CHARLES WHITED Herald Columnist

We put them in office, as I've written before, expecting one overriding quality: integrity.

There's not a great deal else that the public demands of its elected officials. One doesn't have to be brilliant to be a mayor or commissioner, or especially charismatic, or always wise.
In Dade County, we've suffered the presence of charlatans, rummies and fools; we've elected, and re-elected, the inept, the pompous, the drab.

The public is long on acceptance, remarkably patient.

And then sometimes a politician comes along who seems possessed of gifts that mark him for a future in some larger arena.

When that happens, a kind of public belief system clicks in. There's a magnetism generated between the officeholder and the constituency, a vital power-lock that inspires confidence and gets things done.

For a few years there, Hialeah's Mayor Raul Martinez seemed to be such a politician, a young man who had it all.

Which makes his fall this week, in scandal and disgrace, all the more shattering.

Raul Martinez came to power nine years ago pledging a city set on a new course from the old hell-for-leather days that had marked the styles of his predecessors as mayor.

At age 32, he was not only the youngest chief executive Hialeah ever had, he was also the first Cuban-born mayor of a major Florida city.

"We are going to have a progressive mayor who will be accountable to the people," he promised. "Finances will be done out in the open, and it will be a city of progress, growth and togetherness."

Earlier, for 30 years the city had been the fiefdom of Mayor Henry Milander, a folksy politician who made millions manipulating zoning changes on land he owned, and then sold, solidifying his power by hearing callers' complaints, fixing potholes and traffic tickets.

Milander was often the target of grand jury probes, and in 1970 was ousted, tried and convicted of three felony counts of conspiring to use city funds to buy land that was then sold to the city for a profit. A friendly judge refused to adjudicate him, and Milander won easy re-election. He died in office in 1974.

Voters had loved him no matter what he did. As one longtime admirer put it: "Now, Henry was a crook, but he was for the people."

Milander's successor, Dale Bennett, was an avowed redneck who ran the city by doling out jobs and favors to friends, perpetually at war with his council. Young Councilman Raul Martinez was quoted as saying, "Bennett's nothing but a rat."

Bennett lost out in his seventh year in office.

Martinez's victory was widely hurrahed. The Miami Herald editorialized, "The city has taken a welcome step away from bossism." The new mayor had youth, good looks, brains, a powerful political base.

Even though unsavory rumors of using his office to profit on real estate deals began surfacing in the mid-1980s, Martinez had the mystique of a man who could call his future political shots, from a seat in Congress to the governor's chair. Despite his being a Democrat in a heavily Republican ethnic constituency, it's doubtful that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen could have beaten him in a head-on race to succeed the late Congressman Claude Pepper.

Now, it's down the drain, all that potential lost, with the once-dynamic young mayor mired in allegations of racketeering and extortion. The impact of it was expressed by Gov. Bob Martinez, announcing the suspension of Martinez and the also- indicted Commissioner Andres Mejides: "These are extremely serious charges that go to the very essence of trust in government."

What's the truth of it? A jury will decide. But in politics, unless you are a rare breed indeed -- say, a Henry Milander -- a grand jury indictment is the kiss of death.

Between public and officeholder, that fragile bond of trust, once broken, can rarely be restored . . .

That bond of integrity.