Lessons Learned from My Mayoral Campaign
In September of 2023, I found myself in a familiar setting: in an office buzzing with the energy of young staffers dedicated to their mission, going over numbers that forecasted my future. But this wasn’t MTV, it was Miami Beach politics. And those numbers weren’t viewers, they were voters. Instead of trying to reach a global audience of billions, I was trying to connect to the 80,000 residents of my hometown, where I was campaigning to be the next mayor.
We were rising in the polls just then, and it had been hard work — my team and I knocked on more than 20,000 doors, held nearly 100 meet-and-greets, and participated in 14 debates and forums. If an opportunity to talk with voters and engage them on the issues presented itself, I took it. I was a political newcomer running against longtime insiders. But I knew how to lead, how to build consensus, and how to drive change. And as had been the case so many times before, my team and I drew energy from the hard work and challenges we faced.
We came close — very close — to effecting that change. It was a brutal campaign — one of the nastiest in ages according to veterans of Miami Beach politics. The attacks on me started early, before I’d even officially announced my campaign. And along the way I’d see my patriotism and my faith buried in a blizzard of distortions and deceptions. But now, on the other side of it, I can say that the challenges and struggles have only affirmed my lifelong commitment to service.
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I didn’t wake up one morning thinking I wanted to be the mayor of Miami Beach. It took more than two years of thought and conversation — and some persistent persuasion from a collection of influential people in the city. That included the former mayor, Philip Levine, and the then-sitting mayor, Dan Gelber — and when the 37th and 38th mayors of Miami Beach encourage you to become the 39th, well, you take notice.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. To understand how it all happened, you need to understand a bit about Miami Beach’s political structure. I like to say it’s a small city with a big brand. Miami Beach is one of the greatest cities in the world: beautiful beaches, first-class hotels and restaurants, unique and historic Art Deco architecture, with a lively culture of music and entertainment, plus a diverse population of residents mirroring much of America. But it also struggles with crime, traffic, homelessness, and overdevelopment, as well as being on the front lines of rising seas. And negotiating the twin priorities of development and preservation is increasingly difficult, with special interest groups knocking the balance out of whack.
There were painful and chronic delays in problem-solving, as well as low morale in City Hall. The mayor shares power with six commissioners, all holding one vote — not the best way to run a city with a budget of $1 billion. Getting things done requires building consensus, but that’s difficult to do due to Miami’s Sunshine Laws, a reform measure that requires every discussion to be public. The intentions there are good, but the results aren’t — it promotes performative politics, everyone sticking to their guns, not wanting to change their minds for fear of looking like they’re compromising. The Sunshine Laws are meant to put the workings of local government on view to the public, but too often you see eager self-promotion from the mayoral and commissioner candidates. Adding to the problem, the council and mayor are essentially volunteer positions, with nominal compensation ($6,000 a year for the commissioners, $10,000 for the mayor). That means elected officials have to hold outside jobs, which increases vulnerability to outside influence. And it also means that their government work is part time, so even though the city’s problems exist 24/7, 365 days a year, the attention of the city government doesn’t.
I was going to counter that and be a full-time mayor, 24/7. Furthermore, as a self-funded candidate, I wouldn’t be beholden to anyone, so I could speak — and act — freely on the issues, unencumbered by ties to special interest groups. To paraphrase Mayor Dan Gelber, “The city needed a person who didn’t need the job” — whose sole motivation was to serve this great city with action and integrity.
But again, I’m getting ahead of myself. It all really started a few years before the race, during the thick of the Covid pandemic in 2020, with a series of conversations with Robin Jacobs, who was the Chair of the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce and the daughter of a board member from my former company, Viacom. Robin’s original suggestion was that I run for a city commissioner seat. Over the next year I continued talking with Robin, as well as Paxti Pastor, a marketing expert, philanthropist, and environmental activist who’d been deeply involved in ocean conservation efforts in Florida and elsewhere. It was Paxi who introduced me to Jerry Libbin, the President and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, as well as a former city commissioner who’d mounted his own mayoral campaign in 2013. Robin, Jerry, and Paxti were the three who started it all.
It was in the spring of 2022 that Robin and Jerry presented the idea of running for mayor. I’d never sought a political career, but I began to consider the role and how it aligned with my capabilities and my goal of providing public service. I knew I had operational experience that applied. Miami Beach has some 2,600 employees and a $1 billion budget. Managing things at this scale was completely familiar to me: when I left MTV Networks International we had 20 brands across 200 countries, reaching two billion viewers, and I was managing more than 6,000 employees and a $2 billion budget. That background made me unique among the candidates. I was an unusual candidate in other ways: this would be the first time a military combat veteran and global health ambassador had run for mayor of Miami Beach. And I had the benefit of the long view: having been raised in Miami — and having kept a residence there for more than 20 years — I knew the history of the city well. I’d seen its ups and downs, how the city had transformed over the years from the 1950s to the present day.
As I turned it over, I came to see running for office as a chance to combine two key currents in my life and career: the business acumen I’d acquired in my 30-year media career, taking a product all around the world successfully, and bringing people together as we did; and the idea of service, which had driven my time in the military. The work I’d done as the first UNAIDS ambassador and as the Chair of amfAR to bring about a substantial decrease in HIV/AIDS cases globally also meant I could better connect with Miami Beach’s LGBTQ voters.
In August of 2022, Alex, the kids, and I moved back to Miami Beach full time. Alex and I had exchanged our vows on the same beach in 2000, and we’d long been going back and forth between London and Miami Beach, keeping a link with my mom and family there. Going back and forth so often, in fact, that our son Rocky was born just days after 9/11 in a hot tub at a maternity center in North Beach.
Once we’d moved, my consideration of running for mayor began to take on a new seriousness. Over the next few months, I met with the former mayor, Phillip Levine (who served from 2013 to 2017), and the current mayor, Dan Gelber, as well as many former and current commissioners, candidates, and Miami Beach community leaders. Our conversations deepened my understanding of the political landscape, and also allowed me to show respect for what had been accomplished.
It was as the year drew to a close that things really began to take shape. As other people were making pies in the days before Thanksgiving, I was meeting with a seasoned Miami-based political strategist, Steve Marin. December brought holiday shopping, but also the suggestion from Ricky Arriola, one of the city commissioners, that I join the Miami Beach Budget Advisory Committee, which met monthly to review the budget process and the workings of different departments.
Becoming part of the Budget Advisory Committee showed my commitment to engaging with key stakeholders in the community. But it wasn’t just strategic. I was no longer just talking about the problems. I was getting involved in solving them.
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“Politics is a full-contact sport.” That bit of advice came to me from Ed Tobin, whose dedication to service I admired and shared. Ed had been a Miami Beach city commissioner until he resigned his commission to realize a lifelong dream and become a Miami police officer in 2015 at age 53. Ed was part of a group of local leaders I nicknamed Law and Order. They kept me up to speed on the machinations of city politics and helped hold my feet to the fire. Ed knew the city, and he knew politics, and one night in March of 2023 — after a meeting that brought some intense grilling from my Law and Order team — he sent a text reminding me that campaigns are hard work and more grilling was sure to come.
But full contact sports have rules and referees. Modern politics — as I was about to find out — has neither.
I soon got an invitation from Michael Gongora for Alex and I to join him for dinner. Gongora was a lawyer and longtime city commissioner — Miami Beach’s first openly gay commissioner, in fact. He’d run for mayor in 2013 and was planning to run again. The month before he’d reached out to talk, and we met at my house. He was polite, charming, but kept asking if I intended to enter the mayoral race, and he wasn’t exactly encouraging.
Then in early March, we met Gongora again, this time for dinner at the News Cafe on Ocean Drive. Part newsstand and part restaurant, News Cafe had been a key spot of the South Beach renaissance in the ‘80s and ‘90s and had recently reopened after a renovation. Alex and I enjoyed being back there. What we didn’t enjoy quite as much was Gongora’s insistence in taking pictures of us at dinner. Not long after, Gongora posted one of those photos online with a caption calling us “new residents.”
This stunt was clearly designed to stir up concerns about my residency, and it was my first taste of political dirty tricks, Miami style. As it happened, I’d anticipated an attack along these lines — former mayor Philip Levine had alerted me to these concerns, and I’d already had an expert lawyer verify my residency, paving the way for us to move forward.
And move forward we did. We set about building out a real campaign operation, starting with Antoinette Zel, who I’d formerly worked with as one of my key executives at MTV Latin America’s Miami offices on Lincoln Road. We spent hours discussing the politics of Miami Beach, and Antoinette presented a powerpoint overview of what would be needed to build a campaign team. I joked at the time that Antoinette was someone who, like me, didn’t have any experience in politics, which made her the perfect choice. But underneath that joke was something important: we might have been inexperienced in electoral politics, but that also meant we both had an outsider’s perspective, and we agreed that it was time for a fresh voice to shake up a stale system. Despite the inexperience, I decided to hire Antoinette as my Chief of Staff and Campaign Manager.
There were a few more pieces to get in place. Antoinette’s research brought us to Bill Knapp, a political strategist based in Washington D.C. who’d worked on campaigns for Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Michael Bloomberg, among many others. He gave us national experience and a Democratic perspective, and we brought in Alex Miranda, a Republican who’d been Philip Levine’s Chief of Staff, for a local perspective. It was a perfect balance, especially since I was a registered independent.
I decided to tap into the immense creative talent of MTV. We reached out to my former worldwide MTV creative director Cristian Jofre to create the visual identity for the campaign and design our campaign logo. Linda Alexander, former MTV Latin America senior vice president of communications, was enlisted to handle our PR operations. Beto Giraldo, another MTV Latin America communications and marketing employee, and Coumba Diagne, a recent college graduate, set up our first photo shoot — one of those pictures would eventually be on a 14x48 foot billboard over the entrances to the Julia Tuttle and McArthur Causeways connecting Miami Beach and Miami. And the final piece of the puzzle: my messaging. “Serve With Integrity” was the West Point motto — it’s on the class ring I wore. I adopted it for my campaign slogan: Action With Integrity.
But truly the most important part of the process was getting agreement from the family. My wife Alex and I had endless conversations but we both eventually agreed to do it. As such she became my equal partner in everything with the campaign. She joked that her title was “Chief of Stuff.”
Including Alex (who had excelled in the advertising department at MTV when we met), I now had as my core team five former MTV executives who were behind the huge success of the brand becoming the largest media network in the world. On June 1st I filed paperwork to make it official: I was running for mayor.
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As I campaigned, my team and I encountered the issues facing Miami Beach in real time. Earlier, in March, I’d spent days walking up and down Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue, taking in the good, the bad, and the ugly of spring break — and that year it had been particularly ugly. There were not one but two deadly shootings within 48 hours. That summer, there was another shooting near Manolo’s, an Argentinian restaurant on Collins Avenue. We were across the street having dinner at Sazón when it happened and witnessed it first hand.
But the pledge of simply getting things done — even simple things people agreed on, like improving lighting on pedestrian pathways to help deter crime and promote tourism — was proving difficult to fulfill due to bureaucratic log jams. And this was at the core of my campaign: The biggest risk we faced in Miami Beach was sticking with the same old politics and expecting a different result. (This was a play on something Barack Obama had said during his first presidential campaign in 2008.)
We all knew there was too much crime. Too much overdevelopment. Too much traffic. Heavy rainstorms flooded intersections — a clear reminder that there was too little being done to prepare us for sea rise.
If we elected the same kind of politicians, things would never change.
I was the candidate of change.
That was the message of my stump speech. Finally I was getting a chance to talk about the issues — not just the problems, but our solutions.
First: public safety. Public safety was a top priority — not only in South Beach, but across the city. I felt Spring Break as we knew it must end. These high-impact weekends had seized the narrative about our city, presenting it as a place of chaos and crime. We came up with the phrase “We need a break from Spring Break” which we used in our political ads (and which was adopted by the city for a PSA the following year). But Spring Break was hardly the only issue. We needed to take charge of our streets and deter crime with more and better trained police. My military background would help in leading our local law enforcement and firefighters, but we also needed surveillance cameras in hot spots. There had been partial funding for a Real Time Crime Center — a centralized technology hub for law enforcement and first responders — since 2018, but it still wasn’t up and running. We needed to change that.
Next: Over development. I understood the value of growth and prosperity, but I wanted to balance the tension between the desires of the developers and the residents. The first step was putting a halt to the “pay to play” behavior that was the norm in Miami Beach and focus on responsible development that preserved our city’s character. I was a self-funded candidate. I hadn’t accepted any campaign money from a developer or a lobbyist, and I never would. So I was free to start my tenure as mayor with a moratorium on new high-rise developments. If developers wanted to build in our city, they would also need to provide affordable housing and meaningful benefits for our communities. We also needed to improve what we had already — take traffic infrastructure. Traffic was a big problem, but there were simple solutions — such as better coordination of traffic lights — that could address the issue.
And finally: resiliency. Sea rise was a pressing issue. Most of South Florida’s drainage infrastructure relied on gravity to move water off the land — and a lot of the infrastructure dates back to the 1960s, or earlier. My plan was to reignite the storm pump program and the seawalls, and put more mobile trucks on the road for flexible flood response, and my global background would help me incorporate best practices from all around the world — specifically, innovations from Holland, Singapore, Bangladesh, and the Mekong Delta — while also taking into account each neighborhood’s unique needs. It was crucial that we push forward with sea-level rise mitigation for future generations.
A successful campaign requires tremendous stamina — especially when you’re campaigning through 46 straight days with the heat index in triple digits. We were knocking on doors, holding nightly events, and meeting voters. The pace was exhausting, but we drew tremendous energy from our voter outreach.
By we, I mean my team of 40, which included a small group of former team members/ employees from my days at MTV. All were located in Miami Beach, and many were of Hispanic background, which was crucial to engage with one of the city’s largest communities. We were also reaching other key voting blocs: seniors, the LGBTQ community, and the Jewish community. That meant meeting with rabbis and temple leaders, attending Pride events, and talking with seniors at more than 20 events. We connected strongly with the residents of Miami Beach at these encounters, especially the seniors, who invigorated our campaign. And we were doing all this alongside a massive media campaign and brand-building effort that mirrored our days at MTV.
We needed to — initial polling showed just a 4% awareness of my campaign. The other candidates were deeply entrenched in local politics: Mike Grieco, a criminal defense attorney, had been a city commissioner from 2013 to 2017, had run for mayor already, and had served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2018 to 2022. Michael Gongora was a local lawyer with roots in the Latino and LGBTQ+ communities who was in his third term as a city commissioner, having first been elected in 2006. And Steven Meiner, an attorney with the SEC with strong ties to the Orthodox Jewish community, had served as a city commissioner since 2019.
Still, if it was an uphill battle, we were climbing that hill. Being an outsider who was not using this as a stepping stone for a political career helped me stand out. And our messages resonated, particularly our refusal to take money from developers. We knew that elections in Miami Beach were decided by a small percentage of eligible voters (there would ultimately be a 14.5% voter turnout in this race), so it was a matter of reaching those voters. Our polling showed awareness growing from 4% to 80%, gaining rapidly until I was actually in the lead — a huge milestone for the team.
But at the end of July, Alex and I had encountered Mike Grieco while canvassing. He told us that things were "about to get ugly." And he was right. I was about to get an education in opposition research and negative advertising.
I’d considered my global experience a plus, but my time at MTV in London earned me the nickname “British Billionaire Bill.” I’d always reply that only one “B” was accurate — and that was Bill. Once again, the questions about my residency were surfacing, and it was about to get worse. A photoshopped picture that had been a gift from a friend that put me in one of the tall caps worn by the guards outside Buckingham Palace was used in a website, mailer, and text blast aimed at persuading voters that I had stronger foreign ties than to my own hometown. That website went live on September 11th, an insult to my military service.
There was more, I’m sorry to say — multiple mailers that were low blows or puerile nonsense. I’d spent almost two decades working to get distribution for MTV in China, believing then — as I do now — that American music brings messages of freedom wherever it goes. But these efforts were reduced to baseless allegations that I’d supported censorship in China. And even worse was the absurd accusations that I had close ties to Cuba (very much a hot-button issue in Miami Beach), accompanied by a low-resolution photo depicting Fidel Castro hugging me. That photo was actually from 1961, when I was 13, and in real-life it showed Castro embracing Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin. A friend of mine had photoshopped me into Gagarin’s place, a playful bit of fun that I kept on my desk. It was a joke between friends, but it was no laughing matter when it was circulated as if it was real. Adding to the absurdity, my sister married a Cuban and I’d fought communism as part of my army career.
If I found myself attacked, well, that’s politics. But the degree to which lies and exaggeration are now the accepted strategy from the professional political consulting class was something else: misinformation. Everything from my patriotism to my connection to my Jewish faith came under attack by outlandish text messages spreading false narratives. I was a vocal supporter of Israel, but I was portrayed as siding with Hamas, an outright lie. And the decline of local press in the digital age meant there was almost no one policing those lies. Ad fact checks are gone, in-depth issue profiles are a thing of the past, and voters who want to know more are drowning in distortions.
We responded by focusing on facts. There would be no personal attacks, no manipulation. Our campaign was transparent and trustworthy. We used every platform we could to speak directly with voters: mailers, text and email blasts, social media reels, TV spots, and digital ads. And I remember my time at the Stella Maris senior center as a chance to connect with voters directly and address their concerns head-on. I appealed to this group with my military background — the time I’d spent fighting communism and working to protect freedom and bring democracy abroad. Providing a clear stance on issues like anti-communism solidified support among patriotic voters who value strong and principled leadership. I continued this #JustTheFacts strategy in interviews with the Miami Herald, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, and others.
The final stretch of the race was a turning point that saw a dramatic uptick in media attention and political turbulence. Meiner received the endorsement of SoBe Safe, a neighborhood group focused on the Ocean Drive corridor—even though I lived in the area and had consistently championed its issues throughout my campaign. For our team, it was a dark day—disheartening to see a local group overlook lived experience and long-standing advocacy. Meiner was also endorsed by The Miami Herald, but the paper revoked its endorsement just days before the election after he faced a wave of public scrutiny over newly surfaced sexual misconduct allegations.
Meanwhile, Grieco’s troubling pattern of behavior took center stage. Having previously resigned from public office after pleading no contest to accepting an illegal foreign donation, Grieco made headlines again for leaving a loaded handgun unattended in a public park—a repeat offense following a similar incident in 2020. We publicly called for his withdrawal, citing a blatant disregard for public safety and judgment unworthy of mayoral office. Additionally, while there were no formal allegations of misconduct related to his 2023 campaign finances, the incredibly substantial backing from real estate interests raised concerns among observers, especially given his prior campaign finance controversies. His campaign also benefited from the silence of an anonymous PAC, Miami Beach Residents First, which spent heavily attacking us and Commissioner Gongora while leaving Grieco untouched—raising serious concerns about transparency and influence in our local politics.
60 days out, as things reached a fever pitch, we felt like we could win. But October 7th came the Hamas attacks in Israel, a tragedy that destabilized things both locally and globally. The moment we heard about the attacks we had our mobile billboard truck featuring a video of the Israeli flag. From that moment on, we were loud and clear about our support for Israel on all fronts: event attendance, speaking on it at the forums, posting about it, sending letters out. During my time at MTV I’d worked for decades in Israel to use music to unite people on both sides of the conflict. Now more than ever, Alex and I wanted to make clear our Jewish pride and show support to our beloved Holy Land.
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Election day, November 7. My team and I were at the polls. We saw some moments of chaos — candidates almost chasing voters to the voting booths. However, our interactions were mostly filled with warmth, with supporters letting us know that I had their votes.
I was at the polling place at South Pointe Elementary School until the polls closed, alongside Matti Bower, a former mayor and Gongora supporter. Despite being on opposite sides, we seemed to find common ground.
Our team knew the race was tight, but the overwhelming love and support I felt at the polls left me confident we had secured a win. That confidence carried me into our election night watch party, where a crowd of cheering supporters awaited. I was moments from delivering a victory speech when the TV screens revealed an unexpected result — and in an instant, everything shifted. Much to my dismay, I pivoted to a concession speech, straight from the heart.
In the days after the election I thought about Winston Churchill, a favorite figure of mine, and the UK’s general election of 1945. As Prime Minister, Churchill had been an inspiration to his nation through World War II, but in that post-war election his Conservative party was routed by Labour, who won a landslide victory. His wife, Clementine, tried to cheer him up by suggesting that the defeat might be “a blessing in disguise.” Never at a loss for words, Churchill responded, “At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.”
Still, I wanted to see through the disguise. I’ve never wanted to dwell in the negative, and so I went looking for the lessons the campaign had to offer.
The overarching one was that local relationships matter. I came to understand that I could have developed those relationships better. If I’d lived in Miami Beach fulltime for the past 25 years, I would have gained not just local trust, but insight — I would have seen the day-to-day problems of the voters in greater detail. I naïvely thought that my range of experience would speak for itself. Never before had there been a mayoral candidate with military and combat experience, a media CEO, and a global health ambassador, including three decades on the frontlines of the AIDS pandemic. Looking back, I realize politics is not about what you’ve done, it’s about what you will do for the voters. Global, big picture strategy and experience has its time and place, but it didn’t resonate in a local election with Miami Beach voters.
I also came to understand how audacious it was of us to jump right in — with no previous political experience — running for the top spot, rather than, say, starting as a city commissioner. I began the campaign feeling that a counter balance to our political inexperience was that I was a distinct contrast to my opponents: I was a true change candidate, and I wasn't using this as a stepping stone to something else. My career building was done. This was pure public service. But ultimately, voters found it safer to stick with the familiar rather than take a chance on a new approach and a candidate they perceived as an outsider. We embodied change, and for many, that was too great a risk.
I knew going into the race that politics was a nasty business. But I would come to learn—the hard way—just how much local political consultants make it their primary function to produce nonstop attacks against opponents. I was ill prepared for the negative personal attacks, the lies, the fake photos, which seemed to an outsider like me to be a constant barrage. Politics requires a thick skin, the ability to move on without being distracted or defensive, another important lesson.
And so move on I did. In the end, my experience left me with a sense of optimism. Democracy has always been a work in progress, a long term experiment. As Teddy Roosevelt, another favorite figure of mine, put it in a speech about citizenship he gave in Paris in 1919, a decade after his presidency, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.” When he spoke about stepping into the arena, Roosevelt wasn’t talking about winning. He was talking about the daring it took to try to make things better, about not settling for being one of those “cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Citizenship, Roosevelt knew, came with duties and responsibilities, and worthy causes were accompanied by struggle. And so he spoke about striving valiantly, and about triumphs and high achievements not coming without the willingness to fail.
When my team and I stepped in the arena, it was an honor, one of the highest possible. The humility and inspiration I felt matched my taking the oath of service on the Plain at West Point 50 years ago. Maybe there are reforms needed in our election process. We can do better, have better engagement, better campaigns. But there is no substitute for freedom and all the values that come with democracy.
