YouTube attack ad by Mucarsel-Powell has ‘false’ allegation, Gimenez lawyer says
Miami Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign says it will “update” a digital ad criticizing her political opponent for Congress after an attorney for the campaign of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez threatened to sue over “false information” about the mayor’s family contained in the video.
The ad — released Tuesday night by Democrat Mucarsel-Powell as Gimenez was celebrating victory in a Republican primary for Florida’s 26th Congressional District — alleges that “getting wealthy off taxpayer funds is a family affair for Carlos Gimenez and his kids.”
The ad says one of the Miami-Dade mayor’s sons, Carlos J. Gimenez, has in the past lobbied for red light cameras in South Florida and represented President Donald Trump. But it incorrectly describes the relationship between the mayor’s other son, Julio Gimenez, and Munilla Construction Management, the company that built a pedestrian bridge at Florida International University that collapsed in 2018, killing six people.
Julio Gimenez was once a construction executive for MCM, and his brother lobbied for the firm at one time.
But the ad inaccurately says it was Julio Gimenez who lobbied for the company. The ad goes on to say that Gimenez — the mayor — “gave them another contract” after the bridge collapse, an apparent reference to MCM and a county commission vote last year to uphold Gimenez’s recommendation to renew an airport construction contract.
Gimenez is challenging Mucarsel-Powell in a closely watched race to represent the Westchester-to-Key West district. Gimenez launched his campaign in January around an endorsement from Trump.
In a letter addressed Wednesday to Mucarsel-Powell’s congressional office on behalf of Gimenez’s campaign, attorney David Winker took umbrage at the description of the mayor’s role in awarding the contract, and to the misstatement about Julio Gimenez’s relationship with MCM.
“What is particularly insidious about this disinformation is that you are making these false and abusive statements in order to falsely imply that Mayor Gimenez and/or his family were somehow involved in this tragic event that killed six people and attempting to use the tragedy for political gain,” Winker wrote. “For these reasons, we have requested that YouTube take this ad offline for abuse, defamation, and any violations of YouTube’s applicable terms of use and Florida and federal law.”
Winker wrote that the Gimenez campaign would “seek all remedies available to it, including, but not limited to injunctive relief and/or monetary damages” if the demands laid out in the letter aren’t met. Winker’s letter was first reported by NBC’s Miami affiliate.
YouTube could not be reached to address questions about whether it had heard from Gimenez’s campaign, or if the company would remove the video. A spokesman for the Mucarsel-Powell campaign said no money had been spent as of Thursday afternoon to promote the video, which had been viewed fewer than 300 times on YouTube.
The ad is the latest attack involving the candidates’ families in the campaign for Florida’s 26th Congressional District, expected to be one of the most competitive in the country. The district has changed hands repeatedly between Republicans and Democrats, most recently in 2018 when Mucarsel-Powell beat former Rep. Carlos Curbelo to turn the district blue.
For months, Mucarsel-Powell and the Florida Democratic Party have criticized Gimenez and his family, noting that his wife, Lourdes Gimenez, is a cousin of the Munilla brothers, who run MCM, now known as Magnum Construction Management.
Meanwhile, Gimenez’s campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee have slammed Mucarsel-Powell’s husband for working as an attorney for companies tied to a controversial Ukrainian oligarch and for a restaurant group that accepted, and then returned, millions in Paycheck Protection Program dollars.
A representative for the Mucarsel-Powell campaign acknowledged Thursday that the ad contained an error regarding Julio Gimenez’s relationship with MCM, saying it was an unintentional mistake and a mix-up, given that C.J. Gimenez once lobbied for the company.
Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign manager, Andrew Markoff, said in a statement Thursday the campaign would correct the reference in the video.
“We are updating the ad to make it even clearer which of Mayor Gimenez’s family members was the corporate executive and which was the lobbyist for a shady special interest,” Markoff said, “and thank the Gimenez campaign for highlighting our campaign message.”
Nicole Rapanos, a campaign spokeswoman for Gimenez, responded: “We appreciate the congresswoman admitting that her ad contained false statements and look forward to a campaign that allows voters to make decisions based on the facts and our respective records.”
This story was originally published August 20, 2020 at 6:17 PM with the headline "YouTube attack ad by Mucarsel-Powell has ‘false’ allegation, Gimenez lawyer says."
