Miami Transformed. Manny Diaz
campaigns.
The electoral process was itself a game, even before qualifying to run. The game was to succeed in running unopposed. For the most part, only a handful of people actually ran for judicial office. There were plenty of seats and only a few candidates. Naturally, Cuban American candidates would be vulnerable in any race with even a handful of candidates.
Here is an illustration of the game. In order to protect the few Cuban American incumbents and candidates, I was required to meet with a political operative who for years had been the behind-the-scenes kingpin of judicial campaigns. He singlehandedly decided which candidates run for which seats. He would threaten me with running his candidate(s) against one of the Cuban Americans. Of course, if we retained his services, our candidate stood a much better chance of running unopposed. Committed to breaking down this long-standing, albeit pathetic practice, our candidates refused to pay his fees and instead relied on me to play poker with the operative. Since he represented candidates running for other offices, I would match his threat with an equal threat, that we would rally the Cuban American community in opposition to his other candidates. Of course, this was a complete bluff; I had no such power. I don’t believe anyone has that power.
But, we had to play the game. The final test of our efforts would occur on the last day of qualifying. At this point, candidates wishing to qualify would have to appear physically in Tallahassee, our state capital, and file their papers by noon. The game went down to the wire as the operatives and potential candidates walked the halls at the very last minute, trying to determine whom to run against. I would stand outside the secretary of state’s office all morning, waiting and watching to see which candidates were running for judge. Rumors were rampant, and in the end we learned how the game was played and how to win. I am so proud of that early group of Cuban American judges and candidates—Mario Goderich, Maria Korvick, Gisella Cardonne Dienstag, Margarita Esquiroz, and others. They served or continue to serve us with great distinction and in the process refused to be threatened by the old political system and stood on their principles. And in so doing, they virtually eliminated the game and paved the way for many others who followed them onto the bench. Being adequately represented in the judiciary by reflecting the community it represents is absolutely critical in ensuring a fair and just society.
While fighting for Cuban American judicial candidates, I also turned my attention to the Florida Legislature and the creation of single-member districts: districts where people elect only one person to represent them in a legislative body. Our success in this area helped not only Cuban Americans, but African Americans as well.
The Florida Legislature was dominated by white males. The system of multimember districts had made it impossible for Cuban Americans and other minorities to win a legislative seat. There simply were not enough pockets of minority voters located within these large districts. Single-member districts were the only plausible solution to achieve minority representation in the legislature. Again, I spent a significant amount of time lobbying in Tallahassee. Ironically, I met a considerable amount of resistance from my own local delegation made up almost exclusively of Democrats. I was well aware of the fact that one of the by-products of single-member districts would likely be the election of Cuban American Republicans—which is in fact what later happened. Nevertheless, this issue was about principle; from a policy point of view, single-member districts are essential to achieve diversity in Tallahassee. This was my priority. Separately, it would be up to the Democrats and Republicans to elect their candidates. But that should not detract from the goal.
We succeeded in persuading the legislature to adopt single-member districts. This could not have happened without the leadership of the Senate president, a conservative Southern Democrat from the Florida panhandle, Dempsey Barron. After spending a considerable amount of time with him, I became convinced that he truly believed in our goals and that he very much wanted this legislation to serve as his legacy for Florida. He was willing to overlook plenty, both personally and politically. Yet even when some of my Democratic friends from South Florida tried to circumvent the process, he would call them on the carpet in front of me and admonish them in his deep Southern drawl, “Heard y’all are tryin’ to do this. That’s not gonna happen.”
After the legislation passed in 1982, we elected our first Cuban Americans to the Florida Legislature, Ileana Ros Lehtinen (now in Congress), Humberto Cortina, and Lincoln Diaz Balart (recently retired from Congress). Equally as important to me, we also saw the election of Carrie Meek, the first African American since Reconstruction to become a member of the Florida Senate and later the U.S. House of Representatives (her son, Kendrick, later occupied her seat and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate). The Florida Legislature today is much more reflective of Florida’s diverse population. This was made possible by the passage of the legislation creating single-member districts. In fact, Florida was one of the few, if not the only, state to adopt single-member districts voluntarily and without litigation.
MY BACKGROUND IN electoral politics, especially my love for statistical analysis of voting results and patterns, propelled me in yet another direction politically. My multiple campaign experiences often involved polling. In 1984, I visited friends at the Spanish International Network, now known as Univision, and offered to do exit polling for the station. They were not familiar with exit polling. In those days, very few people were, including the English language networks in Miami.
The station management agreed. The network had no budget for exit polling or me. This effort was to be strictly experimental, and, in fact, they were taking a huge gamble because I was a friend and they knew that I had organized many campaigns that involved polling. We had no resources whatsoever. I had such a skeleton crew that even I had to stand at a polling place several times during the day in order to make sure I had enough of a statistical sample. I would then drive back to my office and use a calculator with a huge spreadsheet—I don’t mean Excel, but the old ledger spreadsheet—to run the numbers. Finally, I would rush to the station, finalize the results, and prepare for live TV.
My job was to announce the results live at 7:00 P.M., immediately after the polls had closed. It was just minutes before going on the air, and I still didn’t have the final results. My team was scrambling, trying to finalize the data I had provided them. The anchors were on the set, ready to start the newscast. The station had announced throughout that day I would be introducing this new methodology that would allow the station to announce the day’s winners even before the first votes were counted. Viewers would no longer have to stay up late into the evening to find out if the candidates of their choice won or lost.
I asked the anchors to stall for as long as possible. We were almost ready. As we go live, the anchors begin to talk, and talk, and talk. It was a long introduction. Finally, a member of my team literally crawls on the floor over to me with the final numbers. The anchors see this and say, “Let’s turn it over to Manny Diaz.” I pull the papers from his hands, turn to the camera, and say, “Today’s election results are ….”
This was the first time exit polling had been done in Miami, and I continued to announce winners and losers at 7:00 P.M. every election night in the years to come. Of course, this newly introduced political methodology had plenty of skeptics. Every election night, history repeated itself. A television news crew would be assigned to each candidate on election night. The candidate I projected to lose would reject the projection, instead suggesting that we needed to wait until all the ballots were counted. His or her precinct results had not yet been counted. Even today, many candidates are in denial, but the process works.
Continuing to employ my love for statistics, I then devoted a significant amount of time and effort in determining which municipality in Miami-Dade County had the best and earliest possibility of electing our first Cuban American mayor. Much to the surprise of many, I concluded that a small, one-precinct town in Miami-Dade County called Sweetwater was beginning to show an increase in Hispanic voter registration and that this would be our best shot at getting our first Cuban American elected as mayor. We understood it was going to be a real uphill battle, but nonetheless we all decided to get behind the candidacy of José Montiel. We raised money, walked door-to-door, fully knowing we would not win this time, but we created an awareness in Sweetwater that ultimately did lead to the election of our