Alarmed by what he describes as a culture of corruption and legislative dysfunction at Miami City Hall, former District 2 City Commissioner and Grove resident Ken Russell has filed paperwork to run for mayor in November’s general election.
He becomes the most prominent candidate, to date, to replace Francis Suarez, who will vacate the seat this year because of term limits after eight years in office.
Russell, 51, attributes his decision to run to growing frustration over efforts by the existing City Commission to chip away at the legislative achievements he championed while in office from 2015 to 2022.
“I’ve been watching the commission try to repeal things that mattered a lot to me, during my time [on the City Commission] – the tree protection ordinance, a more robust recycling program, a check on lifetime pensions,” Russell tells the Spotlight.
The “final straw,” he adds, was the recent decision to redirect $10 million earmarked for acquiring new park space to the Freedom Park sports complex near Miami International Airport.
If elected, Russell says he will invigorate Miami’s mayoral seat by opting to serve as the non-voting chairman of the commission, as the City Charter allows, rather than appointing one of the commissioners to fill that role, as Suarez and other mayors have done.
The power of a non-voting mayor leading the City Commission, Russell contends, lies in their ability to “steer conversations and make sure that the vision of Miami as a whole is represented.”
The mayor, he adds, is not bound by the state Sunshine Laws that prevent elected officials from discussing city business behind closed doors and can thus help shepherd legislation in ways that commissioners cannot do on their own.
Russell also believes that as commission chair he can “prioritize process, decorum and good governance” within a legislative body widely criticized for its political squabbling, personal enmity, and indifference to citizen input.
Russell rode into elective office a decade ago as a political neophyte promising to prioritize environmental concerns and government accountability.
He was reelected in 2019 but vacated his seat a year early – a move that piqued many voters – to mount an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Congress. He now works as a consultant and lobbyist focusing on environmental issues.
As mayor, Russell says he would promote legislation allowing voters to expand the size of the City Commission from five to seven or, ideally, nine seats. Such a change – diluting the power wielded by each commissioner – would encourage a more deliberate and democratic process in legislative policymaking, he says.
He also plans to push for a charter change mandating even-year elections to coincide with the federal races that routinely attract higher voter turnout.
Russell supports a recent proposal to impose lifetime term limits on City of Miami elected officials, barring them from returning to the same office after serving any part of two terms. The City Commission was scheduled to consider the item this week but instead deferred the proposal to its April 10 meeting.
As presently written, and if approved by voters in November, the change would apply retroactively, essentially disqualifying candidates elected on the same November ballot.
The proposal threatens to upend the political calculus in races for Commission District 3, where Frank Carollo is vying to replace his term-limited brother Joe Carollo, and for mayor – a seat Joe Carollo and perhaps two other former mayors are rumored to be eyeing. Joe Carollo, who was elected to the City Commission at age 24 in 1979, served two terms as mayor in the late 1990s.
Russell says this November’s races should underscore the need for lifetime term limits.
“Joe Carollo was a commissioner when I was seven years old, and here he is. These dynastic family names that we all know, that keep coming back, and have siblings or parents or wives who run for office who then also come back, this is simply a lack of good choices for Miami voters.”
