Alex Daoud

Alex Daoud is the former mayor of Miami Beach, Florida who served the City from 1985 to 1991. On October 29, 1991, Daoud was indicted for 41 counts of bribery and served eighteen months in a federal prison, after which he retired from politics.

Alex Daoud was born and grew up in the City of Miami Beach. His grandparents were Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic immigrants from Lebanon. His mother, the youngest woman to pass the New York bar exam in the early 1920s, and his father, an antiques dealer, moved from New York to Florida during World War II. At the age of six, Daoud contracted polio and recovered without lifelong disability.

Daoud was elected to the Miami Beach City Commission in 1979. He was re-elected to a second term in 1981 and then a third term in 1983. In 1985, he became the first Roman Catholic to be elected Mayor of Miami Beach. In 1987, he won re-election by eighty-six percent of the popular vote. In 1989, he was re-elected to an unprecedented third term as Mayor of Miami Beach.

Daoud is still active in the community. In 2007, he published Sins of South Beach, an autobiographical depiction of Miami Beach in the 1980s and its regeneration as a premiere vacation and nightlife destination in the United States. In it, he recounts going on vigilante patrols with the Miami Beach Police Department while serving as both city commissioner an