Some people will say anything to get elected regardless of whether or not it’s true.

North Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Joseph is apparently one of those aspiring politicians who has trouble with the truth … starting with his real name.

According to the city’s website, as well as his official campaign documents, his name is “Michael Joseph.”

According to the Florida Bar, however, this attorney’s legal name is “Mike Joseph.”

We’re not sure which is the correct one, but we do know that a person can have only one legal name at a time.

Ironically, Mike/Michael Joseph brings to mind another polynymous character (and one of my favorite performers), Marshall Mathers, more famously known as Eminem, a/k/a Slim Shady.

If that were Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Is Joseph’s only inconsistency, it could be chalked up to a mere personality quirk.  But it seems to be just one of many anomalies that make up his character.

Or, in this case, his lack thereof.

I probably wouldn’t have known about these discrepancies if I didn’t have a personal history with Michael Joseph.

In 2012, when he was thinking of running against incumbent Barbara Watson for District 107 of the Florida House of Representatives, we were introduced by a mutual friend, political operative Hector Roos, who was seeking my support for his candidate.

At Hector’s urging, I met with and spent several hours with Michael at a local Starbucks getting to know him.  He came across as an affable gentleman, sincerely wanting to give back to the South Florida community at large by humbly serving the public’s best interests.  We immediately connected and eventually became good friends.

Several years – and three campaigns – later, it became quite apparent that my instincts about Michael were completely wrong, and that he had played me from the very beginning.

I was not the only one duped by Michael.

During his 2014 campaign, Michael connected with the Jewish Leadership Coalition in the district whose only political issue is to promote School Choice, which according to the Office of K-12 School Choice, is the “support [of] quality public and private educational choice programs…”  Michael told them he was fully on board with this mission, and thus secured the Coalition’s endorsement.

Michael ended up losing that election, coming in third with only 19.9% of the votes.  Barbara Watson won with 47.3% and Philip Brutus came in second with 26.7%.

His unsuccessful campaign for State Representative, however, only fueled Michael’s determination to win an election, even if he had to start at the bottom rung of the ladder – City Hall.

In 2015, Michael ran against incumbent Phyllis Smith for her seat on the North Miami Beach City Council.  Once again, the Jewish Leadership Coalition endorsed him, as did VotersOpinion.

Once again, Michael lost, this time by only 71 votes in a run-off election.  Since we were absolutely convinced that Phyllis only won because of absentee ballot fraud (committed with the help of her good friend, the now-arrested-and-removed-from-office Frantz Pierre), Michael and the Jewish Leadership Coalition filed a lawsuit against her.

A group of us, including Hector Roos and others, worked tirelessly for weeks collecting well over 100 notarized affidavits signed by North Miami Beach voters whose ballots were tampered with and/or stolen.  With all that evidence, we were confident Michael had an excellent case.

While the Jewish Leadership Coalition filed a Voluntary Dismissal to excuse itself as a party to the lawsuit, Michael Joseph pressed on.

We can only guess why the Coalition withdrew its support of Michael Joseph, but we suspect they figured out Michael’s real agenda and realized that they, too, had been played.

Unfortunately for Michael, the case was stalled in the courts thanks to the shady delay tactics employed by Phyllis Smith’s lawyer (and wannabe city attorney) Joseph S. Geller.

Fortunately for everyone else, Michael eventually ran out of enough money to keep the lawsuit going and in 2017 it was dismissed for lack of prosecution.

Personally, had I known then what I now know about Michael Joseph, I would have supported Phyllis in her re-election bid.  While her overbearing personality is a bit hard to take at times, at least with Phyllis you know exactly what you’re getting.

With Michael, on the other hand, it’s anyone’s guess who he really is, what he believes in, and most importantly, why he so desperately wants to get elected.  It certainly appears that Michael’s desire is not to selflessly serve the public, but to fulfill a self-serving agenda.

Fast forward to the 2018 city election, when Michael did a 180-degree turn and literally turned his back on every single person who supported him since his very first bid for office.

In his obsession to win this election by any means necessary (even if it meant skirting the line of ethical behavior), the candidate who relied on our support during his two previous campaigns suddenly decided he didn’t need our help.

For starters, Florida Statute 106.143(3) expressly states, “A candidate for nonpartisan office is prohibited from campaigning based on party affiliation.”

Last June, the Florida Elections Commission fined Sarasota County School Board member Shirley Brown for “violating state election laws against using partisan appeals when running for office.”

In Sarasota School Board member broke election law during campaign, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported, “Weeks before the election she sent a batch of mailers to registered Republicans in the county with the words ‘Republican Primary voter alert’ at the top.  The ad accused ‘labor unions’ of illegally spending $71,449 to get [Brown’s opponent] elected. School board races are nonpartisan, and candidates are not allowed to campaign using partisan labels.”

Fines were also assessed in separate but related complaints filed against former candidate for the Sarasota City Commission, Martin Hyde, the Sarasota GOP (Republican Party), and two political committees associated with Eric Robinson, a member of the Sarasota County School Board.

After investigating, the Florida Elections Commission determined that all three parties “schemed to get around the prohibition on partisan campaigning by moving money from Hyde to a political committee and ultimately to the party, which paid for a mailer saying the party backed Hyde in the 2017 election.”

In Sarasota GOP, Martin Hyde fined for election law violations, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported, “The consent orders approved Tuesday by the FEC require Hyde to pay $1,500 and the Sarasota GOP to pay $2,000 to settle the complaints brought against them.”

It seems that Michael Joseph, however, never got the message to keep partisan politics out of the nonpartisan North Miami Beach City Commission election.  Not only did he secure the endorsement of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, but he used that endorsement as the highlight of his campaign.

Even his campaign signs prominently displayed the word “Democrats” in large letters, while minimizing the words “Endorsed by Miami-Dade.”

This illegal, and highly unethical, ploy was designed to falsely give the impression that he was running as a Democrat in a nonpartisan local election for the sole purpose of tricking unsuspecting voters into believing it was a partisan race.

When I told him that he was making a huge mistake by doing this, Michael tried explaining that he needed “the Party’s” endorsement to win his election.

When I reminded him that no candidate in the history of North Miami Beach elections has ever required the support of a political party to win an election, he simply ignored my warning.

To his own peril.

Since the Florida Elections Commission had already found two Sarasota candidates, as well as the Sarasota Republican Party, guilty of “campaigning based on party affiliation,” we are also hoping for a similar outcome in a complaint filed against Michael for employing these exact same tactics.

Once he was finally elected, Michael continued pushing his partisan agenda despite the fact that the North Miami Beach City Commission is a nonpartisan governmental body.

For example, he has aligned himself with the Labor Community Alliance of South Florida (LCA), an extremely partisan Progressive Democratic organization which uses the clenched raised fist symbolism of the Communist Party, and which pushes such socialist ideas as “Medicaid for All,” none of which have anything to do with local nonpartisan government.

One of the first things Michael did in office was to sponsor the organization’s April 6, 2019 event entitled “Exploring Medicaid Expansion” held at the North Miami Beach McDonald Center.

Another one of the LCA’s “beliefs” is raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a premise that Michael desperately tried to push on the North Miami Beach Commission in July with his unsustainable “living wage” ordinance.

In fact, Michael has so fully embraced the LCA’s controversial doctrine, he posted a hand-written note on his Commission office wall, announcing to no one in particular:

Except that he’s wrong.

Not only is the NMB Commission not “fully Progressive,” but by pushing this false narrative, Michael has succeeded in antagonizing and alienating most of his colleagues on the dais, even those who had supported his candidacy, as well as most of the city staff.

We also imagine that he’s lost the endorsement, and generous financial backing, of the Jewish Leadership Coalition to which he pledged support of quality public and private educational choice programs, an issue diametrically opposed to the progressive Democrat’s anathema to private schools.

Considering that Michael’s only goal in life is to be an elected official, it’s indeed odd that he has now estranged himself from every single person who helped get him elected in the first place.

All of which could explain some of the more ridiculous budget proposals Michael put on the table, such as a $30,000 line item for “Catholic Charities for September to November Citizenship Drive,” which thankfully did not make the final cut.

Aside from the fact that this is a blatant violation of the separation between Church and State (an infraction for which the North Miami Mayor and Council are now being scrutinized), citizenship drives are never the responsibility of local government agencies.  That task is traditionally undertaken by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which are non-profit organizations operating independently of government, and which are formed for the purpose of addressing social or political issues.

These are just a few of the many controversial actions Michael Joseph has taken during the short 10 months he has been in office, all of which we will be covering in future blogs.

For the time being, however, we can’t help but wonder if Michael Joseph actually believes all the “progressive” propaganda he’s suddenly espousing, or if it’s merely a ruse to help his run for higher office.  It’s common knowledge that Michael considers his short-term gig as a North Miami Beach Commissioner a mere stepping stone to Tallahassee, where he has set his sights on since when we were first introduced seven years ago.

It bears noting that our mutual friend, Hector Roos, is a staunch Libertarian, a stance that is the polar opposite of Progressive party.  Hector would never have asked me, a civil libertarian, to support a candidate espousing socialist progressive ideals.

Nor can I imagine Hector being Michael’s best man at his wedding or, as Michael stated at his November 27, 2018 induction, the godfather of his son, if Michael were truly the progressive ideologue he is now pretending to be.

We can’t help but wonder if Michael’s newly adopted progressive agenda is merely performance art for the political stage while planning for his next election.

To paraphrase Eminem, “Will the real Mike Joseph please stand up?”

Stephanie