Gus Garcia-Roberts wants to make Surfside 'awesome'

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Gus Garcia-Roberts has has thrown his hat in the ring. He recently qualified to run for an open commission seat in the small town of Surfside.

You may not recognize the name, but surely you've seen his work. Gus - a staff writer at Miami New Times - is the evil genius behind one of paper's more popular web features, "Mugshots Friday."

Gus announced his plans to run for Surfside's open commission seat a few weeks ago in a piece on his paper's blog, Riptide 2.0.

"I'm going to make this town awesome," Gus wrote.

Gus has his work cut out for him. To the casual observer, the tiny town of Surfside - estimated population: 5,000 - might seem like a beach-side version of Mayberry.

But, as Gus wrote in his March 23rd piece, the...

...outwardly placid beach hamlet [...] has a healthy amount of chaos. A serial masturbator was jacking it in the beach showers until he was finally, um, busted in 2010. One of [the town's] fine officers was caught taking bribes from drunk drivers. The town's getting sued by a local synagogue. Our town attorney Lynn Dannheisser, who makes a whopping $178,000 annually, hired her boyfriend on the taxpayer's dime. A secretive clutch of anti-regime bloggers regularly churn out press releases about the "cancer of corruption" infecting Surfside.

Wow! How much corruption could there be in a town of 5,000?

So far, Gus has been pretty tight-lipped about his platform. A source at New Times tells me that he'll reveal much of it on the paper's website next week.

And Gus hasn't said much about his opponent in the race, Michelle Kligman, a 39 year-old psychologist. He did, however, drop this tantalizing hint in his blog piece: "Michelle, prepare to get Swiftboated."