We told you last week that a low turnout in last Tuesday's Republican primary election might allow the powerbrokers to prevail in the race that determined who would face 20-year incumbent State Attorney Kirk Zuelch in November. The last thing they wanted was Attorney Mick Barnes challenging Zuelch head-to-head. After all, Barnes was preaching a radical doctrine: Equal Justice For All. We certainly can't have that, can we?
And so it came to pass. Voter turnout was the lowest in recent memory. And Tavenier Attorney Mark Kohl, who hardly even ran a campaign, won by 105 votes. The Key West Citizen called it an "upset." We disagree. We considered Barnes an underdog candidate all along, a candidate who dared to take on Monroe County's most powerful influentials—those who consistently receive special favors from Kirk Zuelch.
While we often disagree with the politics of the powerbrokers, we have written here before that we cannot help but be impressed with the awesome proficiency of their cunning and conniving. After all, in love and war and politics, isn't just about anything considered fair?
A good example of cunning in this election was Attorney David Paul Horan's last -minute half-page ad in the Citizen last Sunday berating Mick Barnes. It was packed with lies. But the timing was such that Barnes could not respond before the election. That was, of course, the whole point.
Most of those who may have read that ad, however, probably don't know much about the source. David Paul Horan is so close to Kirk Zuelch that they should probably be married. It is absolutely in Horan's best interests and in the best interests of his law firm that Zuelch wins in November.
And Horan is mad at Barnes for another reason. Earlier this year, Manuel Marcial fired Horan & Horan and hired Barnes as co-counsel to help defend against the false charges of grand theft that had been filed against him by State Attorney Zuelch.
If you're a regular reader of this newspaper, you probably know the story. One of Marcial's customers was demanding a full refund on a seven-year old ring. The emerald had been shattered by the customer and part of it was missing. During the trial, it was suggested that maybe it was the customer who was trying to defraud Marcial, not the other way around— and that Zuelch's office was an unwitting player in that alleged conspiracy.
It took the jury only 35 minutes to return a "not guilty" verdict.
Last year, based on those bogus charges, Zuelch had Marcial arrested and put in jail And Judge Susan Vernon had slapped him with a $25,000 bond—even though he has been a respected member of this community for 20 years.
Marcial hired Attorney Ed Horan, David Paul's brother and law partner, to defend him. Horan's approach to the case was simple. He worked out a deal with Zuelch that called for Marcial to plead guilty to a lesser charge to avoid a trial. An easy conviction for Zuelch. A quick fee for Horan.
Marcial was horrified. "I didn't do anything wrong," he argued. "I can't plead guilty to something I didn't do."
Over the protests of Horan, Marcial brought in Gainesville Attorney Gloria Fletcher as new lead counsel, pushing Horan over to the co-counsel chair. But Horan refused to give up.
"He told me that the judges here don't like outside lawyers being brought in," Marcial said. (We have to wonder which judges told him that.)
That was enough for Marcial. He dismissed Horan & Horan and hired Barnes as co-counsel. Marcial is now suing the state, and Zuelch personally, for millions of dollars.
We hope that Horan & Horan are ashamed of their role in the attempted railroading of Manuel Marcial. But they probably aren't.
In his big ad last Sunday, David Paul Horan also professed to knowing the attitudes of the judges toward Mick Barnes. We think he was lying. We can't imagine any judge discussing their preference for State Attorney with David Paul Horan. But we could be wrong. Maybe Horan will share with us which judges he talked to and what they said. If he won't share that information with us, maybe he'll share it with the Florida Bar.
This isn't the first time that David Paul Horan has been involved behind the scenes in a controversial case. He pressured his own mother-in-law— Mosquito Control Commissioner Joan Lord-Papy— to lay off former Key West Mayor Dennis Wardlow in the now famous job fix case at the Mosquito Control Board. It didn't work. The job was unfixed, with Commissioner Lord-Papy courageously playing a leadership role.
This newspaper's first run-in with David Paul Horan came back in 1995 when we were supporting City Commissioner Harry Bethel's efforts to get the Key West Chamber of Commerce leadership to go public with their financial records.
At that time, even Chamber members were prohibited from seeing how their dues money was being spent. And we understand that, even when financial matters were discussed in the Board of Directors' meetings, the written reports were not allowed to leave the room.
A tough-talking Horan, representing the Chamber, told us "no way are we going to release our records— not to our members and certainly not to Key West The Newspaper!" Of couse, we got them anyway and published them over a three-week period— including information about Executive Director Virginia Panico's big-bucks salary-perks package and a secret slush fund.
And we retained former Miami Beach City Attorney Lawrence Feingold to sue the Chamber on behalf of several Chamber members. Horan pretended to be offended when Feingold called the case a "no brainer."
But, in the end, it was a no brainer. Feingold stomped Horan like a grape at a Sicilian wine-making festival. After failing to pressure the Chamber members to drop out of the suit, Horan folded like a cheap lawn chair.
In his statement of capitulation, Horan said, "Chamber members will be allowed to inspect all books and records of the Chamber for any proper purpose at any reasonable time."
An amusing sidebar to this story was that the Chamber immediately expelled the City of Key West as a member— to keep Harry Bethel from looking at the records!
Speaking of amusing, you may or may not have read Solares Hill used-to-be-Publisher-but-now-demoted-to-Editor David Ethridge's pre-election diatribe concerning Mick Barnes. He said he didn't like Barnes because we endorsed him.
Do you think it might be possible, when Ethridge was on that operating table,close to death a couple of months ago, that they cut off the oxygen to his brain for a few minutes? He now seems to spend an inordinate amount of time apologizing for his editorial gaffes.
Not long ago, Ethridge wrote that County Commissioner Wilhelmina Harvey voted for something or other that she really didn't vote for; and then he had to devote a whole column to apologizing.
Two weeks ago, he used his column to rip County Commission candidate Sonny McCoy up one side and down the other. The trouble is, he apparently just made up stuff. For example, he said that McCoy had been the architect for the Pelican Landing condo project on Eisenhower Drive and that the project was somehow illegal.
"When Ethridge finally got around to checking his facts—on the Monday following the appearance of his column," McCoy said, "he found out that I had nothing to do with that project. His column also contained many other untruths."
McCoy demanded a meeting with Citizen Publisher Bill Barry (the Citizen now owns Solares Hill) and Ethridge was called on the carpet. And, reportedly, he had to sit there while McCoy reamed him a new one.
"He was ashen," McCoy reported. "Frankly, as mad as I was about what he had done, I found myself feeling a little sorry for him. I thought he might faint."
This must have been an unusual experience for Ethridge. You may recall that, for years, when he was claiming to be the owner of Solares Hill, he would have never allowed a politician to put him on the defensive like that. But in 1998, the real owner of the paper fired Ethridge and sold out to the Citizen. Barry replaced Ethridge as publisher, but re-hired him as editor.
"I told them I wanted a retraction on page one of the next issue and that I wanted my response letter published on page three," McCoy said.
They met all his demands in last Friday's edition.
One of the things we were most surprised about in Ethridge's pre-election rant about Mick Barnes, however, was Ethridge's apparent insinsitivity concerning the plight of Nick and Carrie Nowatney, the young couple whose two babies were taken and held hostage for 200 days after State Attorney Kirk Zuelch falsely accused them of child abuse.
Finally, of course, Judge Mark Jones threw Zuelch's case out of court without even bothering to hear all the testimony. Mick Barnes was the Nowatneys' lawyer.
But Ethridge seemed to suggest that Zuelch's actions were somehow proper. Screw those young parents! And screw those little babies! Who the hell cares if the charges were false from the very beginning!? The main thing is to get Zuelch reelected! Right, David?
The reason we're surprised at this stance is that we hear that Ethridge may be experiencing some problems of his own as a parent, problems that have yet to be reported in the press.
Here at Key West The Newspaper, we have never pretended to be something we're not. We don't have fancy offices. We're not owned by a big corporation. We don't have a rich backer. Early on in our existance, some critic attempted to rag us by suggesting that we were "underfinanced." Our response: "Duh!"
But the good news (or the bad news, depending on your politics) is that nobody can call our boss and call us on the carpet.
Stay tuned.