"Political B.S.": Surfside Stops Short of Condemning Mayor Over Prejudiced "Spanish" Comment

During a commission meeting last month, Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger was speaking about extending elected officials' terms when commissioner Nelly Velasquez interjected to voice her displeasure.

"Commissioner, please stop interrupting," Danzinger said. "OK, does anybody know how to speak Spanish to tell it to her? Because I've said it like four times."

The comment sparked outrage throughout the community, with residents calling the remark racist. Velasquez, a Hispanic resident born in the U.S. who "speaks English perfectly," told reporters the comment was humiliating and insulting.

The mayor initially doubled down before issuing a public apology on the dais at the next meeting. He told the Miami Herald he thought the commissioner was having trouble understanding and wondered if it was a language barrier. Velasquez proposed a resolution to condemn the mayor's actions through a public censure as part of the fallout.

"Mayor Danzinger's behavior and comments have resulted in the Miami Herald's editorial board having to instruct Mr. Danzinger that 'racist insults and sexist remarks reveal themselves in subtle ways,' including 'the slip of a tongue,'" the resolution reads. "The town commission wishes to declare and establish that the town commission does not, in any way, shape, or form, condone or accept Mayor Danzinger's aforementioned behavior."

In her introduction of the item at the commission meeting last night, September 12, Velasquez said she was "highly offended" by the mayor's remark and said his apology was insufficient.

"No person deserves to be humiliated at a public meeting by a mayor," she said. "This personal attack went far beyond just me...He revealed his disdain for women, generally, and Hispanics, specifically...This is not political. This is about right and wrong. Saying it is political is simply a weak excuse for not standing up and not doing the right thing."

After hours of bickering and throwing verbal jabs at one another, the commission rejected the proposal. Only commissioners Velasquez and Marianne Meischeid voted in favor of the condemnation. The vote was taken shortly after midnight following a meeting packed with yelling that nearly erupted into chaos throughout the night.

"It is a serious issue," Meischeid said. "To vote against it is to condone the remarks."

Commissioner Fred Landsman and Vice Mayor Jeffrey Rose voiced their disapproval of the item as they claimed it was politically motivated. Rose claimed it was "B.S." because Danzinger's rival, former Surfside mayor Charles Burkett, helped write the resolution.

"It is political," Landsman said. "You have the right to like or dislike what we say. That is your prerogative. I don't think censure is appropriate at this point."

Resident and former commissioner Eliana Salzhauer said she had hoped there would be "three voices of reason and sanity" to condemn the mayor for his insulting comment.

"I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that Fred Landsman will turn on Shlomo and Jeff Rose," she told New Times ahead of the vote. "They have a lock on all decisions. They are a developer's dream team."

Salzhauer had been censured when she was commissioner after she flashed the middle finger during a town Zoom meeting. She pointed out that fellow elected officials with whom she typically aligned on the dais even voted for it — a move she did not expect, she said.

"This was an outright racist statement that the mayor made, and there's no way to sugarcoat that," she said before the meeting. "There needs to be three voices of reason up there who would stand up and say, 'Shame on you.' But unfortunately, I don't have any faith that they would do that because they see themselves as this voting bloc that delivers favors for the developers and don't want any cracks in that wall."

Resident Gerardo Vildostegui said the censure was necessary because the mayor's apology — in which he said he regretted "not choosing [his] words more carefully" — focused on how he lost his composure rather than addressing the hurt he caused to the Hispanic community.