Joe Carollo has spent almost half a century in public life in Miami, a fixture in local politics in a career that includes being a four-time City of Miami commissioner, two-time Miami mayor, and a brief sabbatical as city manager in nearby Doral.
He was Miami’s mayor during the Elián Gonzalez saga in 1999 and 2000, in which a young Cuban refugee floated to Florida alone and was picked up by family, only to be seized by U.S. federal agents and returned to his father in Cuba.
In 1997, the Cuban-American politician successfully challenged the Miami mayoral election, alleging absentee ballot fraud and overturning the election results in his favor.
There’s also his yearslong battle with Little Havana property owners William Fuller and Martin Pinilla over a political feud. It resulted in Carollo being slapped with a $63 million civil judgement against him for violating their First Amendment rights, and the City of Miami footing the multimillion dollar bill for the commissioner’s ample legal representation.
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Carollo, now 70, is termed out from his position as commissioner for the city’s third district. His most recent bid to become mayor a third time flamed out decisively on Nov. 4 when he came in fourth place behind his former political rivals Emilio T. Gonzalez and Ken Russell, as well as frontrunner Eileen Higgins.
Thursday, Dec. 11, will be Carollo’s final commission meeting, as the next District 3 Commissioner will be sworn in shortly after.
Carollo declined an interview request from WLRN. He has long claimed the media has not treated him fairly.
- Elected in 1979 to the Miami City commission at age 24.
- Served as mayor from 1996 to 1997, replacing the late Mayor Stephen Clark.
- Ran again for Mayor and lost to Xavier Suarez in 1997, sued, and became mayor again from 1998 to 2001
- Served as Doral City Manager 2013-2014
- Elected again to Miami City commission from 2017-2025
First Election
The year is 1979, and Joe Carollo has just been elected the youngest commissioner in the City of Miami’s history at the ripe age of 24. His election coincided with a wave of Latino representation on the dais.
Born on the island of Cuba, Carollo came to the U.S. as a child during Operation Pedro Pan, in which unaccompanied children were sent on flights from Cuba by their parents from 1960 to 1962.
Carollo spent the first part of his youth in Chicago before moving to Miami and attending Florida International University.
The Miami Herald in 1979 noted that Carollo was “a member of the first commission with a Latin majority.”
He aligned himself strongly with law enforcement and “tough on crime” policies. He told the Miami Herald at the time he would volunteer to ride in police cars and drive out prostitutes from Biscayne Boulevard.
Carollo himself was a police officer with the Metro Dade Police Department (now the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Department), and drew attention for alleged racist behavior.
The young policeman left the department after it was found that he placed cartoons depicting Ku Klux Klan members into the mailboxes of his Black colleagues. Carollo said at the time that this was a joke.
“I admit it’s something in poor taste,” Carollo told the Herald in 1979. “But if you don’t have humor in life, life can get pretty ugly.”
Mayorship
Carollo’s first stint as mayor lasted only a single year after he won a special election to replace the late mayor Stephen P. Clark, who died in office in 1996.
Carollo then ran a heated mayoral campaign against Xavier Suarez, father of current Mayor Francis Suarez, in 1997. Suarez won the election, but a contentious legal battle waged by Carollo led to a judge throwing out the results and naming Carollo the new mayor. He would then serve out his term through 2001.
It was during this time that Miami became the center of international media attention during the Elián Gonzalez scandal.
The U.S. became embroiled in an international incident as the six-year-old’s Miami-based family tried to keep him, claiming to be protecting him from Fidel Castro’s communist regime in Cuba. The Castro government demanded the U.S. return the boy to his father, in accordance with the island’s custody laws. Gonzalez’s mother had died at sea in an unsuccessful attempt to reach Florida with her son and several others.
Carollo, Miami’s Cuba-born mayor, visited Washington, D.C., in April of 2000 to defend the reputation of Miami Cubans who he felt were being characterized as violent.
“The purpose of my visit in Washington today, mainly, has been to … defend the honor of my city, of my people that have been so unjustly attacked with what I truly feel has been a double standard. They want to make Miami Cubans appear to be bad and want to make the thugs back here appear to be the good ones.” Carollo told to news reporters at the time.
Ironically, less than a year later, Carollo would be arrested by the Miami Police Department on charges of domestic violence. His 10-year-old daughter called the police claiming her father hurt her mother. Police arrived and found the mayor’s then-wife, Maria Carollo, with a bump on her head. Police alleged Joe Carollo struck his wife with a clay tea container during an argument.
Carollo claimed at the time that his daughter overreacted and that he never struck Maria Carollo. He was required to take anger management courses, and he and his wife later divorced.
Second Commissionership
Carollo returned to the fray of Miami city politics after a brief but fraught stint as manager of the relatively young City of Doral. He was hired in 2013 by then-Doral Mayor Luigi Boria. Carollo then feuded with Boria and the rest of the city council until he was ousted in 2014, just 15 months after his appointment. Council members accused him of “bullying” and “insubordination.”
The erstwhile manager then campaigned in 2017 to regain his old seat on the Miami City Commission and represent Little Havana, running against opponent Alfonso “Alfie” Leon.
This would be the start of Carollo’s now contentious feud with Fuller and Pinilla, each a co-owner of multiple Little Havana properties, including the Ball & Chain Bar.
The pair threw their lot in with Leon in the election, allowing the candidate to film campaign ads on some of their properties. This inflamed Carollo.
The former Mayor beat Leon in a runoff, and shrugged off a lawsuit from his opponent claiming he did not live in the district he was running in to represent within the qualifying period.
Once in office, Carollo began what was described in a federal lawsuit as “a campaign of retaliation” against Fuller and Pinilla.
Carollo used the offices of city government, through the police, code enforcement and the fire department, to harass businesses and properties owned by the businessmen with raids and code violations.
Emilio Gonzalez, who was city manager during this time, later testified in court that Carollo “targeted” Fuller and Pinilla and “terrified” city employees.
“I would hear from employees that they were terrified. They were afraid to say ‘no,’” Gonzalez said in 2023.
Gonzalez was given a list of the men’s properties to target with investigations, and told by then-City Attorney Victoria Mendez to assuage Carollo’s worries by doing what he said.
The commissioner was seen multiple times hanging around outside Fuller’s properties, including the Ball & Chain, filming and taking pictures of the bar. When confronted by staff, he would say they were trying to intimidate him.
In numerous city commission meetings throughout the years, Carollo would accuse anyone who spoke ill of him of being paid by Fuller and what he referred to as the “8th Street Boys” to attack him and ruin his reputation.
This saga culminated in a yearslong federal lawsuit brought by Fuller and Pinilla against Carollo in 2018. Through many legal twists and turns — including Carollo unsuccessfully petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to declare he had political immunity to the legal claims — the lawsuit ended in the businessmen’s favor.
A group of Broward jurors found Carollo liable for violating Fuller and Pinilla’s First Amendment rights by targeting their businesses in retaliation for supporting his one-time opponent, Alfie Leon. Carollo was ordered to pay them $63.5 million in damages, in what would become perhaps the defining moment of the end of his political career.
So far, Fuller and Pinilla have been unable to collect on that judgement, as Carollo has managed to shield his city paycheck and his home property from being garnished by the court.
His colleagues on the Commission, meanwhile, have argued for months about whether the city should demand Carollo pay them back for the millions of dollars in legal fees he has accrued since 2018. As a commissioner, Carollo is entitled to legal representation paid for by the city unless he is accused of criminal activity.
A company that provided legal insurance for Miami sued the city in 2024 and stopped providing coverage because of Carollo’s ongoing fees.
Election night loss
Carollo failed to make the runoff election during his bid for a third term as mayor, losing to opponents Gonzalez and Higgins.
In a statement to the Miami Herald the day after his loss, the septuagenarian said he would not be seeking public office again after his long and storied career.
“I’m not going to run for office, but I’m going to be involved in different ways at different levels,” Carollo told the Herald. “One thing’s for sure: you can’t blame me for anything anymore.”
