Laura levey

Ambitious Endeavor
Newcomer Laura Levey is Going After the Mayor's Gavel
 
By Lee Molloy

Going up against a popular incumbent, with very little money raised and scarce name recognition, mayoral candidate Laura Levey embarked on quite an uphill battle when she filed to run against Matti Bower. However, unlike perennial candidate Raphael Herman, the passionate and outspoken Levey has not only gone door to door in her “grassroots campaign” but has stepped up to the plate by facing Bower at a recent candidate forum held at Old City Hall, and one-on-one at a Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club debate. 

Levey thinks her dedication to the democratic process deserves to be taken seriously.

“Our city has a glaring lack of leadership,” she told The Lead. “No one with political experience stepped up to address this situation because professional politicians all have vested interests to protect. I am only interested in the needs of our city and quality of life for our residents.”

Levey was born and raised in Venezuela. A quick study, she says, she was able to skip a year of high school and was accepted to a program to learn English in Miami. She continued her education at Miami Beach Senior High, Miami-Dade College and finally Florida International University.

Upon graduating college, Levey got married and opened her own shoe store, but after about a year, gave up the business to start her family. She says that since then, she has dedicated her life to her home and five children, although she has also been involved in her community, taking leadership roles in the PTA’s of her children’s schools and serving as a board member of the American Jewish Committee for more than a decade.

According to Levey, she has hosted dignitaries from Eastern Europe, Germany, France and Israel on their visits to the United States. During one of these visits, she says, she was able to demonstrate to her German visitors ways to get volunteers to help out in school projects. On a reciprocal visit to Germany, Levey says she was pleased to see that her visitors had implemented her ideas when dealing with child obesity.

“I learned about how they changed the school meal programs,” she said, adding that, to ensure the kids had proper diets, volunteer “parents were taking charge and cooking the meals.”

In 2007, Levey says she also helped to found Miami Beach Senior High’s Marine biology program — World Ocean Watch (WOW), which introduces students to the relationships between the land and sea components of our coast.

Now that she is running for mayor, however, the environment is only one of her platforms. She is also concerned about the city’s infrastructure and finances.

“The budget tsunami heading towards our city, that the city manager and mayor are ignoring,” is my main priority, Levey said. “They are going to leave us in a tax nightmare.”

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