Ken Russell
speaker
139 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 26 Sep
Ken Russell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Xavier Suarez became the city's first Cuban-born mayor in 1985.
Miami's first Cuban-born mayor.
The first Cuban-born mayor.
The first Cuban-American mayor.
The city's first Cuban-born mayor.
The first Cuban-born mayor of Miami.
The first Cuban-born mayor of Miami.
Now, 40 years later, he's running again.
Well, first of all, thanks for having me here. You're welcome. I can't imagine there's a lot of politicians that come rolling through, and I don't know why. But when I heard that you wanted me on to endorse my mayoral campaign live on the show, I couldn't resist, and so I'm here, and I really appreciate that. So thank you for this time.
To be honest, he thought this would also be the last day of his campaign, potentially.
the possibility of public or elected life? It's not the reason, but it's definitely one of the straws that's breaking the back of me deciding to come back to the city of Miami, because I was very happy having left and enjoying private life. But I would say our relationship was super solid up until that vote. And we had a drink right around then in 2018.
And you said over that drink that if I voted for that, our relationship would be over, basically. Because you were very passionate about this. Sounds like something I'd say. I don't think you were trying to leverage me for the sake of, please let me keep this friendship. No, I didn't think you gave a shit about that. But you did keep to your word. I'm a man of my word. So, in my...
first term in office, let's say I had some naivete that wanted to believe that we could make a good deal out of a bad deal, and that if the right contractual terms were put in place and the right public benefits were there, this could be a good deal.
And I was torn, because a lot of the folks that supported me, a lot of the activist crowd, a lot of the green space environmental crowd, they weren't crazy about this. And so I struggled a lot leading up to 2018, but I thought I'd solved it. And the reason I'm here with you today is to really
but this is really hard i'm i'm not willing to say that you were all right i can't i can't do it i can't say billy corvin was right well billy could do it for you he says it every day but he always says wait a few years and i always say that if you think if when it comes to politics if you think i'm wrong just wait two years sometimes you only have to wait two days or two weeks but in this case i'm almost like almost spot on and i'm not trying to be funny you were right because
I put all of the legal teeth into a vote that would hold the public benefits that kept this from being a bad deal, in my opinion. You may still disagree with even what I was able to extract being the swing vote and having that leverage, but it was everything from living wages for every single person that worked there, from the ticket takers to the person at McDonald's.
It was full cost for remediation of all the contamination, and this is a very contaminated site. And a big part for you was that since it was a no-bid deal, that there was no competition in the pricing. Correct.
amending the charter to say these guys could get right no way when it came down to the lease I was able to use my leverage to take the highest possible assessment of that land valuing it not on the contaminated value but after they cleaned it and paid for it what was the true value of that land and people could argue whether or not the three appraisals were impartial or correct but we took the highest of the highest one
But the big thing for me was about the green space that was going to be lost there. Even though this is an artifact, it's a golf course, really. And the pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers that are put right there on the Miami River aren't great. The actual landfill that's under it was never properly remediated, and that's not great. But I was okay with this deal if it made sense financially.
And then any green space lost there, we'd make it up in new green space around the city. You were hearing yourself, right? Yeah. Yes, I'm taking you back to that time.
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