THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

ELECTION UPDATE .....

Welcome to our 6th in a series of nine weekly reports breaking down the contested judicial elections in Miami-Dade County. In Week One, we focused on the only contested County Court race of Lindsay v. Lesperance. Since then, we have provided you with the Circuit Court races of Cueto v. Velis; Migna v. Manny and Colodny v. Kopco v. Millan and last week, Garcia v. Glick. As we reported on May 2, 2008 on this blog, there are nine contested races here in Miami-Dade County; eight in the Circuit Court and one in the County Court.

Today, it's Group 50, a seat currently held by retiring Judge Stuart Simons. Our goal will be to attempt to provide you with a weekly contest overview and then let you have at it and give us your opinions on why we should or should not vote for a certain candidate.

The candidates for Group 50 are Ricardo "Rick" Corona and Abby Cynamon.

RICARDO "RICK" CORONA .....

This is a campaign that has had lots of publicity over the course of the past couple of weeks. We do not want to rehash it all, but if you want to read what Rick had to say about all that has been written by the DBR and others, go back and review his front page post on this BLOG of June 22, 2008. I think Rick rightly pointed out that, The Florida Bar had the opportunity to thoroughly review all of the allegations and history of the FDIC charges that his father and brother were tied up in. The Bar gave Mr. corona a license to practice law.

Mr. Corona has been in several different occupations during his lifetime. Banking, supermarket owner, real estate developer are just some of the things he has accomplished in his career. Now he want to be a Circuit Court Judge. He filed in October of 2007 and has only reported raising $1,250 from three contributors and loaned his campaign an additional $16,000. He has a lot of catching up to do if he plans on matching his opponent dollar for dollar. Rick has been a member of The Florida Bar for 11 years.

We have been unable to locate a website for Mr. Corona's campaign.

ABBY CYNAMON ....

Ms. Cynamon has also had much written about her on this BLOG. She is a graduate of the UM Law School and has been an Assistant General Counsel for the 11th Judicial Circuit from 1993-2008. She was the President of FAWL from 2006-2007. Abby has been licensed for 18 years in Florida.

Ms. Cynamon is running this campaign and leaving nothing in the bag, so to speak. Her Campaign Treasurer is Hector Lombana. She has stormed the fundraising scene with $51,363 from 259 donors; (and that does not count what she has raised in the past three months as second quarter reports are due to be filed any day now). She also throw in $300,000 of her own money.

She has hired the entire hit list of campaign gurus: Susan Fried, Robert Levy, Armando Gutierrez and ?? have each been paid $11,000 so far. Tangela Sears has been paid an additional $4,500. In fact, Cynamon has spent over $100,00 already on the campaign.

You can read all about Abby on her website at abby4judge.com.

Please do your homework on the two candidates. Help out our readers by giving us your comments, pro and con, on each of the candidates.

The election takes place on Tuesday, August 26, 2008.

CAPTAIN OUT .........

DCBA JUDICIAL POLL RESULTS ......

Also, this week, the DCBA posted the results of their annual Bar Poll of the Judicial Candidates. We will not comment on the results of the non-elected candidates, but we do feel that it is important to comment on three TOP FIVE lists of the sitting judges.

EXCEPTIONALLY QUALIFIED:

1. Judge Emas - 70%
2. Judge Farina - 66%
3. Judge Robert Scola - 64%
4. Judge Reemberto Diaz - 60%
5. Judge Tam Wilson - 58%

UNQUALIFIED (lowest five):

1. Judge Schumacher - 4%
2. Judge Robert Scola - 4%
3. Judge Prescott - 4%
4. Judge Farina - 5%
5. Judge Emas - 5%

UNQUALIFIED (highest five):

1. Judge Esquiroz - 43%
2. Judge Jacqueline Schwartz - 36%
3. Judge Eig 30%
4. Judge Butchko - 30%
5. Judge Donner - 25%

These last five judges need to figure out what it is they are doing that is causing their ratings to be so low. Granted, there were only a small percentage of attorneys voting in this poll, but these numbers still represent the voices of anywhere from 400-900 practicing lawyers in this County. The people of Miami-Dade County deserve better.

As for the other two "top five" lists, those jurists are to be congratulated for being such fine public servants.

CAPTAIN OUT .....