When You Strike at a King You Must Kill Him

The black-oriented weekly newspaper Miami Times helped fuel speculation that the motives of the recall committee were not legitimate. One editorial headlined "You're a good man, Arthur Teele" had this to say: "The recall effort is a shoddy operation at best, with a smattering of support from a few duplicitous activists who may or may not have the community's best interest at heart." Were McKnight, Crespo, and Jones simply knocking down one king in order to prop up their own political ambitions? Even moderates like Rev. Jimmie Brown had to wonder. "Something just doesn't seem to gel," he mused. "I wonder if there were political ambitions amongst the 'activists.' Were they really trying to do what's best for Overtown or simply looking for 'fifteen minutes' of news coverage?"

The rumors eventually led to the breakup of the recall committee. Soon after the Martin Luther King, Jr., parade in Liberty City, Leroy Jones and associates from Brothers of the Same Mind confronted McKnight and Crespo with the scuttlebutt they'd heard about one or both of them intending to run for Teele's seat. Recall committee members had earlier agreed that none of them would become candidates because it would taint the process. Jones and crew didn't want to risk their credibility on a couple of political hucksters. "To help them run -- that ain't why I got in the recall," says Jones.

McKnight assured them he and Crespo were not candidates. "Irby McKnight isn't interested in being a public servant," he declares to anyone who asks. The Brothers didn't buy it. "I'm not going to criticize the effort or the members," Jones now says. "I still believe in the effort. Teele wasn't helping his constituents."

Crespo's political aspirations vary, depending on when and how he's asked about them. Most often he says he's not interested in being a city commissioner. But when pressed... "If I wanted to run, I could run for the seat and I would guarantee that Irby and those guys would support me," Crespo lets slip one day over raw fish at Sushi Siam. "Just like if Irby would run, then I'd support him." What about the credibility factor? Crespo has a solution. "If you were to be a spin doctor and wanted to change that, you just hold a press conference and bring out a whole lot of people who are urging you to run."

It's this sort of thing that clouded and complicated the stated mission of the recall committee. "This is a ragtag, unlikely group," admits Del Bryan, age 62, a round-faced Jamaican with bifocals who slightly resembles James Earl Jones (he's also been mistaken for the ghost of Dewey Knight, Sr.). "Here I am with an ex-con [Jones] I love, Irby the rebel who shoots off his mouth, and Crespo, who has his own ambitions. I'm the pain in the ass who kept things focused." Bryan heads the condo association at Poinciana Village, the much-delayed first project initiated in Overtown by the CRA in the late Eighties. Bryan bought a condo there in 1993 to be close to his job and because he thought redevelopment would improve the neighborhood. Bryan and his condo association members have fought with Teele over money they believe the CRA still owes them, but Teele thinks they should press the condo developer for it. Bryan believes this is Teele's way of assuring that the project fails and comes back under his control. Bryan says that despite disparate backgrounds and motives for joining the recall, the members shared a genuine frustration at the lack of accountability and responsiveness they observed in Teele. "The conventional wisdom was that we would fail," he allows.

The group also had difficulty funding the campaign. According to filings with the city clerk, as of December 31 the recall committee had raised just $3120. Of that, developer Martin Margulies, who locked horns with Teele while trying to build a youth center in Overtown, gave $1000. A few hundred dollars were contributed by Little Haiti business owners who oppose a 60-acre park proposed by Teele. Most of the rest of the money came out of recall members' pockets. The oddest contribution, though, had to be the $20 the group received from former commissioner and convicted felon Miller Dawkins. Crespo claims that many more people expressed an interest in supporting the recall but didn't want their names to show up in the campaign reports for fear of provoking the famously certain retribution of Teele. "There's a lot of people who want him out, but they want to throw the rock and hide the hand," he shrugs.

Marvin Dunn, a Florida International University professor and recognized historian of black Miami, says the recall effort ultimately failed because its scope was too limited to attract broad support -- and because it didn't offer a viable alternative to Art Teele. In addition, he doesn't see the recall as the beginning of a rebirth of local black activism. "Art, he's not been perfect in office," Dunn acknowledges. "He's hard to get hold of, et cetera. People may not be exactly happy with him, but he's done nothing so egregious as to cause a huge outcry. It will take far more than the issue of the parking lots to do that."