Blast from the Past - Romano says Ramiccio failed to demonstrate any leadership

ROMANO SEEKS OLD LAKE WORTH MAYOR JOB

BYLINE: Scott McCabe, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
May 24, 2000
SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 1B
DATELINE: LAKE WORTH

In a scathing letter attacking his political protege, former Mayor Rodney Romano announced he'll try to wrest back the office he left for Mayor four years ago.

This weird twist and aggressive tone surprised even longtime city politicos. Romano had taken Ramiccio under his wing, endorsed him as his vice mayor and groomed him as his replacement. Romano Monday took credit for getting Ramiccio elected.

Romano took the mayor to task for a range of issues: Ramiccio hogged headlines, offered no leadership, alienated constituents, and insulted political higher-ups. The mayor, he pointed out, even made a bizarre claim in a local weekly newspaper that Ramiccio was called the "White Negro of Lake Worth" for all he's done for the black community.

Romano announced his candidacy in a letter to The Lake Worth Herald last week, 10 months before the March election. Ramiccio has spent four years resting on my laurels," wrote Romano, a popular mayor from 1993 to 1997. "He has failed to demonstrate any leadership, judgment or decision-making skills necessary to be a good mayor." During an interview Monday, Romano's words rang harsher. Lake Worth's much-publicized progress, he said, "would have happened had a monkey been in office."

Ramiccio was stunned. "That was no announcement," he said. "That was a character assassination." Ramiccio said he would be more than happy to give Romano a tour of the city and introduce him to the people who have worked so hard in his four-year absence.

Romano's comments confused commissioners, who brag of a bustling downtown, a sharp increase in property values, a new downtown park, plans for new ballpark and golf club facility, and citizen-generated plans to improve the 19-acre beach. Commissioner Mac McKinnon called it a "harsh political attack on Ramiccio and an indirect attack on city staff and commissioners, past and present. "It's egotistical to think that nothing's been done since (Romano) left three years ago," McKinnon said.

This is not the first time Romano has publicly criticized Ramiccio. In a November letter to the editor to The Palm Beach Post, Romano wrote that he "was mortified" that Ramiccio raised concerns about county Commissioner Warren Newell's lobbying the city to buy property from Newell's business partner. Romano, who once called Ramiccio, "P.T. Barnum" for his ability to generate publicity, says the mayor is more interested in making headlines than headway.

Ramiccio has caught headlines, but most notably for promoting Romano's cause, "The Plunge in the Grunge," an annual swim across the Intracoastal Waterway to dramatize the need to clean up the lagoon. Ramiccio made national news two years ago when he contracted a mysterious, life-threatening virus that he said doctors attributed to the swim. The two-term mayor drew more exposure when he threatened to swim again, in a plastic bubble.

It's too early to worry about Romano and the election, Ramiccio said. He is worried, though, that a negative campaign will tear the city apart before then. "It's sad," he said. "It was Romano that taught us that nobody benefits in negative politics."

HOW COME YOU NEVER LEARNED THAT MR. RAMICCIO?
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