I’m a retired biology professor (ask me about mosquitoes) who served 5 terms in public office as Mayor of South Miami before escaping back to academia. In that time we cleaned up a corrupt and incompetent local government, passed environmental protections and clean energy initiatives, lowered crime by 75%, and sued Gov. DeSantis over his first attempt to subvert our community police department into an arm of ICE.
I was the first elected official in America to speak openly to the press about impending economic damage from climate change and the need for organized retreat from rising seas, drafting the first national sea level rise policy for the Office of Environmental Policy (OPM) under the Obama White House.
I never thought of myself as a politician until 2017, when Miami New Times named me as “Best Politician” and Politico magazine named me to the Politico50. What can you do at that point? I’d planned to enjoy retirement fly fishing the Everglades backcountry, but here we are, fighting a totalitarian takeover.
Either we rise up to keep our country a democracy, or… it’s too horrible to say. So, let’s get to work.
Flyfisher@WTP305.org
