5 January 4-10, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | Contents | Letters | news | night+Day | CuLture | Cafe | MusiC | miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | Under Milander’s tenure, Hialeah’s indus- trial sector flourished, providing jobs for working-class families that had fled Cuba and arrived in South Florida. He offered a long-term tax break for new local businesses, and by the 1960s, the city had hundreds of manufacturing operations, according to the Miami Herald archive. The mayor was known for chatting with residents at his shop, Milander’s Meat Market, where a sign read, “Cows may come and cows may go, but the bull around here goes on forever.” As it happened, Milander was convicted in the early 1970s of grand larceny after he was accused of using city funds to speculate in real estate. A local judge withheld adjudication of guilt, however, which allowed him to avoid jail and hold onto his mayoral position. He died in 1974 while still serving as Hialeah’s mayor. “When the Cubans came, that baton of a political machine with a strong mayor was passed to Raul Martinez, and he dominated Hialeah politics to the early 2000s. Even though Martinez was a Democrat, he would win re-election over and over again even after being indicted,” says Moreno, who works at FIU’s Cuban Research Institute. The city has since elected a series of Re- publican mayors, including Bovo, a Queens, New York, native whose father was a member of Brigade 2506. He was a Hialeah city coun- cil member, Florida House representative, and Miami-Dade County commissioner be- fore he became mayor. “Stevie [Bovo] was part of the Hialeah op- eration,” Moreno says. “He started out in poli- tics as an aide to Sen. Roberto Casas, one of Martinez’s loyal lieutenants.” Nearly a century after it was incorporated, Hialeah has one of the highest percentages of Cuban residents among large U.S. munici- palities. A city where more than 95 percent of resi- dents identify as Hispanic, Hialeah has nearly 47,000 registered Republicans, around 22,000 registered Democrats, and more than 32,000 independent voters, according to Mi- ami-Dade County Elections. The conservative, working-class demo- graphics of Hialeah make it ground zero for Trump supporters, Moreno says. “Obama didn’t win Hialeah, but he got in the mid-40s, mainly because health care was a very attractive policy for many of the people in Hialeah,” Moreno says. That’s one of the reasons Coipel cited when he lobbied for Obama to have a street named after him in Hialeah. As Coipel noted, Hialeah reportedly sits near the top of the list of cities with the most Obamacare enrollees. “Crush the Communists” The stockpile of quotes from Trump over the years has grown so deep that it’s hard to pluck from memory singular moments when he uttered a headline-generating word. But one stands out in light of the multiple indictments. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Ave- nue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump said at a campaign stop in Sioux Center, Iowa, in 2016. “It’s, like, incredible.” For the Cuban-American electorate in the Miami metro area, that should perhaps be amended to state that Trump could shoot somebody and not lose any votes so long as he takes an uncompromising stance on the Cuban regime. During his presidency, Trump unleashed a barrage of sanctions on the island and re-des- ignated Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” He also activated Title III of the Helms Burton Act, which opened the floodgates for lawsuits against companies for doing business on prop- erty confiscated from Cuban Americans or their families during the Cuban Revolution. Not all the measures were popular among voters of Cuban descent when polled on indi- vidual policies. But the general foreign relations strategy and tough talk won over older Cuban Americans, many of whom have conservative leanings and a lingering disdain for anyone and anything labeled as communist. In the 2022 midterm election, Trump struck that nerve, equating Democrats with Communists and speaking to Cuban exiles’ apprehension that the U.S. would ease pres- sure on the Cu- ban government. Republicans made remarkable headway in typi- cally Democratic- leaning Miami-Dade County, winning the county vote in a governor’s race for the first time since 2002. “You have to crush the communists at the ballot box. If you want to save your rights and liberties, you have to start by dealing a humili- ating rebuke to the radical left maniacs run- ning in this election,” Trump told a crowd at a November 2022 rally. FIU professor and Cuba Poll investigator Guillermo Grenier told New Times after the landslide victory, “The ‘Republican-ness’ just about trumps everything else.” “The Republican Party says all the right things. It resonates here. The Democratic Party has not made any inroads,” Grenier said of South Florida’s political landscape in the Cuban community. A moment before voting to name the street on which Hialeah City Hall stands “Trump Av- enue,” Bovo made mention of the former presi- dent’s hardline approach to Cuban relations. “In 2016, Donald Trump came to this com- munity, Miami-Dade County in that case, and went to Casa de la Brigada, and he met with the brigade members, and he made a commitment to them that he was going to reverse the treacherous Obama policies to- ward Cuba,” the mayor continued, claiming Trump is now the victim of political perse- cution. Done Deal Bovo has not responded to a request for comment on whether he has read the federal election-interference indictment against Trump. Alongside the mayor, council members Jesus Tundidor, Jacqueline Garcia-Roves, Bryan Calvo, Monica Perez, Luis Rodriguez, and Carl Zogby voted in favor of honoring Trump with a street name. Perez pointed to roads named after presi- dents in other cities: Joe Biden Expressway in Pennsylvania and Barack Obama Avenue in Opa-locka. “These streets of presidents are already in other locations. Why can’t Hi- aleah have also a president that’s recog- nized?” she asked. One Miami-Dade resident who voiced her support for Trump during the street- naming session insisted the former presi- dent stands “against tyranny, terrorism, the communist Castro.” “I think, no, I’m sure, President Donald J. Trump has stood for everything that we’ve been holding dear to us, our Democracy and our freedom,” the resident said. “I believe he’s our president. He’s already won. No- body can go against him.” Coipel and the city’s Historic Preservation Board previously voted against honoring Trump with a Hialeah street name, but the board’s decision was not binding on the coun- cil. As for Coipel’s application to name a street after Obama, Bovo told him at a De- cember council meeting, “It’s sitting in a drawer in my desk, and I’ll get to it when I get to it.” “It’s something that’s still being consid- ered? Coipel asked. “No, it’s not,” Bovo said. “You can let the press know.” [email protected] Supporters arrive at Donald Trump’s Hialeah rally on November 8, 2023. Photo by Alon Skuy/Getty Images HIALEAH SITS NEAR THE TOP OF THE LIST OF CITIES WITH THE MOST OBAMACARE ENROLLEES.
