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1639-28 Politics SUN JUN 30 1985 ED: FINAL SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: 1B LENGTH: 60.29" LONG ILLUST: photo: Marcie LIBERMAN, Simon WIKLER, Scott ROSS, Gerald SCHWARTZ , Bernie FRANK SOURCE: CRAIG GILBERT And TOM FIEDLER Herald Staff Writers DATELINE: MEMO: BEACH POLITICS : STUNTS, TRICKS, VENOM -- AGAIN After spending most of 20 years abroad, former mayor Ken Oka agreed this March to one last dose of Miami Beach politics -- a Monday night debate at the Civic League. It turned out to be a traditional Beach affair. The crowd buzzed rudely, the speechmakers offered quick fixes, the questioners offered long speeches, and an ex-Israeli commando running for mayor kept accusing the moderator of discrimination. "I should have had my head examined, " said Oka, after breaking two decades of isolation from Beach politics . Once again, it ' s campaign time in Miami Beach, a city long known for its political circus. "If you watch the elections in other cities, like Hialeah or Miami, you could figure them out, " says Dick Troxel, a veteran consultant. "But the Beach is the craziest place in South Florida. " The history of politics on this densely populated, mile- wide island abounds with scoundrels, crusaders, double- crosses, personal invective, dirty tricks, and campaign stunts so shrewdly executed they don' t come to light until years later. Mayor Malcolm Fromberg, in the midst of his first campaign, called Beach politics "the lowest form of life that ever existed. " "In Miami Beach, " says Scott Ross, a former Beach political consultant who gave up the business in disgust two years ago, "they don't sling mud, they sling nuclear weapons. They don' t play to win. They play to kill and maim. " In 1953, PR man Gerald Schwartz took on his first race, the low-budget campaign of council candidate Harold Shapiro. As a cheap publicity gimmick, Schwartz rented three rowboats, fixed a huge Shapiro sign on each, and anchored them along the MacArthur Causeway in full view of cars driving onto the Beach. Then, a few nights before the vote, Schwartz secretly paid the owner of the boats to sink them. "I went to the papers and I screamed, ' Somebody ' s sunk Shapiro' s Navy, ' " said Schwartz . The last-minute publicity boost propelled Shapiro into office. Schwartz says he did nothing wrong. "Sinking your own navy isn't a dirty trick. That was just cute. " What happened to Melvin Richard that year wasn' t so cute. Richard, who made a political career of attacking the city' s powerful gambling interests, seemed headed for a seat on the City Council. But on election morning, voters awoke to find their car windshields plastered with impossible-to-remove "Melvin Richard" stickers. Richard lost the election. To this day, he insists the police must have known about the trick. "It took a large group of people carrying bucketsful of paste, " he said. "The entire city was covered. " The most raucous campaign of recent years was the 1979 epic, featuring the "knock out bossism" crusade against Steve Muss, the city' s biggest landlord and taxpayer and head of the South Shore Redevelopment Agency. That race had all the classic Beach elements. There was the sudden flood of political tabloids -- The Miami Beach Leader, Plain Talk, Inside Miami Beach -- all packaged like newspapers, published by the tens of thousands, and full of adulation for one set of candidates and venom for the other. "Can Muss ' Money Buy The Mayor And City Hall Again?" screamed a typical front page. The dirtiest race that year pitted tenants attorney Alex Daoud against another lawyer, Joe Malek. By pronouncing his opponent' s name "Dah-OOOD" instead of "Dowd, " Malek reminded his listeners that Daoud wasn't Jewish. He also tried to get Daoud, a Catholic whose father was born in Lebanon, kicked out of the American Zionist Federation, a federation official claimed. And when Daoud put off his wedding until after the election, Malek sent a friend to North Carolina to ply the fiancee ' s family for embarrassing revelations. For their part, Daoud' s forces hired their own private investigator to prove that Malek was involved in a firm that owned apartments, placing him in that hated class -- landlords. Malek not only lost, he also was rebuked by the Anti- Defamation League for injecting religion into the race. There was so much hysteria in that campaign that before Election Day, the Chamber of Commerce took out a full page ad advising citizens in big black letters, "Please . . . Relax! " Why is Beach politics played with such special intensity? There are all sorts of theories: the city' s dense crowding, its "small town atmosphere, " its civic maze of clubs and organizations, and its city charter, with the almost permanent campaign that stems from having two-year commission terms. But most answers start with the people who, for decades, have dominated Beach elections. "Where you have significant numbers of elderly, you have more people who have time to pay attention to government, especially local government, " says State Sen. Jack Gordon, D- Miami Beach, a veteran of Beach politics. Beach political rallies used to draw a thousand or more faithful -- virtually all of them over 65 . It was unfortunate, said former Mayor Harold Rosen, but the city' s retirees "didn' t have anything to do. So they attended all of these things. " Perhaps it is free time that has also given the Beach its incredible mosaic of clubs and civic groups. Miami politico Steve Ross, who worked for Muss during the turbulent late ' 70s, figures "South Beach has more organizations per person than any place in the world. " The Elks, the Hadassahs, Pioneer Women, Knights of Pythias, the countless men' s and ladies ' social clubs -- "they're all pockets of potential voters, " said Rosen. "There are meetings upon meetings. If you can press some flesh you can do it on the Beach, " Rosen said. But more than being simply idle and retired, these people were a special class of retiree. The first wave of elderly to hit the Beach in the 1940s was filled with New York Jews, many of them ex-garment workers, schooled in union politics, tenant politics, Depression politics. "They were the ones who were fighting against sweatshops and for Social Security and for their children to be doctors, lawyers and teachers, " said Revy Wikler, publisher of the Citizen News, a South Beach tabloid. "They were tremendously active people who wanted to have an impact on politics. " In its heyday, the mass of working class retirees in South Beach was known as the Solid South, and politicians who didn't cultivate it didn't last. "Everybody used to curtsey and favor them, " said Rosen. Candidates hopped from patio to patio in South Beach. They held rallies with free bagels or ice cream, and doled out promises of free city services for their "golden years. " Yet just who was in the driver' s seat -- the politicians or the people -- is open to debate. Beach gadfly Harry Plissner, 84 , thinks many of the city' s retirees, their youth spent in unions and causes up north, are burned out and indifferent. "They' re more easily manipulated -- by hiring them to get votes, by running parties, by running breakfasts and dinners, by throwing them a bone, " he said. "They' ll show their appreciation by accepting a rogue if he gives them a cup of coffee and a sandwich, " said Plissner. Schwartz is less cynical. He says there ' s a fine line between candidates appealing to the elderly and pandering to them. "When they dance with little old ladies, it' s got to be self-evident that they want to dance, " he said. Not everyone can dance. It takes personality. But personality politics is what the Beach is famous for. With 100 , 000 people packed into a 7 . 1 square mile sandspit, human relations are intimate and volatile. "It ' s like the scientific experiment of putting rats into a box, " said one long-time Beach leader who asked not to be named. "They get along fine until you put just one-too-many into the box. Then the social system breaks down. " People live on top of one another. Partly because of that, campaigning is intensely personal, issues give way to personalities and elections can turn on trivialities. Wikler, for instance, believes Elliott Roosevelt, second son of the president, lost his 1967 re-election bid in part over a social slight. After a luncheon at her home, Mrs. Roosevelt purportedly insulted the wives of the senior citizen club presidents by implying someone had stolen some of her silverware. Alliances are deeply held and enemies bitterly fought. The level of debate goes beyond intense. "I would call it hatred, " says Stanley Shapiro, a frequent candidate. "I had a woman stand up and spit on me once for just saying something complimentary about President Reagan. " Beach candidates don 't always stop at name-calling. Charges of bribery, slander and voter fraud have produced a host of grand jury investigations and an occasional arrest or indictment. "Oh, I think almost every campaign was dirty, " said Bernie Frank, who served on the council in the ' 50s and early ' 60s. "Every single day . . . somebody was running over to the state attorney' s office to get somebody indicted. " In 1965, one candidate swore out a warrant against the backer of his rival -- for using bad language. The man called him a "goddamn liar, " he charged. Gordon has his own explanation for the Beach' s intensity: "The campaigns were in the nature of family arguments, " he said. This year' s campaign should be no exception. The mayor' s race includes a former Israeli commando named Raphael Herman. He ' s joined by two colorful ex- commissioners: podiatrist Simon Wikler, with his perennial campaigns against the "special interests, " and meatpacker Mel Mendelson, whose old South Beach butcher shop was once the scene of many a political deal. To that, add the already bitter Fromberg -- Daoud clash. Twenty-two years after Shapiro' s Navy, Schwartz is also in the thick of this fight. Barely two years ago he had helped a politically inexperienced Fromberg get elected mayor. But Fromberg failed to return the favor when he voted against giving Schwartz a city public relations contract. Schwartz retaliated by urging Daoud to take on Fromberg. Recently Fromberg struck back by firing Schwartz as chairman of the city' s Hurricane Safety Committee. Then Schwartz called the press to ridicule the mayor. Scott Ross thinks this race will be a "killer . . . as filthy and as vulgar a political campaign as you are ever likely to see. " It may be, but there are also signs that Beach politics is headed for change; like the people who practiced it at its wildest, it may be slowing with age. In the last election, Fromberg won despite losing South Beach to opponent Murray Meyerson. He was helped by a strong turnout in the city' s middle- and high-income neighborhoods to the north. The old throw-the-bums-out sentiment didn't materialize. All the incumbents who ran, won. Bernie Frank thinks campaigns have toned down considerably. The raucous days of the South Beach bloc vote are unquestionably ending. "The Jewish population on Miami Beach has been dying off and isn't being replaced, " says Ira Sheskin, a demographer at the University of Miami. "The new Jewish population retiring to Florida is choosing to live in other counties. " Says Commissioner Bruce Singer: "You have a tremendous influx of young families, young Latins not registered to vote. " A decade ago, according to Dade Elections Analyst Joe Malone, only 3 . 8 percent of the city' s voters were Hispanic. By 1981, Hispanics made up 10 percent. And this year, Malone said, Hispanics comprise 15 percent of the city' s electorate. The tide also appears to favor youth. Sheskin, the demographer, estimated in a survey that 4 .5 percent of the Beach' s Jewish population is now comprised of toddlers . Yet only 1 . 5 percent is in the next age group between 5 and 9 -- a ratio that suggests a mini-baby boom. Finally, the so-called Yuppies -- the acronym for young, urban professionals -- settling in on the Beach are a presence, Sheskin and others say. "Their politics, " says Gordon, "will be live and let live. " For now, though, this city' s politics remain anything but laissez faire. Maybe Oka just came back too soon. Safely back in Switzerland, the former mayor says "you couldn't pay me enough" to return to office. "It seems that nothing has changed, " said Oka. "It ' s a fickle Beach. " ADDED TERMS: major-story analysis profile mb politics END OF DOCUMENT.