Alex Daoud

Alex Daoud is an author and the former mayor of Miami Beach, Florida who served from 1985 to 1991. He is a Miami Beach native.

Daoud was elected to the Miami Beach City Commission in 1979. He was re-elected to a second term in 1981 and 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 was a beloved mayor but lived a scandalous life while in office. In his book Sins of South Beach The True Story of Corruption, Violence, Murder, and the Making of Miami Beach, he describes how, as an idealistic young lawyer, he was seduced by money, power and sex. The former mayor was indicted for 41 counts of bribery and served eighteen months in a federal prison and retired from politics.

Daoud still is active in the community. In his book he recounts going on vigilante patrols with the Miami Beach Police Department while both city councilman and mayor routinely kidnapping and beating criminal suspects.

Sins of South Beach, Daoud's autobiographical expose, is a portrait of the city he led for three terms as mayor during the anything-goes '80s-when "cocaine cowboys" slaughtered each other in bloody drug wars and refugees from the Mariel Boatlift, many released by Fidel Castro from his worst jails and insane asylums, terrorized the predominantly elderly Jewish population of Miami Beach. It's the story of a city's renaissance and the crime and corruption which fueled. it. The book has received many excellent reviews and has been optioned to be made into a major motion picture.