Joseph Xavier Carollo (born March 12, 1955) is a Cuban-American politician who served as mayor of Miami from 1996 to 1997 and again from 1998 to 2001. Following his loss in the 2001 mayoral election, he served as Doral, Florida city manager from January 2013 until his firing in April 2014. After a lawsuit by Carollo, he was reinstated as city manager in June 2017, before immediately resigning. He successfully ran for election to the Miami City Commission in 2017. He was a candidate in the 2025 Miami mayoral election.
Carollo's combative and erratic behavior in his political career earned him the name "Crazy Joe" from Miami Herald journalist and author Carl Hiaasen. The Miami New Times similarly called him "Loco Joe."
Early life, education and early career Carollo was born in Caibarién, Cuba.
At the age of 18, Carollo became the youngest police officer in the state of Florida. In 1979, as a police officer, he was reprimanded for putting Ku Klux Klan cartoon pamphlets in the locker of a fellow Black officer. He soon after quit the police force. His early career also included work as a security guard, and as a campus police officer at Florida International University (FIU).
Carollo received two bachelor degrees from FIU, one in criminal justice and another in international relations.
During the 1976 Democratic presidential primaries, Carollo (at the age of 20) supported the candidacy of George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama. That same year, Carollo also worked as a campaign aide to John Grady, a right wing candidate in the Republican Party's primary election in Florida's election for United States Senate. Grady was a leader of the John Birch Society, which was considered an ultra-right wing group, and had previously had run for senate in 1974 as the American Independent Party's nominee in Florida. Carollo would later reflect that his work on Grady's campaign played a pivotal role in recognizing that he felt his own politics most aligned with the Republican Party, believing that his strong anti-communist sentiments were most at home in the Republican Party.
First tenure on the Miami City Commission (1979–87) In 1977, at the age of 22, Carollo ran unsuccessfully for the Miami City Commission, challenging Theodore Gibson. In his campaign, he positioned himself as vehemently anti-communist and spoke of his desire to represent the city's rising Cuban population. He regularly appeared on Spanish-language radio, calling himself "Jose" in those appearances. He lost this campaign, but learned enough to have more success two year later.
In 1979, Carollo was elected to the Miami City Commission at the age of 24, He was the youngest member that had ever been elected to the commission. defeating Demetrio Perez Jr. Carollo was elected to hold the 2nd at-large seat on the commission. Both Carollo and Perez were Cuban-American. Carollo was regarded to have run a campaign more appealing to Latin American voters, aligning himself with city's Latin-American political establishment political figures, such as Mayor Maurice Ferré. Perez had run a campaign that was more appealing to black voters, which had received endorsements from figures such as U.S. Congresswoman Carrie Meek and former city commission M. Athalie Range.
In 1982 and 1985, Carolllo served as vice mayor, a position held by one of the city's five commissioners tasked with setting policies for the city manager to follow.
Political feuding Carollo quickly gained a reputation for making enemies, frequently battling with others in Miami government. A 2017 Miami Herald article would later say of Carollo's combative approach to politics, "he built a political career destroying opponents."
Carollo's combative and erratic behavior in his political career earned him the name "Crazy Joe" from noted Miami Herald journalist and author Carl Hiaasen. This name was popular among his critics. The Miami New Times similarly called him "Loco Joe."
It became clear from the start of his tenure on the City Commission, that Carollo was independent of other politicians in the city and willing to be combative with them. In his first meeting as a commissioner, he voted six times against Mayor Ferré's preferred positions. This was despite Ferré having endorsed his election. After the meeting, Ferré publicly characterized Carollo as "out of control". Carollo and Ferré frequently fought with each other. Their negative relationship heightened in 1983, after Ferré had made what he initially thought was a successful overture to make peace. Carollo promised to give Ferré his endorsement in the 1983 mayoral election, in which Ferré was being challenged by Xavier Suarez. At the public event in which Carollo was expected to deliver his endorsement, Carollo instead blindsided Ferré and delivered remarks lambasting him with a tirade of accusations. Among accusations he lodged was that Ferré (a Puerto Rican) was anti-Cuban. Ferré won the election. Carollo's 1983 "double cross" of Ferré remains a memorable moment in Carollo's political career.
Carollo and the city's police chief, Kenneth Harms, fought with each other. Carollo called Harms a "two-bit punk", and publicly accused Harms of harboring agents of the Fidel Castro government of Cuba within the ranks of the city's police department. In 1982, Harms sent a memo accusing Carollo of seeking political favors for Sheik Mohammed Al-Fassi, bribing the police, seeking career favors for his friends on the police force, and enforcing these demands by withholding budget funds for the police.
While Carollo had originally played a role in facilitating the appointment of Howard Gary as Miami's city manager, after Gary took office Carollo fought with him relentlessly and played a role in pressuring the controversial firing of Gary (the city's first black city manager). The ousting of Gary particularly angered black residents.
Carollo also acted as a frequent adversary to Xavier Suarez. In 1985, after mayor-elect Suarez (elected in the 1985 mayoral election) had had success in electing a slate of candidates promising reform, Suarez promised that he would cooperate with the new mayor and his council allies rather than be combative with them. This promise, however, was not honored. In 1987, Mayor Suarez (in a speech as a fundraiser for his mayoral re-election campaign) said of Carollo "He's really kind of an embarrassment to those people who really are fighting communism and giving their lives and their talents and their time and their money, and in the halls of the U.S. Congress, and in South America and Africa they sometimes give their lives. In fact I think he's an all-around embarrassment."
Anti-communism Carollo frequently postured against communism. He blocked a Sister Cities convention from being hosted in the city, citing opposition to the fact that it would include delegates from communist nations. In 1987, Carollo and several other city officials traveled on an eight-day city-funded trip to Miami's new sister city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
In 1986, Carollo attacked a plan to build a major waterfront development on Watson Island by alleging it was funded by communists. This was despite plan being backed by several conservative leaders, such as former U. S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, conservative anti-Castro lobbyist Jorge Mas Canosa, and then-mayor Xavier Suarez. In support of this accusation, Carollo cited a revelation that one investor in the project had previous business in a communist country. Carollo's vocal opposition helped kill the planned development.
Operation of private security firm, allegations of impropriety Art the time, city commissioners were paid a government salary of only $5,000 annually. Carollo founded a private security firm named Genesis Security Services. Several journalistic investigations by the Miami Herald highlighted that many of his strongest consumers were individuals that had business with the city.
Carollo faced an investigation into allegations that he pressured city contractors to do business with his private security firm. He was never prosecuted, however. He was also accused of giving a key to the city to a wealthy Middle East oil sheik in an effort to receive a contract from the businessman for his security firm.
"Carollo amendment" The titular "Carollo amendment" required agreements leasing city property to be subject to voter approval (through ballot measures).
Re-election defeat in 1987
Carollo floated a possible run in the 1987 city mayoral election before shying away after polls indicated he would receive little support. He instead sought re-election for a third term in his seat on the city commission. He lost re-election, being defeated by lawyer Victor De Yurre, losing by a broad margin in a runoff election. Leading black figures in the city's politics had come out in opposition to Carollo's re-election, as had Mayor Suarez, the Cuban American National Foundation, the Latin Builders Association, and the editorial board of the Miami Herald.
In the first round of the election, Carollo placed second behind De Yurre, with the third-place candidate (school administrator and activist Bill Perry) fell only 5% shy of outperforming Carollo (which would have eliminated Carollo before the runoff). Perry had previously run against Carollo four years earlier. The Miami Herald wrote that, in the first round, "Black and Anglo voters teamed up against Carollo, but scattered their votes among seven challengers," with the divided vote enabling a politically-weakened Carollo to still advance to a runoff. The newspaper described the race as "the fiercest, most expensive campaign" in Miami that year, as well as the "toughest campaign of [Carollo's] 10-year political career", leaving Carollo both exhausted and with a runoff still to campaign for. Analysis of voter behavior in the election indicated that, in the runoff, De Yurre won a majority of the hispanic vote for the seat, and won even more strongly among non-hispanic voters (evidently winning 80% of the non-hispanic participating electorate).
Political wilderness; founding of Stone Crab King company; unsuccessful 1987 and 1993 pursuits of office For much of the next eight years after losing re-election, Carollo was considered to be in "political exile", and was regarded by numerous political pundits to be a "has been".:
After he left government, his security business lost customers. Political opponents alleged this was because city government influence peddling had been driving business when he was in office, while Carollo alleged this was untrue and that he lost business because prior investigations into his business (which he alleged were driven by his political rivals) had spooked customers away. Carollo turned to new work in the private sector, including owning and operating restaurants.: Recalling the high Asian-market demand for seafood he noticed during his 1987 trip to Taiwan, Carollo founded the Stone Crab Company. This company purchased crabs and other seafood delicacies at cheap prices from nations in Latin America and exported them to Japan and other Far Eastern nations at a profit.