Lawyers converse in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on Friday, Oct. 30, as North Miami Councilwoman Mary Estimé-Irvin and her opponent, Jobans Jules, decided to drop their efforts to challenge the other’s candidacy in the Nov. 3 election.
Olivia Lloyd
Miami Herald
Chaos has embroiled campaign season in North Miami, where technicalities over cashier’s checks, boilerplate forms and pennies have upended the race for mayor, kicked one City Council candidate off the ballot and threatened to place a second Council race in the hands of a judge.
Before the city’s 25,000 voters can decide who should represent them on Nov. 3, candidates have sought to have their opponents disqualified — only to have the finger pointed back at them, questioning whether they’re eligible themselves.
“How do you come into court and say, ‘Your Honor, I didn’t comply with the statute, but I want you to kick my opponent off for not complying with the statute,’” Richard Rosengarten, a lawyer hired by the city of North Miami, said after a hearing Friday in a dispute between two candidates.
So far, judges have disqualified Mayor Alix Desulme and District 2 council candidate Hector Medina. Both were bounced over procedural errors in their qualifying fee checks. Medina was disqualified in August, leaving incumbent Kassandra Timothe to face only Brian Jinks. Desulme was booted last week after voters had already begun casting their ballots.
In a third race on the ballot, Councilwoman Mary Estimé-Irvin convinced a judge this week to declare that votes cast for opponent Jobans Jules would not count, leaving only the incumbent and candidate Carolina Matamoros in the race. But that decision was undone less than 24 hours later.
And the legal challenges didn’t end there. Suits generated appeals and counter-suits.
After Desulme lost the lawsuit filed by his lone opponent, George Morgan, he countersued, pointing out Morgan wrote a check that was 80 cents short of the required qualifying fee. And after Estimé-Irvin sued her opponent, he sued her right back, filing a complaint that the incumbent’s attorney agreed Friday may have had merit.
North Miami Mayor Alix Desulme is running against challenger George E. Duell Morgan. Courtesy of the candidates
Rosengarten, the lawyer for the city, said candidates may need to ask themselves, “‘Is a consequence of me coming into court trying to sue my opponent off the ballot that I’m going to get kicked off too?’”
A change of heart
The latest episode in the saga played out in a Miami courtroom on Friday over the District 3 councilmember race and ended in perhaps the most surprising decision of them all amid the litigious drama: The candidates agreed to drop their cases against each other and let the voters decide.
“This entire charade was just to deter us from what we should have been doing,” said Jules, who countersued Estimé-Irvin after she sought to disqualify him.
North Miami Council District 3 candidates Mary Estimé-Irvin, Jobans Jules and Carolina Matamoros. Courtesy of the candidates Miami
The day before, a judge had granted Estimé-Irvin’s temporary injunction attempting to disqualify Jules for not having a campaign treasurer’s signature on his check. But Jules had already filed a counterclaim accusing Estimé-Irvin of not qualifying as a candidate because she didn’t check a box designating a primary or secondary depository bank account.
So back to court they went to weigh the merits of the counterclaim — before deciding just to end the ordeal and let bygones be bygones.
Then an 11th-hour development occurred in the middle of the hearing that Jules’ attorney, Hilton Napoleon II, said was practically out of a movie.
Jules learned he had won an appeal from a higher court preventing the judge’s disqualification order from going into effect right away. He could have reneged on their deal and tried to throw Estimé-Irvin out of the race, as she did to him. But he didn’t.
“Most people would have said, ‘I’m not agreeing to anything now … because she threw the first stone,’” Napoleon said. “And he could have easily thrown the stone back, but he chose not to.”
When asked after Friday’s hearing whether she thought the counterclaim had merit, Estimé-Irvin said she was focused on getting the residents of District 3 to vote.
Estimé-Irvin attorney, Dedrick D. Straghn, acknowledged Jules’ claim may have held water.
“Mr. Jules, his countersuit actually brought up a very crucial, I guess defect, in Ms. Estimé-Irvin’s file,” Straghn said.
But Straghn said it’s not really a debate whether these candidates need to follow the rules.
“The court is very clear on this, even though it seems ticky tacky and hyper technical,” he said. “You have to meet these requirements, and the statutes are clear on what the requirements are.”
He still said Friday’s agreement was for the best for both candidates and their would-be constituents.
“I’m pleased for the voters,” he added, “because now they get to choose who they want to fill that seat.”
The legal drama may not be over, however. In the mayor’s race, the Third District Court of Appeal has decided to hear Desulme’s case. Proceedings have been scheduled up to, and possibly through, Election Day.
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Olivia Lloyd is an Associate Editor/Reporter for the Coral Springs News, the Pembroke Pines News and the Miramar News. She graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Previously, she has worked for Hearst DevHub, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and McClatchy’s Real Time Team.