Lawyer in Case Rides Cuban Support to Miami Mayoral Win

By Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer

MIAMI, Nov. 14 -- On April 22, 2000, Miami lawyer Manny Diaz was at the Little Havana home of Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives, negotiating on the telephone
with federal attorneys about the boy's future, when federal agents burst in to seize the young shipwreck victim and return him to his Cuban father.

That dramatic episode, which still resonates deeply in Miami's large Cuban American community, catapulted the virtually unknown Diaz, 47 -- one of a pack of
lawyers representing the Miami relatives who wanted Elian to remain in America -- to the high visibility that won him Miami's mayoral job Tuesday night. Diaz's
victory was sealed, political analysts said, by the votes of Cuban Americans.

The Cuban-born Diaz beat former Miami mayor Maurice Ferre, who is of Puerto Rican descent, by an unexpectedly wide margin -- 55 percent to 45 percent.
According to unofficial results, Diaz outpolled Ferre in heavily Cuban neighborhoods, winning in Little Havana North by 72 percent to 29 percent and in Miami West
by 74 percent to 28 percent.

Diaz won Miami's Hispanic vote overwhelmingly, 70 percent to 30 percent, but with only about 12 percent of the black vote and 32 percent of the non-Hispanic
white vote. About 65 percent of the city's 350,000 residents are Hispanic.

"We're in the dawn of a new era in Miami . . . one city, one future," Diaz said to a cheering crowd of about 500 at his campaign headquarters Tuesday night,
reiterating his vow to build consensus in an international city that often seems to revel in its divisiveness.

Diaz, who was making his first run for elected office, based his campaign on offering a fresh start for a city also infamous for public corruption and scandals. He
vowed to work on further reducing crime, improving city services and attracting new economic development.

Tuesday's runoff was required after Ferre and Davis came in first and second Nov. 6 in a field of 10 candidates, receiving 31 percent and 24 percent of the vote,
respectively. Coming in third, with 23 percent of the vote, was Mayor Joe Carollo, who was hailed for improving the city's financial picture but had recently received
negative publicity over domestic troubles.

Carollo also had come under fire in non-Hispanic quarters of the city last year for his vigorous support of the campaign to keep Elian in the United States and his
firing of the city police chief for assisting federal authorities in the boy's seizure. But with Carollo's last-minute endorsement of Diaz on Monday, Diaz was guaranteed
an even larger chunk of the Cuban vote.

"I think Carollo more than any other politician in Miami-Dade became affiliated with the Elian project, and that's where some of the original anti-Carollo vote came
in," said George Gonzalez, a political science professor at the University of Miami. "But it worked out well for Diaz. He was an Elian attorney, but he was not front
and center. . . . He had the best of both worlds -- he could say, 'I was intimately connected with the Gonzalez family,' and at the same time, his personality would not
inflame people."

Gonzalez said it was not unusual in nonpartisan elections for voters to vote along ethnic lines. A heavy turnout also helped Diaz.

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