Leanne Tellam wins Palmetto Bay vice mayor seat in runoff
Leanne Tellam will be Palmetto Bay’s next vice mayor after she beat former village manager Ed Silva in Tuesday’s runoff election.
Tellam, an attorney who carried the endorsement of Mayor Karyn Cunningham and other community leaders, captured about 66% of the vote with all precincts reporting Tuesday night. About 5,000 voters participated in the runoff, which was held after none of the three candidates received more than 50% of the vote on Nov. 3. Tellam led her opponent by about 1,600 votes.
“My initial plans are to rest for a couple days,” Tellam told the Miami Herald. “Then I really want to focus on making sure we have a collaborate leadership style where we include the residents’ voices as we guide our charter officers to preserving Palmetto Bay as the special place it is.”
Tellam, a first-time candidate, said her election signaled that voters wanted elected officials “who look out for them and not for special interests.”
She built on a lead she had on Nov. 3, when she won just under 50% of the vote. Silva got the second highest vote total at about 38%.
Tellam, 52, has served in a number of community service groups, including president of the Junior League of Miami. She first got involved in politics when she began hosting training for women to run for office with Ruth’s List Florida, which supports female candidates. Going into the election, Tellam was backed by Cunningham, outgoing Vice Mayor John DuBois and former Pinecrest mayor and county commission candidate Cindy Lerner.
Silva, a 62-year-old architect by trade, became Palmetto Bay’s permanent manager in July 2015 after serving briefly in an interim capacity. Before that, he’d been the village’s director of building and capital projects for eight years.
The position caused a bit of controversy when the county Commission on Ethics and Public Trust in April 2015 received anonymous correspondence alleging that Silva “‘stands to gain either directly or indirectly through clients, business partners or proxies thanks to [his] position.”
The investigator at the time concluded that the role didn’t raise any issues under county law. The commission looked into Silva again in December 2015 out of concern that he hired an employee to work both at Village Hall and at his private firm. Soon after leaving his post in January 2020 with a $60,000 severance package, he became the main architect on a slew of development projects the village had approved during his time as a village employee.
The divided village council has been known in recent years to heatedly clash on issues and spend time arguing, and the runoff election was just as divisive. Both candidates blamed each other for running negative campaigns and neither could agree on whether or not to debate before the runoff. The debate never happened.
Tellam wanted a debate with a neutral party, but the organization that proposed to hold the debate, Community Newspapers, endorsed Silva ahead of the general election. Silva was insistent on having the debate, and called out Tellam for not debating him.
