‘Port-au-Prince vs. Tel Aviv’: Racial tensions surface in North Miami Beach commission races

NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Candidates are stoking racial flames in a single South Florida metropolis as fee races get heated forward of the November election.

North Miami Seashore’s metropolis fee races have change into downright nasty.

Vandals dismantled Phyllis Smith’s marketing campaign indicators and painted Jay Chernoff’s face on his indicators.

“I wrote an electronic mail (in regards to the vandalism) to the (metropolis) supervisor two weeks in the past, nothing is finished,” Smith mentioned.

They’re the most recent in a string of accusations pitting candidate versus candidate, commissioner versus commissioner. Presently, 4 are Haitian-American, three are usually not.

“There’s a combat (at) each fee assembly,” Chernoff mentioned. “I served 19 years, by no means had a combat on the dais.”

The latest public fights concerned Commissioner Paule Villard utilizing a metropolis present card giveaway to marketing campaign and directing workers to credit score her identify on metropolis water invoice rebates.

Then, on fellow candidate Hans Mardy’s Creole-language radio program, she made inflammatory feedback about race.

“We’ve got been struggling,” Villard mentioned. “There was whites solely who have been accountable nearly all of North Miami Seashore.”

She continued: “Even when it’s somebody in your house and that individual isn’t for Haitian, don’t vote for that individual. That individual needs to place the white folks on their again.”

Native 10 Information reporter Glenna Milberg requested candidate Wrendly Mesidor, who’s operating for a special seat, how he perceived that assertion as a Haitian man.

“I personally discover that discriminatory,” Mesidor mentioned. “It shouldn’t be like that. I discover it (to be) soiled politics. It shouldn’t be like that.”

Mesidor was at a candidate at a discussion board this week the place Mardy stoked the flames of race and ethnicity.

“You make it seem like Port-au-Prince towards Tel Aviv, that is the truth,” Mardy mentioned.

“What does that imply, ‘Tel Aviv?’” an viewers member interjected.

Metropolis Commissioner Fortuna Smukler expressed her disappointment.

“Our slogan is ‘one imaginative and prescient, one mission, one metropolis,’” she mentioned. “We’re not.”