Our own Joe shines again in Miami race
October 2, 1989
Somebody Up There must love newspaper columnists because an amazing thing has happened.
He's baaaaaaack.
Joe Carollo. Popping out of his manhole like a jack-in-the-box. To run for the Miami City Commission again!
Thank you, God. Things had gotten so dull lately—we needed to be reminded of the bad old days, when city government was a circus and Joe was the head clown. Sure, there's still back-alley politics, but today it's all so tame and … civilized.
In a sick way, we missed Carollo. He was such great copy, guaranteed to say something indefensibly dumb, paranoid or just plain crass.
Joe claims he's mellowed, but don't bet on it. In this new campaign he's challenging the city's only elected black commissioner, and already Carollo has gone on Spanish-language radio likening his opponent to a common street looter.
Vintage Joe. This is the same sensitive fellow who once compared a black city manager to Idi Amin.
Ah, what memories.
Carollo saw spies and counterspies and Communists everywhere, and claimed to have a dashboard bomb detector in his car. He once offered to tell a Senate committee how Fidel Castro's agents had infiltrated the Miami Police Department.
Another time, Joe torpedoed a big Sister Cities convention planned for Miami after learning that a few of the participants came from Eastern bloc countries. Reds!
Not that Carollo didn't have a warm spot for some foreign visitors. Miss Universe contestants, for example. Joe nearly tripped over his agenda in a rush to pose for snapshots with visiting beauty queens.
And when Sheik Mohammed al-Fassi and his wealthy entourage blew into town, Joe tagged along like a drooling puppy, offering the key to the city and (not incidentally) the services of his own private security firm. Any normal person would have been embarrassed, but not Joe.
Who can forget that gloriously despicable double cross of Maurice Ferre during the 1983 mayor's race—Ferre, calling a press conference to trumpet Carollo's endorsement, only to watch Joe trash him mercilessly in front of the assembled media. Poor old Maurice looked like he'd swallowed a bad clam.
Some politicians can legitimately claim stupidity as an excuse, but not Carollo. His reckless words were unforgivable because he knew exactly what he was doing—appealing to the most primitive of voters' fears and biases. He once said: "Sometimes when people are trying to divert attention, they create ridiculous situations and allegations."
People finally figured out that Joe was talking about himself. By the end of his miserable tenure, he had offended, slandered and nauseated the multitudes and gained a statewide reputation as a venal backwater McCarthy—or worse, a parody of one. Even the staunchest of anti-Communist organizations repudiated his tactics.
Carollo's name was such political poison that people who didn't even live in Miami wanted to move here, just so they could vote against him. In 1987, he lost in a muckslide.
Ironically, the only commissioner in recent years to act as preposterously as Joe is the man he's running against, Miller Dawkins.
It was Dawkins who declared that Ronald Reagan created the plight of the homeless "when he fired the air traffic controllers." It was Dawkins who asked if it was legal to build a tall fence around the Camillus House to protect downtown Miami from the poor and the hungry who stay there.
And it was Dawkins who vowed to prevent an AIDS counseling center from opening near Overtown—"if I have to break the law and get the brothers out there and burn it down."
At these moments it seemed like Dawkins was striving to fill the void of crudity left by Carollo, or perhaps trying to eclipse the legend himself.
But, of course, that's impossible. There's only one Joe and he's ours again, at least until November—back in the headlines, back on the talk shows, back in the glare of the TV lights.
Our own little media monster, back from the bogs.