The blogger-retaliatin', Happy Holidays sign swindlin', possibly ethics and campaign finance violatin' reign of North Miami Beach Mayor Myron Rosner has come to an end.
Rosner lost a runoff vote last night to activist George Vallejo, who picked up 57 percent of the ballots cast. Au revoir, Myron! We'll miss the entertaining shenanigans.
Rosner, a general contractor, won his civic seat atop the 38,000-strong town in 2009, and almost from the start his tenure was defined by a particularly ornery set of critics and naysayers.
Soon after taking office, residents filed complaints that he'd illegally renovated his home without getting the proper permits, a charge that led to a Miami-Dade ethics board investigation.
A local blogger named Stephanie Kienzle added to his woes, blogging daily against his administration at her site, votersopinion.com. Her complaints that his "Happy Holidays" bus bench ads amounted to illegal campaigning drew the Miami Herald into the fray.
Rosner was eventually so fed up with the criticism that he apparently let loose his building department against Kienzle and former Mayor Raymond Marin; Rosner admitted to Riptide that he'd filed code complaints against them, but says he did so as a private citizen, not the mayor.
If his aim was to silence Kienzle, it didn't work. Last month, she filed two complaints with the elections commission charging that Rosner under-reported the cost of his bus bench ads.
Now Rosner is no more. Hey George Vallejo -- you might want to add "making friends with the blogosphere" toward the top of your new mayoral priority list.
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