Critics point to the Breakfast Club as the primary wellspring for the SunPost's story ideas. At the very least, the club is the choir to which the newspaper preaches.
On this particular Tuesday morning at Puerto Sagua restaurant, the menu includes huevos revueltos, grits, cafe con leche, and Miami Beach Development Corporation (MBDC) president Denis Russ. The dozen or so men and one woman seated at the rear corner table of the Cuban eatery are core members of the club, which regularly hosts public officials for breakfast. Several of the group's more rabid members are slavering at the prospect of taking a bite out of the beefy, bearded Russ.
Russ's MBDC, a nonprofit that distributes federal money to disadvantaged areas of Miami Beach, has long been a favorite snack for this crowd, as well as for the SunPost. The club and the SunPost, for example, hated the city's short-lived special taxing districts, which MBDC championed.
A.C. Weinstein, who says he tries to make it to these breakfasts at least once a month, isn't here today. Too bad: He once called Russ "Denis the Menace" in a column. But Russ is by no means safe.
Indeed, the natives look especially restless. Hotel owner David Kelsey is sullen and cheerless in his short-sleeve olive-drab shirt. Gray-suited developer/attorney Kent Harrison Robbins is coiled in his chair. Bea Kalstein, the venerable "Queen Bea" whose tremulous yet piercing voice haunts city commission meetings, munches her French fries.
Russ begins his presentation, but club secretary and former mayoral candidate Michael Burke immediately asks him to move from the end of the long table to the middle. "We can all get a better shot at you there," he jokes. Only he isn't joking. Russ moves, and the shots follow.
When Russ makes the mistake of mentioning the negative coverage his group has received from the SunPost, the paper's amen corner springs into action. "I don't think this is the right forum for you to bash the SunPost," warns the bulldoglike Kelsey. "We're not a negative group; we're not here to roast you, or Neisen Kasdin, or New Times, which has a pretty checkered past if you really want to get right down to it." The wiry, tightly wound Robbins takes a turn, lambasting an MBDC-funded low-income housing project that cost $137,000 per unit to rehabilitate -- about which a story recently ran in the SunPost.
For the next hour Russ takes his lumps from a group that doesn't seem to approve of public money being spent for anything.
Burke, who helped found the unofficial club, boasts that of the 22 people who ran for office in Miami Beach last year (himself included), 8 were members of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club. Two of those members, David Dermer and Simon Cruz, are now on the city commission. And as for the local paper? "I think their coverage has been brilliant," he says. "A.C. and Sasser and Erik have really covered the commission like a blanket. I don't always agree with their positions, certainly, but the depth and accuracy of their coverage has been excellent."
Robbins, who advertised extensively in the SunPost last year to bash any candidate Save Miami Beach didn't like, allows that the Breakfast Club and the SunPost are often of similar minds about what's important on the Beach. (In addition to buying ads deriding politicians, Robbins also fights city hall by suing it -- mostly over a 22-story condo he wants to build on Collins Avenue at 76th Street.)
"I will say this: Without the SunPost, there would be no reform movement as it is today," he asserts. "I think people who question the legitimacy of the SunPost are attacking it for bringing to light the bad deals the city has gotten into. Though [the paper] has been a little rough sometimes, I've never seen it be unfair. It's the responsible newspaper this community absolutely needs.
