Herald Staff

If there ever were any doubts about what Miami's and Hialeah's voters want and don't want in their mayors, yesterday's runoff elections clarified them in dramatic terms.

Miami voters said without equivocation that they don't want a mayor who blatantly claims that the office "belongs" to any ethnic group. In so saying, a great many Cuban Americans and Hispanics of other national origins joined with non-Hispanic white and black voters to send Miriam Alonso packing.

Former Miami and Metro Mayor Steve Clark's three-to-two margin was more than a deserved thrashing for Ms. Alonso. It was a loud acclamation by Miami voters, lovely to see and hear, that they've had their fill of ethnic division, of us-versus-them politics.

By so resoundingly rejecting Ms. Alonso's shrill ethnocentrism, Miamians warned future candidates, too. The warning said: We know that our city cannot prosper, cannot ever unify, if we elect candidates who tear down all that every person of goodwill is trying to build. So don't try it. This diverse community won't stand for it.

Mayor Steve Clark has the capacity to unify, and today that capacity is challenged as never before. He will have one fine new commissioner, Willy Gort, whose own career and civic work comfortably spans all of Miami's communities.

Mr. Clark evidently will have to put up with incumbent Miller Dawkins, who apparently was re-elected despite his lack of public-service accomplishments.

In Hialeah, many voters put their hearts where their incredulity should have been. By a margin no wider than a heartstring, they returned their charismatic but disgraced former mayor, Raul Martinez , to the office that a federal court jury in 1991 convicted him of selling out. Martinez defeated former State Rep. Nilo Jury by 273 votes with 511 absentees remaining to be counted.

Hialeans' reasons for choosing charisma over common sense are grist for an in-depth sociological study. Any next-day analysis, such as this one, is necessarily anecdotal. It's incomplete. It's lacking in the full dimension of Hialeans' individual justifications for taking such a risk.

But the anecdotal evidence is that a great many Hialeans disbelieve the trial evidence on which Raul Martinez was convicted of six felony counts.

They remember him as a strong mayor in the only major Dade city that has a strong mayor system. They remember that he was accessible, that they could reach him on the phone or get to him in person if they had a problem.

They have had turmoil since his indictment and consequent suspension from office in 1990. They yearn for things as they were. They want those things brought back by the man who was those things. Once. But Gov. Lawton Chiles must put his fealty to public probity ahead of his respect for Hialeans' investment of faith in a convicted felon . Martinez had the legal right to run for public office pending a decision on his appeal.

But the governor has a corresponding right to suspend him before Raul Martinez even takes office. More to the point, the governor has the duty to do so.

Because if Raul Martinez , convicted felon , is allowed to hold office, the value of honesty in elected officials will have been cheapened. So suspend him, governor, until the appellate court either affirms his guilt or reverses his convictions.