I don’t give two conchs that the Key West Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors endorsed candidates in the city’s politically fraught mayor and commission races. It’s election time. That’s what people do. Are we actually surprised they endorsed their own? I guarantee that had the chamber supported the other side, there’d be dancing on the beach and chortling on social media. No need to smash the outrage buttons.
But, Mary, Joseph and the Wee Donkey, the way the chamber went about it? Could its endorsements be any more ham-fisted? It’s like they mapped a strategic plan to look clumsy and underhanded, a plan heavy on platitudes, light on facts and silent on conflicts of interest.
Let’s recap for those who haven’t been playing along: Early Monday online (and in the e-edition Tuesday), the Citizen published the chamber’s endorsement of Danise “Dee Dee” Henriquez for mayor and three commission candidates — Mark Rossi (District II), Juan Llera (District IV) and Greg Sullivan (District V) — as a letter to the editor. It is the first time since its founding in 1922 that the Key West chamber has endorsed individual candidates.
The chamber followed up on its letter with a stream of endorsement-related emails and messages to its members.
“The stakes are high,” said the letter, signed by Amber Shaffer, chamber president, “and it was decided that we would be doing our membership a disservice not to publicly take a position on who we feel will move Key West forward while supporting a healthy business climate and a strong quality of life for everyone who calls our island home.”
The letter concludes with some dandy kumbaya: “In closing, when this election is over, we will still be neighbors. We will still rely on one another. Our businesses will continue serving this community, residents will continue shaping our future and our elected officials will continue making decisions that affect us all.”
Key West chamber board left out some important details
Within minutes the firestorm erupted as local journalists — and the cadre of opposition supporters — stepped in to figure out who did what to whom, where, when and how. Here’s what we learned:
The chamber failed to disclose that two of its endorsed candidates — Rossi and Sullivan — are members of its board of directors. On its face that’s a rip-roaring conflict of interest. What we don’t know is whether Rossi and Sullivan participated in the endorsement process. Did they recuse themselves? The chamber didn’t say.
It’s unclear for whom the chamber’s letter is speaking. There’s a lot of “we” and “us” and the letter says the board of directors discussed the endorsements. But the chamber also says it has 550 members. Does the “we” include a majority of them, or were they left to discover the endorsements like the rest of us?
Crikey, why single out social media for “creating a polarizing hostile narrative,” as the letter does? That malignancy is also owned by the political action committees who’ve paid for the deluge of slick, nasty campaign mailers and messages rolling into mailboxes, text threads and inboxes. Let’s just say there are no clean hands, though some are dirtier than others.
Why a letter rather than a news conference for such precedent-breaking endorsements? Oh, we know why. A letter is dump-and-run. A news conference gets you uncomfortable pushback.
Ol’ Virginia Panico would have been right up there fielding questions, answering some and ducking when she didn’t, but it’s unlikely she’d hide behind a letter. Not on something this big.
Panico became the chamber’s executive vice president and CEO in 1991 and she ran the organization with an iron hand until she retired in 2019. Love ‘er, hate ‘er, but Panico never shied away from controversy. Not even when she was on the losing side, as she and the chamber were in 2013, when 75 percent of Key West voters resoundingly defeated a ballot referendum proposing a feasibility study that could have ended in dredging and widening the Key West Harbor. Who knew we’d end up missing Panico’s forthright, if often combative, passion for the public spotlight?
I don’t care that the chamber endorsed candidates, just as I wouldn’t care if the Key West Business Guild did. I do care about the lack of transparency, the conflicts of interest, the abdication of public leadership and the clumsy, unprofessional decision to hide behind an unedited, unquestioned letter. For what it’s worth, I’d already voted and that letter didn’t change the ovals I colored in.
(Full disclosure: Back in 2013 I was a paid marketing consultant for the chamber’s harbor referendum campaign. My company, KeyWestWatch Media, handled portions of the pro-referendum print project. I disclose that conflict whenever I write about the referendum. I no longer do marketing consulting.)
Wonderfully stated!
We will see what happens, it will be close