Chris Korge has been called a lot of things over the years, but here’s a new one: radio magnate. Last month Korge became president of Radio Partners, a group that owns Radio Uno (WKAT-AM 1360), a Spanish-language station catering primarily to Colombians. Korge and his partners bought the station in…
Earlier this month state Rep. Frank Arza performed a modest act of heroism by walking into the New World School of the Arts and addressing an assembly of several hundred students and faculty. Everyone in the auditorium that day knew the legislature was recommending cutting the state’s allocation to the…
What do you call a Republican who is pro-choice, supports the National Rifle Association and gay rights, and believes in treatment over incarceration for juveniles but is considered to have one of the worst voting records in the state on environmental issues? In Miami we call him Gus. State Rep…
Within political circles the buzz is almost deafening: “What’s wrong with Penelas?” “Has Miami-Dade’s boy-king lost his mind?” “Is the mayor off his medication or what?” All around town people are asking the same questions following a month in which every decision Alex Penelas made left even the most sophisticated…
The rationale for rejecting Homestead Air Force Base as the site for a new commercial airport was both forceful and unambiguous. “Special circumstances exist regarding the Homestead property,” the U.S. Air Force concluded. “It is proximate to and located between two national parks. The parks are under assault from urbanization…
“I need a drink.” Walking out of the ballroom, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt was feeling a little parched after speaking to more than 400 environmentalists Friday evening at the sixteenth annual conference of the Everglades Coalition. The coalition, composed of more than 40 environmental groups across the nation, was meeting…
Two weeks after Hurricane Andrew ripped through South Florida, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton toured the hardest-hit areas of Homestead and Florida City. “We have more tornadoes in our state, and I’ve seen a lot of little towns leveled,” he offered in September 1992. “But I’ve never seen anything of this…
With the decision on the future of Homestead Air Force Base now less than three weeks away, newspapers around the state have begun publishing editorials urging President Clinton to kill Miami-Dade County’s efforts to transform the base into a major commercial airport. The editorials reflect growing public sentiment that an…
As Bill Clinton’s presidency draws to a close, one of his last acts will be to decide the future of Homestead Air Force Base. Miami-Dade County is pushing to have the base turned into a major commercial airport, while environmentalists oppose such a plan, arguing the base’s location between Everglades…
Less than 24 hours before the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board met to halt the manual recount of ballots in the presidential race — a decision that all but doomed Al Gore’s chances of winning the White House — Alex Penelas was dining with a Republican state legislator at the Governor’s…
Lost amid the hullabaloo over Florida’s presidential recount is this profound fact: The only reason Al Gore is within a few hundred ballots of George W. Bush is the historic turnout among Florida’s black voters. According to election analysts, blacks cast between fifteen and sixteen percent of all votes in…
Three weeks before election day, Al Gore dispatched some of his top advisors to South Florida to shore up support among environmentalists. With Green Party candidate Ralph Nader looming larger and larger in the final weeks of the campaign, Gore needed to make sure his own base was secure within…
Where’s Alex? In the midst of the closest presidential election in U.S. history, at a time when the eyes of the world are riveted on South Florida, our sexy little mayor is nowhere to be found. And I’m concerned. I fear that Alex Penelas may be thinking about ending it…
Generally I’m no fan of lawyers. And as a rule I’d say we live in society that is far too litigious. But show me a lawsuit in which one lawyer is suing another lawyer, in which both lawyers are high-profile county hall lobbyists, and damn it, that’s a cause of…
In the interest of full disclosure, I should acknowledge I didn’t care for the Cub Scouts. My den mother was the wife of my Little League baseball coach, and while she was probably a good woman, at the time I thought she was a thief who was squirreling away my…
Every Sunday for the past ten years, Art Buonamia and his wife, Marisa, drove from their home in Kendall to attend Mass at the Shrine of Saint Philomena Church in Little Havana. “They still do the Mass in Latin,” explains Buonamia, an Italian from New York who moved to Miami…
Alex Penelas is a politician who never loses but rarely succeeds. He’s won every race he has ever entered, whether it was for Hialeah City Council or the Miami-Dade County Commission. Four years ago he took the grand prize of South Florida politics, becoming the first executive mayor of Miami-Dade…
Despite what most people probably believe, the defining moment of Alex Penelas’s tenure as Miami-Dade County mayor was not that infamous press conference in front of the federal courthouse on March 29. Certainly his conduct that day was revelatory of his character, or lack of it. Standing outside the courthouse,…
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle has asked the governor to appoint a special prosecutor to review allegations that the presidents of Florida International University and Miami-Dade Community College violated the state’s campaign finance laws during last year’s failed effort to raise the sales tax by a penny in order…
During the past three decades, Miami International Airport has had three directors: Dick Judy, Rick Elder, and Gary Dellapa. Judy oversaw MIA during the glory days, from 1971 to 1989, and was responsible for building the airport into one of the nation’s largest. Judy ruled the place as if it…
I don’t know if Miami Police Ofcr. Jesse Aguero and Miami-Dade Police Det. Laura Russell have ever met, or even if they know each other. But I do know they have one thing in common: They are both killers. Aguero is one of the most notorious cops in the City…
These are rough days for the City of Miami’s police department. The Elian Gonzalez affair cost them a chief and a major. The chief, William O’Brien, resigned in disgust after Miami Mayor Joe Carollo tried to have him fired for not alerting him in advance to the INS raid on…
