them overcome regulatory hurdles at City Hall, though Suarez denies helping with the project.
When Kapoor wanted to build a high-rise condo project in downtown Coral Gables, he leased a vacant building from Gables Mayor Vince Lago and his business partners to serve as a nearby showroom. When Kapoor’s company closed on the Ponce de Leon property, a $640,000 closing fee went to the real brokerage firm owned by former Hialeah Councilman Oscar de la Rosa.
To sum it up, Kapoor’s companies are connected to about $1 million in payments to business and campaign accounts linked to Miami-area politicians. The Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen Kapoor’s bank accounts and accused him of cheating investors out of millions of dollars.
Suarez and Lago have both said they have done nothing wrong, though the consulting payments Suarez received are now under federal investigation. Even if no laws were broken, the impression of impropriety is enough to make many Miamians lose trust in their government. It defies common sense to believe that Suarez would’ve been hired as a consultant were he not the mayor of South Florida’s largest city, or that the renting of Lago’s property is a mere coincidence. Lago told the Herald in October he was no longer Kapoor’s landlord.
Miami’s problems go beyond corruption in the traditional sense of politicians taking bribes, as former Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla was accused of doing when he was arrested in September. A sophisticated web of connections between elected officials, developers and other business interests is more persistent and harder to combat.
How can you then convince Miamians to be more engaged in the political process when there is a sense of inevitability in the way our politicians behave? Less than 15% of eligible voters have cast ballots in recent elections, and it is in some politicians’ best interest to leave things that way.
What is happening in South Florida, of course, is not exclusively a Miami problem. This is what Trump talked about in 2016 when he bluntly described how, as a businessman, he bought influence through political donations to both parties. The former president capitalized on Americans’ growing skepticism that government is looking out for regular people. Without such distrust, Trump wouldn’t have been able to convince so many voters that election officials in several states conspired to steal the 2020 elections and incite his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the certification of the elections.
It might seem like a stretch to connect Kapoor’s endeavors to curry favor with South Florida’s officials to the ongoing threats to American democracy. But, as an old saying goes, all politics is local: People usually trust local government more than they do Congress or the White House. If voters no longer believe their mayors, council and commission members, will they ever trust politicians in distant Washington, D.C., or officials in charge of elections in Michigan or Pennsylvania?
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