By Jim McCarthy and Mandy Miles
The State Attorney’s Office is looking into an inquiry sent to them by incumbent Democrat Heather Carruthers regarding the residency of Monroe County Commission’s District 3 winner Eddie Martinez and whether he resided in the district at the time ballots were cast on Election Day.
Martinez defeated Carruthers by fewer than 200 votes on Election Day, prompting an automatic recount, which is currently underway.
State Attorney Dennis Ward told the Keys Weekly that Carruthers asked his office if it handles this kind of matter. Ward said he gave it to an investigator to look into.
“What we do with it I don’t know,” Ward said. “We’re still waiting to hear from the Department of State’s Division of Elections to call us back.”
In her communication to Ward, Carruthers said, “I do not think he lives in District 3. Some assert he doesn’t live in Monroe County.”
Martinez, a Republican, secured an unofficial 23,188 votes to incumbent Democrat Carruthers’ 23,047 votes on Election Day. The recount commenced on Nov. 5 by the Monroe County Canvassing Board. It will continue until the machine recount is completed. If the results of the machine recount is less than one-quarter of 1% difference between the candidates, a manual recount of blank and over-voted ballots will be conducted immediately following the machine recount.
Martinez is dismissing the complaint, and said Carruthers is being “a sore loser who’s bringing up anything she can because she can’t believe she lost. I’ve always had residency there.”
Martinez said his residency in District 3 has been long established, but he acknowledges that he spent several weeks during the campaign hospitalized due to five surgeries related to gallbladder issues.
“She has nothing else to blame or complain about,” Martinez said about Carruthers’ surprising defeat.
The District 3 boundaries, Martinez said, are “from White Street toward downtown, and from Bertha Street to the beach. And I am well within those boundaries.”
Carruthers told the Weekly on Friday that she was taught in school that “this is called ‘carpetbagging.’
“It’s a shame the citizens of District 3 won’t be represented by someone who really knows this community,” she said.
When asked whether Martinez’s residency had been a concern all along, or had just come to light, Carruthers said, “It’s been a concern to me all along, but residency has always been hard to prove. [Supervisor of Elections] Joyce Griffin brought up the issue regarding his residency over voting, which is a felony. The guy has a lawsuit pending against him and Danny Coll’s wife is trying to serve him papers due to a dispute with a house he had been renting from them on Key Haven.”
