Karyn Cunningham is hardly a new and unknown face in Palmetto Bay. She was on the Palmetto Bay Village Council for four years. She was elected Mayor in 2018 in a contentious race, beating incumbent and “Founding Mayor” Gene Flinn 61 to 39 percent of the vote. She doesn’t stand for re-election until 2022. And yet, less then a year into her tenure, a storm seems to be brewing over the “Village of Parks” – Palmetto Bay. Public protests at the State of the Village, the neighboring cities of Pinecrest and Cutler Bay are calling out Palmetto Bay for lack of leadership, and now she’s come under attack in a series of detailed hit-piece mailers. So what gives?
Typically, these signs of pubic discontent and mailers are displayed at the height of an election season, within weeks of the actual vote. The reason is because the sender wants to guarantee that if they’re going to tar and feather a candidate, that it sticks in the mind of voters and an attack that comes too early will likely be forgotten by election day, yet it appears Mayor Cunningham is rattling feathers all across Palmetto Bay.
On the mailers’ front, one thing’s is for sure – they are not cheap to send out. If “CSI Miami” were still on the air, we could ask David Caruso to find out the people behind the mailers. The first question he’d ask, after whipping off his Ray-Bans is “Who has that kind of dough?” Caruso would take a deep breath and add, “What’s their motive?” just before the first commercial break. The names of a few suspects have been bandied about. Commissioner David Singer is a frequent and strident critic of “Her Honor,” but it’s doubtful that he’d pony up that kind of cash.
Developer Wayne Rosen has more than a few axes to grind with Palmetto Bay, but his modus operandi is to litigate, not proselytize. Rosen filed a lawsuit last year against former Mayor Shelley Stanczyk, John Dubois, councilmember Marsha Matson, and Gary Pastorella, a local activist and blogger, claiming that they “interfered” with his cozy relationship with the Village of Palmetto Bay. His preferred vector of attack is to try to influence a single judge as opposed to a village full of residents. Or maybe its the folks to the south – Cutler Bay, sent a scorching letter to County Mayor Gimenez about Palmetto Bay dropping the ball on traffic relief strategies on 87th Ave.
We do know deep pockets are behind this campaign because the mailers were sent by two different political action committees called Communities First Project out of Tallahassee and Conservatives For Truth out of Coral Gables. The content in the flyers is well thought out, creative, and seem factual. Someone is doing their homework and keeping track of the Mayor’s every move – speaking of moves, her “highness” also made the move to remove the Village attorney and Manager this year.
There has to be some private actor who feels aggrieved enough to go through the trouble of calling out Cunningham’s moves on the Village Council, much like Sting in the 80’s would sing “…Every breath you take and every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you…”
Whoever it is, the likely suspect or suspects are not holding back any punches. And in a Village filled with rumblers as Palmetto Bay, the list of people fitting that bill is long and getting longer.
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