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FTR #259 Campaign 2000 — Beating the Bushes in Florida

Posted by FTR ⋅ December 4, 2000Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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1. This pro­gram ana­lyzes some of the events in the 2000 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign against the back­ground of the polit­i­cal her­itage of the Bush fam­i­ly.

2. In par­tic­u­lar, the broad­cast relates recent sto­ries involv­ing Latin Amer­i­can polit­i­cal vio­lence with the polit­i­cal milieu of Jeb Bush (gov­er­nor of Flori­da and the broth­er of George W.)

3. Dis­cus­sion begins with new dis­clo­sures con­cern­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Orlan­do Lete­lier, a Chilean diplo­mat liv­ing in exile in the Unit­ed States. Recent­ly declas­si­fied doc­u­ments reveal that U.S. intel­li­gence was aware of the impend­ing assas­si­na­tion. (“Doc­u­ments Shed Light on Assas­si­na­tion of Chilean in U.S.” by Christo­pher Mar­quis and Diana Jean Schemo; The New York Times; 11/14/2000; p. A8.)

4.The Lete­lier assas­si­na­tion was part of an inter­na­tion­al assas­si­na­tion con­sor­tium known as Oper­a­tion Con­dor. Next, the broad­cast excerpts RFA#37 and reviews key aspects of Oper­a­tion Con­dor. (The mate­r­i­al is from The Great Hero­in Coup: Drugs, Intel­li­gence and Inter­na­tion­al Fas­cism, by Hen­rik Kruger, soft­cov­er and hard­cov­er edi­tions copy­right 1980 by South End Press.)

5. Oper­a­tion Con­dor and the Lete­lier killing were orches­trat­ed by an inter­na­tion­al fas­cist milieu that Kruger calls the Inter­na­tion­al Fascista. (Idem.) Incor­po­rat­ing Nazi SS offi­cers, CIA oper­a­tives, anti-Cas­tro Cubans and Latin Amer­i­can and Euro­pean fas­cists, the Inter­na­tion­al Fascista is at one with the polit­i­cal forces behind George Bush.

6. Many of Con­dor’s crimes were com­mit­ted while the elder Bush was direc­tor of the CIA. (Idem.)

7. One of the major ele­ments in Oper­a­tion Con­dor and the Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al was the CORU orga­ni­za­tion. (Idem.)

8. Head­ed by a mil­i­tant anti-Cas­tro Cuban named Orlan­do Bosch, CORU was behind a wave of ter­ror­ist inci­dents in the U.S. and Latin Amer­i­ca, again, while Bush was direc­tor of the CIA. (Idem.)

9. A col­league of Bosch’s and an alleged par­tic­i­pant in the 1976 bomb­ing of a Cuban air­lin­er in which 73 peo­ple died was recent­ly arrest­ed in Pana­ma and detained on sus­pi­cion of con­spir­ing to mur­der Fidel Cas­tro. (“For­mer CIA Agent Accused of Cas­tro Plot

10. Next, the pro­gram excerpts more infor­ma­tion from RFA#37, detail­ing Jeb Bush’s role as his father’s liai­son with the anti-Cas­tro Cubans in Flori­da. (“The Fam­i­ly That Preys Togeth­er” by Jack Col­houn; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin #41; Sum­mer 1992.) The anti-Cas­tro Cubans were deeply involved in the Con­tra sup­port effort.

11. Jeb Bush also main­tained con­tacts with fig­ures from the Mia­mi under­world milieu. (Idem.)

12. In par­tic­u­lar, Jeb led the effort to win free­dom for CORU’s Orlan­do Bosch. (Idem.)

13. In light of the polit­i­cal her­itage of the Bush fam­i­ly and the asso­ci­a­tions main­tained by Jeb, the elec­toral irreg­u­lar­i­ties beset­ting the 2000 cam­paign should not come as a sur­prise. The con­clud­ing por­tion of the broad­cast details some of those irreg­u­lar­i­ties and some of the peo­ple appar­ent­ly involved in them. In addi­tion to the dis­put­ed “but­ter­fly bal­lots” in Palm Beach coun­ty, African vot­ers appear to have been inter­dict­ed in large num­bers in their attempts to vote. (“Fair­ness for Whom?” by Bob Her­bert; The New York Times; 11/13/2000; p. A25.)

14. A Repub­li­can offi­cial con­tra­vened Flori­da elec­tion law by allow­ing Repub­li­can work­ers to camp out in her office for as long as 10 days to make hand­writ­ten cor­rec­tions on the pre-print­ed appli­ca­tions. (“G.O.P. Played Role in Absen­tee Vote” by Michael Moss and Ford Fes­senden; The New York Times; 11/14/2000; p. A1.)

15. As has been well-record­ed, the Flori­da offi­cial in charge of the bal­lot­ing was co-chair of the Bush for Pres­i­dent cam­paign in that state. (“Flori­da Offi­cial Has Dual Roles In a Mael­strom” by Michael Coop­er; The New York Times; 11/14/2000; p. A1.)

16. Even though Jeb Bush recused him­self from the recount bat­tle, some of his top aides have not. (“Jeb Bush’s Top Aides Tak­ing Time Off to Help the Gov­er­nor’s Broth­er” by Lisa Get­ter; The San Jose Mer­cury News; 11/17/2000; p. 25A.)

17. In addi­tion, it turns out that the head of the polit­i­cal desk at Fox news who led the media stam­pede to reas­sign Flori­da from Gore to Bush, was Jeb and “W’s” cousin John Ellis. (“One More elec­tion Embar­rass­ment for the Press: Bush Cousin” by Tom Rosen­stiel; The Los Ange­les Times; 11/15/2000; p. B9.)

18. Ellis was in close tele­phon­ic con­tact with Jeb and “W” on elec­tion night, appar­ent­ly feed­ing them polit­i­cal intel­li­gence on the elec­tion. (“News Exec­u­tive Called Races, and Bush” by Bill Carter; The New York Times; 11/14/2000; p. A17.) (Record­ed on 11/19/2000.)

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #259 Campaign 2000 — Beating the Bushes in Florida”

  1. Here’s a few arti­cles that raise inter­est­ing ques­tions about the fate of Flori­da in the era of a rogue post-pres­i­den­cy Trump move­ment now that Don­ald Trump has made Mar-a-Lago his post-pres­i­den­cy per­ma­nent res­i­dence:

    First, we have a report out of Axios about what appears to be the rum­blings elec­toral runs for mem­bers of the Trump, with grow­ing talk of Ivan­ka Trump tak­ing on Mar­co Rubio for a Flori­da sen­ate. This isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly unex­pect­ed, but it’s the fact that this chat­ter is hap­pen­ing in the midst of a full blown rhetor­i­cal war between Trump and now-Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell fol­low­ing McConnel­l’s con­dem­na­tions of Trump’s role in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion that makes this kind of talk some­thing to be tak­en seri­ous­ly. And if Ivan­ka real­ly does become Flori­da’s next sen­a­tor, it’s hard to see Flori­da not becom­ing some sort of Trump­is­tan Mec­ca for the MAGA move­ment.

    As the Axios arti­cle notes, the buzz around the Trumpian future of the Repub­li­can Par­ty is hap­pen­ing at the same time a slate of for­mer Trump cab­i­net offi­cials are sched­uled to speak at the upcom­ing CPAC con­fer­ence. A con­fer­ence that has relo­cat­ed itself from its long-time home in the DC area to Orlan­do, seen as a reflec­tion of Flori­da as the new home of con­ser­v­a­tive pow­er bro­ker­ing in Amer­i­ca.

    And that brings us to the next two arti­cles. They’re about a wave or recent Sil­i­con Val­ley inter­est in the Venet­ian Islands neigh­bor­hood of Mia­mi beach. The prob­lem is that it appears to be large­ly ‘Alt Right’ Sil­i­con Val­ley inter­est, and there’s a goal of turn­ing Mia­mi into a kind of far right friend­ly Sil­i­con Val­ley. Peter Thiel is the lat­est far right Sil­i­con Val­ley fig­ure to make the move, pick­ing up a pair of adja­cent beach­front man­sions in the neigh­bor­hood.

    Thiel has ties to the begin­ning of this move-to-Mia­mi move­ment: In ear­ly Decem­ber, Delian Asparouhov, a prin­ci­pal at Thiel’s Founders Fund, pub­licly won­dered about mov­ing Sil­i­con Val­ley to Mia­mi. Fran­cis Suarez, Miami’s Repub­li­can may­or, tweet­ed back , “How can I help?” This appar­ent­ly kicked off a social media-dri­ven wave of right-wing inter­est in the idea.

    One of the first big Sil­i­con Val­ley name to move the move is Kei­th Rabois. Rabois joined Theil’s Founders Fund in 2019. Rabois hap­pens to be a fel­low “Pay­Pal Mafia” asso­ciate of the Thiel’s. But Rabois and Theil’s his­to­ry actu­al­ly goes back to their time at Stan­ford, when the two were among the cam­pus’s more out­spo­ken far right stu­dents on Cam­pus. Rabois went on to con­tribute to Thiel’s lib­er­tar­i­an stu­dent pub­li­ca­tion, The Stan­ford Review. To get a sense of Rabois’s pol­i­tics at that time, Rabois was rep­ri­mand­ed by Stan­ford in 1992 when he stood out­side a gay pro­fes­sors home shout­ing homo­pho­bic slurs and sug­gest­ing the pro­fes­sor should “die of AIDS”. Fit­ting­ly, Rabois, now a major Sil­i­con Val­ley investor fol­low­ing his days at Pay­Pal, was forced to resign fro FourSquare in 2013 fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion that he was sex­u­al­ly harass­ing a male employ­ee he was dat­ing at the com­pa­ny.

    Oth­er Sil­i­con Val­ley investors who recent­ly made the move to Mia­mi include Soft­Bank Group COO Marce­lo Clau­re, who announced sev­er­al weeks ago that SoftB­nak will be launch­ing a $100 mil­lion ini­tia­tive to fund Mia­mi-based tech com­pa­nies and com­pa­nies mov­ing to Mia­mi. Recall how Soft­bank teamed up with Sau­di Ara­bia in recent years to cre­ate a giant tech­nol­o­gy invest­ment fund. So when we’re talk­ing about Soft­bank basi­cal­ly spon­sor­ing the devel­op­ment of Miami’s tech­nol­o­gy scene, Keep in mind that it’s poten­tial­ly a Sau­di-financed agen­da too. Is Crown Prince MBS look­ing to cre­ate a big imprint on Mia­mi? Giv­en the close rela­tion­ship between the Saud­is and the Trump fam­i­ly, Flori­da look­ing more and more like it could become a new Trump­is­tan can only make it a more tempt­ing tar­get for some­one like MBS look­ing to cash in on crony­ism and wield their finan­cial influ­ence.

    Ok, first, here’s the lat­est hint from Axios that Sen­a­tor Ivan­ka of Flori­da is a thing that real­ly could hap­pen. The Trumpi­fi­ca­tion of the state is just get­ting under­way:

    Axios

    Trump exile gov­ern­ment takes shape

    Glen John­son, Mar­garet Talev
    Feb 17, 2021 — Pol­i­tics & Pol­i­cy

    From cam­paigns to con­ven­tions, Don­ald Trump and his admin­is­tra­tion are reemerg­ing in exile.

    What’s hap­pen­ing: Trump fam­i­ly mem­bers are weigh­ing polit­i­cal races, a slate of for­mer Cab­i­net mem­bers are set to speak at next week’s CPAC meet­ing, and after lay­ing low through his impeach­ment tri­al, Trump is vow­ing to bat­tle Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell to shape the GOP’s field for the 2022 midterms.

    * Trump on Wednes­day used the death of con­ser­v­a­tive radio host Rush Lim­baugh for his first TV inter­view since leav­ing office, prais­ing Lim­baugh, whom he said also felt angry about the elec­tion because he thought Trump had won.

    * That fol­lowed Trump’s state­ment Tues­day declar­ing, “Where nec­es­sary and appro­pri­ate, I will back pri­ma­ry rivals who espouse Mak­ing Amer­i­ca Great Again and our pol­i­cy of Amer­i­ca First.”

    The Trump brand will be on vivid dis­play at the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence set to run next Thurs­day through Sun­day in Orlan­do.

    * Sen. Mitt Rom­ney was met with groans of “n‑o-o-o‑o” when he end­ed his 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign with a speech at CPAC. This year, main­stream Repub­li­cans like him are per­sona non gra­ta.

    * Instead, the speak­ing list reads like a Trump admin­is­tra­tion ros­ter. Mike Pom­peo, Ben Car­son and Sarah Huck­abee Sanders and ris­ing stars like South Dako­ta Gov. Kristi Noem, are sched­uled to appear.

    * The for­mer pres­i­dent is a pos­si­ble head­lin­er him­self. After all, the event once held in Wash­ing­ton and then sub­ur­ban Mary­land has now been whol­ly relo­cat­ed to Flori­da, Trump’s home and the new locus for con­ser­v­a­tive pow­er bro­kers.

    * Those who have bro­ken with Trump — whether Rom­ney, the GOP’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, or poten­tial 2024 can­di­date Nik­ki Haley — are notable omis­sions at this point.

    CPAC is orga­nized by Matt Schlapp, chair­man of the Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive Union. His wife, Mer­cedes, worked in Trump’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions shop, and Schlapp him­self was in the news last month for receiv­ing a six-fig­ure pay­ment try­ing to arrange pres­i­den­tial par­don for his client.

    * The web­site for the annu­al meet­ing, which is pro­ject­ed to attract up to 18,000 peo­ple over four days, is replete with images of Trump at the pres­i­den­tial podi­um and his daugh­ter Ivan­ka.

    * She has been men­tioned as poten­tial chal­lenger to Sen. Mar­co Rubio (R‑Fla.), while Lara Trump, wife of the for­mer pres­i­den­t’s son Eric, has been men­tioned as a more like­ly can­di­date for U.S. Sen­ate in her native North Car­oli­na.

    What we’re watch­ing: This year’s theme for the con­fer­ence is “Amer­i­ca Uncanceled” — a jab at the can­cel-cul­ture that Repub­li­cans pin on Democ­rats and Sil­i­con Val­ley tech com­pa­nies that have banned Trump from Twit­ter and oth­er social media plat­forms.

    ————–

    “Trump exile gov­ern­ment takes shape” by Glen John­son, Mar­garet Talev; Axios; 02/17/2021

    “The for­mer pres­i­dent is a pos­si­ble head­lin­er him­self. After all, the event once held in Wash­ing­ton and then sub­ur­ban Mary­land has now been whol­ly relo­cat­ed to Flori­da, Trump’s home and the new locus for con­ser­v­a­tive pow­er bro­kers.”

    Flori­da, it’s the new home of Trump­ism which makes it the new home of Amer­i­can con­ser­vatism. Even CPAC can’t resist the Trump fam­i­ly’s allure.

    But it’s not just the polit­i­cal class in DC that are find­ing them­selves drawn to Flori­da. Back in Decem­ber, Delian Asparouhov at Peter Theil’s Founders Fund set off what appears to be a grow­ing trend of right-wing tech investors set­ting up shop in Mia­mi, with the city’s Repub­li­can may­or encour­ag­ing the hype. Soft­Bank Group CEO Marce­lo Clau­re is also pro­mot­ing the city. But its long-time Thiel asso­ciate and Pay­Pal Mafia alum Kei­th Rabois who appears to be play­ing the role of chief tech evan­ge­list:

    The Real Deal

    Par­adise found: Can Fran­cis Suarez make Mia­mi the next Big Tech mec­ca?
    The may­or and Sil­i­con Val­ley elite are enjoy­ing a tor­rid romance. Real estate is watch­ing

    Jan­u­ary 2021 Issue /
    Jan­u­ary 17, 2021 01:00 PM

    You could call it the tweet heard around the world.

    In ear­ly Decem­ber, Delian Asparouhov, a prin­ci­pal at ven­ture-cap­i­tal firm Founders Fund, threw out a pro­pos­al mov­ing Sil­i­con Val­ley to Mia­mi. Fran­cis Suarez, a real estate attor­ney who stepped into the mayor’s chair in 2017, quote-tweet­ed the investor. He asked, “How can I help?”

    Suarez’s response went viral with more than 2 mil­lion impres­sions and thou­sands of likes. The may­or lat­er likened it to “catch­ing light­ning in a bot­tle.” He was sud­den­ly in con­ver­sa­tion with major ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists and tech exec­u­tives from around the coun­try, grate­ful for a friend­ly ear in what has become a polit­i­cal cli­mate open­ly hos­tile to Big Tech. Kei­th Rabois, a mem­ber of the “Pay­Pal Mafia” and an ear­ly investor in Open­door, Soft­Bank Group CEO Marce­lo Clau­re and Shut­ter­stock founder Jon Oringer are among those palling up with the 43-year-old may­or on Twit­ter. Rabois has become the city’s most promi­nent evan­ge­list among the tech com­mu­ni­ty.

    “I have met more new inter­est­ing peo­ple in Mia­mi in 3 weeks than all of 2020 in the Bay Area,” Rabois tweet­ed Jan. 4.

    For those mar­quee names and those who look up to them, Mia­mi marks a sharp con­trast to the gov­ern­ments that have “mar­gin­al­ized and reject­ed” them in the past, Suarez said in an inter­view with The Real Deal last month. “I’m let­ting them tell their sto­ry. There’s noth­ing more pow­er­ful [than that].”

    It’s an over­ture that has South Flori­da real estate sali­vat­ing. Devel­op­ers, bro­kers and office land­lords are antic­i­pat­ing a Big Tech gold rush that would build on the recent suc­cess Mia­mi has had with finan­cial firms. Last month, Rabois paid a record $29 mil­lion for a water­front man­sion in Mia­mi Beach, and the fol­low­ing month announced his intent to attract at least 1,000 “founder cal­iber” tech­nol­o­gists to the Mag­ic City in 2021 as well as VC firms and estab­lished star­tups. That’s a lot of office space and a lot of high-end homes.

    But Mia­mi has a long way to go on sev­er­al met­rics impor­tant to Big Tech. It lacks effi­cient large-scale pub­lic tran­sit and is well behind estab­lished tech hubs on health care and edu­ca­tion. A surge in pop­u­la­tion might push the city’s infra­struc­ture to the brink. Some warn that all the hype (and growth) could be short-lived. And Suarez, for all his enthu­si­asm and PR savvy, has very lim­it­ed pow­ers as may­or to bring about the sweep­ing changes that the tech indus­try will like­ly want.

    If Mia­mi real­ly hopes to become the next Sil­i­con Val­ley or Boston, it will need to address those infra­struc­ture deficits, said Bernard Zyscovich, an urban plan­ner and archi­tect who Face­book tapped to study the Bay Area from an urban design and mobil­i­ty per­spec­tive.

    There is “no way” Mia­mi can pro­vide the same “brain trust” as Sil­i­con Val­ley in the short term, Zyscovich said. “Over time, Mia­mi could become a place which gen­er­ates its own feed­er sys­tem for recruit­ment. But in the short term, recruit­ment is lim­it­ed to Mia­mi being a desir­able place for star­tups and incu­ba­tors. It has to be a large num­ber of small scale investors that come here that can run their busi­ness­es from their com­put­er.”

    Oringer, who relo­cat­ed to Mia­mi Beach in the fall after keep­ing a pied-à-terre for years, described Miami’s sit­u­a­tion as a “chick­en or egg prob­lem.”

    “If we can find entre­pre­neurs down here, if we can launch enough busi­ness­es, if we can attract enough tal­ent, we’ll be able to build lots of inter­est­ing com­pa­nies down here,” he said. “Peo­ple asked me the same ques­tions in the ear­ly 2000s when I start­ed Shut­ter­stock in New York. New York was a finance town filled with Wall Street peo­ple. It had a lit­tle bit of tech, but if you want­ed to start a tech com­pa­ny, you moved to San Fran­cis­co. I resist­ed that.”

    Test­ing the waters

    “Vis­it­ing Mia­mi right now and I think I’ve seen more peo­ple from SF here than I saw in SF last year,” JD Ross, a co-founder of iBuy­ing start­up Open­door, tweet­ed Jan. 10.

    It’s a trend that’s been on since at least the sum­mer, with South Florida’s res­i­den­tial bro­kers find­ing them­selves inun­dat­ed with requests for lux­u­ry water­front rentals and for-sale homes. The sin­gle-fam­i­ly home mar­ket, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Mia­mi Beach and Palm Beach, saw a surge, and sell­ers called the shots.

    In the sec­ond half of 2020, there were more than 3,000 sales of sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes priced at over $1 mil­lion, an increase of 99 per­cent, accord­ing to Ana­lyt­ics Mia­mi. In Palm Beach, which saw the great­est gains, $1 mil­lion-plus sin­gle-fam­i­ly home sales more than dou­bled year over year with near­ly 1,300 clos­ings.

    The wealthy buy­ers hailed from sev­er­al indus­tries: hedge funds, finance, real estate and enter­tain­ment. Mar­tin Brand, Black­stone Group’s co-head of U.S. acqui­si­tions, bought a water­front home in Palm Beach, and Gold­man Sachs man­ag­ing direc­tor Dou­glas Sacks picked up a con­do at Eighty Sev­en Park in Mia­mi Beach.

    Many buy­ers also pur­chased tear­downs and emp­ty lots. Builders are busy.

    Jason Ander­son, vice pres­i­dent of Coastal Homes, said buy­ers are upping the ask for ameni­ties, includ­ing bowl­ing alleys, indoor bas­ket­ball courts and even built-out tun­nels con­nect­ing prop­er­ties divid­ed by the street. Rabois’ Venet­ian Islands man­sion came with a $1 mil­lion aquar­i­um..

    Miami’s water­ways are bustling with hedge fund man­agers and tech investors, many of whom have recent­ly become first-time boat own­ers. Boat slips, which were already in demand, are being snapped up. It’s the cool way to get around.

    “They’re boat­ing week­days: Mon­day, Tues­day, Wednes­day. Every day is a boat day,” yacht bro­ker Boomer Jous­ma, who’s seen his sales dou­ble in 2020, said, refer­ring to the influx of New York­ers in South Flori­da. “They’re enter­tain­ing on the water. They’re meet­ing on the water; they’re social dis­tanc­ing.”

    Anoth­er sign that the migra­tion is less sea­son­al and more per­ma­nent? Schools are fill­ing up.

    “In the mid­dle of Covid, where peo­ple would oth­er­wise be poten­tial­ly guess­ing pri­vate schools, there’s wait­ing lists,” Steve Hur­witz of JLL said. “Peo­ple have already made those deci­sions.”

    Land of the (tax) free

    It’s not just the tech bros plant­i­ng flags in South Flori­da. Though Suarez seems to have put Mia­mi on the map with that indus­try, the city has long been work­ing to attract blue-chip finan­cial firms to the region. The pan­dem­ic, which nor­mal­ized work from home, mere­ly accel­er­at­ed a migra­tion that’s been under­way for years, experts said. Florida’s lack of state income tax, pro-busi­ness lead­ers and warm weath­er have long drawn the wealthy.

    Bar­ry Sternlicht’s Star­wood Cap­i­tal Group, Tom Barrack’s Colony Cap­i­tal, Carl Icahn’s Icahn Enter­pris­es and David Tepper’s Appaloosa Man­age­ment have all relo­cat­ed to South Flori­da.

    “The tours I used to have were with folks with sec­ond homes and sec­ond offices,” JLL’s Hur­witz said.

    And there’s more to come. In ear­ly Jan­u­ary, Black­stone took 41,000 square feet at the Miami­Cen­tral devel­op­ment in down­town Mia­mi, where it will hire more than 200 employ­ees.

    Bil­lion­aire hedge fun­der Ken Grif­fin, already the own­er of some of Miami’s prici­est real estate, is near­ing a deal to lease space at the under-con­struc­tion office tow­er 830 Brick­ell, accord­ing to Busi­ness Insid­er, where Microsoft is also close to a deal. Gold­man Sachs is also con­sid­er­ing a larg­er expan­sion into South Flori­da, and Vir­tu Finan­cial has toured spaces in Palm Beach Coun­ty. Google is eye­ing an expan­sion in the Mia­mi area, and Spo­ti­fy last year inked a lease in Wyn­wood.

    Thrive Cap­i­tal, Joshua Kushner’s invest­ment firm, is also in the mar­ket, accord­ing to sources. Twit­ter founder Jack Dorsey and the Win­klevoss twins have expressed inter­est in invest­ing in Mia­mi.

    Kel­ly Small­ridge, pres­i­dent of the Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Board of Palm Beach Coun­ty, acknowl­edged that there are no guar­an­tees the busi­ness­es com­ing into town are here to stay. “How­ev­er, our reten­tion num­bers are very high, and you can’t get away from no state tax on income,” Small­ridge said. She is behind the effort to build up “Wall Street South” and said there are about 30 finan­cial ser­vices firms in the pipeline in Palm Beach Coun­ty. (Paul Singer’s Elliott Man­age­ment is among them with plans to move to a 40,000-square-foot space at Relat­ed Com­pa­nies’ 360 Rose­mary office build­ing in West Palm Beach.)

    Danet Linares, vice chair of bro­ker­age Blan­ca Com­mer­cial Real Estate, said new-to-mar­ket ten­ants have toured more than 1 mil­lion square feet of space in Mia­mi-Dade over the past six months with Class A rents still increas­ing. Coun­ty­wide, Class A rents rose to more than $48 a foot in the fourth quar­ter, accord­ing to Col­liers Inter­na­tion­al data. Brick­ell is still the most expen­sive with ask­ing rents of near­ly $60 per square foot. Though there is increased buzz sur­round­ing the office mar­ket in South Flori­da, the vacan­cy rate was at 10.8 per­cent in the fourth quar­ter of 2020, up from 9.2 per­cent a year ear­li­er, accord­ing to Col­liers. The hos­pi­tal­i­ty and retail indus­tries are still reel­ing, and mul­ti­fam­i­ly land­lords aren’t able to col­lect rent from low­er-income renters. In a way, it’s a tale of two cities, sources said.

    Doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Bil­ly Cor­ben called the push for tech “the lat­est real estate hus­tle” in Mia­mi.

    “There is a com­mer­cial real estate depres­sion hap­pen­ing right now,” said Cor­ben, who’s known for the “Cocaine Cow­boys” and “Screw­ball” doc­u­men­taries. “No one wants to say the D word, espe­cial­ly down here where every­thing is about spin­ning real­i­ty. But the real­i­ty is you have one of the poor­est cities in Amer­i­ca and its res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers are cry­ing out for real and imme­di­ate help, with­out any response from their gov­ern­ment.”

    Moving’s easy. Living’s hard­er.

    Let’s assume Big Tech does make the big move to Mia­mi. Will the city be equipped to inte­grate it?

    Trans­porta­tion has long been a big issue for South Flori­da. Bright­line, a train that runs from down­town Mia­mi to West Palm Beach, is plan­ning an expan­sion, as is Tri-Rail, a more afford­able com­muter rail option.

    Suarez said that it was hard to pre­dict what trans­porta­tion require­ments would be in a remote-work world, and point­ed to Miami’s invest­ment in walk­a­ble neigh­bor­hoods.

    David Gold­berg, gen­er­al part­ner at Alpaca VC (for­mer­ly Cori­gin Ven­tures) not­ed that the cities attract­ing com­pa­nies — Boca Raton, Mia­mi, West Palm Beach, Fort Laud­erdale and Mia­mi Beach — are all far apart from each oth­er, pre­vent­ing the kind of clus­ter that tech firms love.

    He also made ref­er­ence to the area’s more easy­go­ing ways as a poten­tial hur­dle.

    “Is there a hard-charg­ing hus­tlers men­tal­i­ty?” he said. “Or is it a bit slow­er, less ambi­tious, poten­tial­ly shady?” A thin tal­ent pipeline is anoth­er con­cern: “You don’t have the Stan­fords, MITs and Berke­leys churn­ing out entre­pre­neur tal­ent,” said the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mia­mi grad­u­ate.

    Still, Gold­berg made the jump to the city with his wife in August. He’s work­ing out of a pri­vate office at the LAB Mia­mi, one of the first start­up hubs. When asked where his part­ners are based, he respond­ed, “I don’t real­ly know what that means any­more. I’m in Mia­mi. Ryan [Freed­man] is in Aspen. Aubrie [Pagano] is usu­al­ly in New York, but she’s in Brazil right now.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Par­adise found: Can Fran­cis Suarez make Mia­mi the next Big Tech mec­ca?” by Kather­ine Kaller­gis; The Real Deal; 01/17/2021

    “For those mar­quee names and those who look up to them, Mia­mi marks a sharp con­trast to the gov­ern­ments that have “mar­gin­al­ized and reject­ed” them in the past, Suarez said in an inter­view with The Real Deal last month. “I’m let­ting them tell their sto­ry. There’s noth­ing more pow­er­ful [than that].””

    Mia­mi won’t “mar­gin­al­ize and reject” these right-wing tech entre­pre­neurs. That’s the promise of Miami’s Repub­li­can may­or Fran­cis Suarez as he pro­motes his city, But it’s fel­low tech investors like Kei­th Rabois and Soft­Bank Group CEO Marce­lo Clau­re who are like­ly to make the biggest impact on lur­ing tech com­pa­nies to the area:

    ...
    Suarez’s response went viral with more than 2 mil­lion impres­sions and thou­sands of likes. The may­or lat­er likened it to “catch­ing light­ning in a bot­tle.” He was sud­den­ly in con­ver­sa­tion with major ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists and tech exec­u­tives from around the coun­try, grate­ful for a friend­ly ear in what has become a polit­i­cal cli­mate open­ly hos­tile to Big Tech. Kei­th Rabois, a mem­ber of the “Pay­Pal Mafia” and an ear­ly investor in Open­door, Soft­Bank Group CEO Marce­lo Clau­re and Shut­ter­stock founder Jon Oringer are among those palling up with the 43-year-old may­or on Twit­ter. Rabois has become the city’s most promi­nent evan­ge­list among the tech com­mu­ni­ty.
    ...

    And look who is already respond­ing to the Siren’s call: Peter Thiel just bought two beach­front man­sions:

    The Real Deal

    Pay­Pal co-founder Peter Thiel revealed as buy­er of Mia­mi Beach man­sions
    Bil­lion­aire co-founder of Founders Fund also incor­po­rat­ed a com­pa­ny in Flori­da

    By Kather­ine Kaller­gis
    Jan­u­ary 22, 2021 03:30 PM

    Pay­Pal co-founder Peter Thiel was revealed as the buy­er of two water­front adja­cent Mia­mi Beach man­sions that sold in Sep­tem­ber for $18 mil­lion.

    Thiel, the Ger­man-Amer­i­can bil­lion­aire entre­pre­neur and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, acquired Jacques Nasser’s dou­ble-home at 445 to 441 East Rivo Alto Dri­ve on the Venet­ian Islands. Busi­ness Insid­er first report­ed the buyer’s iden­ti­ty, which a source con­firmed to The Real Deal.

    Thiel is a co-founder of San Fran­cis­co-based ven­ture cap­i­tal firm Founders Fund, which has a pres­ence in the Mia­mi area. Thiel incor­po­rat­ed Founders Fund Mia­mi in Decem­ber, accord­ing to state records. He also invest­ed in Face­book and co-found­ed Palan­tir Tech­nolo­gies. Forbes pegs his net worth at about $5.9 bil­lion.

    Nass­er, a Lebanese-Amer­i­can busi­ness exec­u­tive and phil­an­thropist who led Ford Motor Com­pa­ny as pres­i­dent and CEO, put the Mia­mi Beach prop­er­ty up for sale ask­ing near­ly $20 mil­lion in July.

    The prop­er­ty includes two hous­es, each with a pool, with a total of nine bed­rooms, sev­en bath­rooms and one half-bath. Nass­er paid $5 mil­lion for the 0.6‑acre prop­er­ty in 2005. The homes were orig­i­nal­ly built in 1947 and 1956, records show.

    Dora Puig of Luxe Liv­ing Real­ty was the list­ing agent in the lat­est deal, and Dou­glas Kins­ley of For­tune Inter­na­tion­al Real­ty rep­re­sent­ed the buy­er.

    Thiel is one of the biggest tech names to plunk down cash for a water­front Mia­mi Beach home in recent months, as more ven­ture cap­i­tal and tech exec­u­tives move to South Flori­da. In Decem­ber, Kei­th Rabois, a mem­ber of the “Pay­Pal Mafia” and a gen­er­al part­ner at Founders Fund, paid near­ly $29 mil­lion for a man­sion, also on the Venet­ian Islands.

    ...

    —————

    “Pay­Pal co-founder Peter Thiel revealed as buy­er of Mia­mi Beach man­sions” by Kather­ine Kaller­gis; The Real Deal; 01/22/2021

    “Thiel is one of the biggest tech names to plunk down cash for a water­front Mia­mi Beach home in recent months, as more ven­ture cap­i­tal and tech exec­u­tives move to South Flori­da. In Decem­ber, Kei­th Rabois, a mem­ber of the “Pay­Pal Mafia” and a gen­er­al part­ner at Founders Fund, paid near­ly $29 mil­lion for a man­sion, also on the Venet­ian Islands.”

    Long-time friends and co-investors Thiel and Rabois are set­ting up camp on the Venet­ian Islands and invit­ing the rest of their friends to join them. It’s one com­po­nent of what appears to be a much larg­er far right pil­grim­age to Flori­da, the new far right Amer­i­can Mec­ca.

    And that’s all why the fate of Flori­da is sud­den­ly very much an open ques­tion. We’ve long known that the state is fat­ed to even­tu­al­ly be sub­merged under a flood of ris­ing oceans in com­ing decades and cen­turies. But we are now see­ing the start of a new demo­graph­ic flood swamp­ing the state, with the city of Mia­mi poised to take the brunt of what looks like a surge of super-rich far right tech assh*les descend­ing on the city with plans of mak­ing it their own. The res­i­dents of Flori­da had bet­ter pre­pare. Nasty weath­er ahead.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 20, 2021, 5:49 pm

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