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| MEET NICK PERDOMO, POLITICIAN! |
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Page 1 of 2  Plus: Our Register & Win winner of the week!Los Angeles, April 9 – Nick Perdomo thanks you for smoking his cigars. Now, if you’re a citizen of District 1 of Miami Lakes, Florida, he wants your vote! Perdomo is running for a four-year term for Seat 1 on the Town Council of Miami Lakes, an incorporated city of a little over 24,000 located northwest of Miami and just north of Hialeah, Florida in Miami-Dade County. True to its name, it actually has 23 lakes in it. He filed his candidature papers in late February. “I’m for maximum efficiency and more accountability,” he told Miami Herald reporter Laura Morales. “I’ll protect the interests of the people the way I protect my business.” If that’s the case, then Miami Lakes could get a tiger guarding the gates . . . and the books. Perdomo is one of the success stories of the Cigar Boom, although his family’s background – in Cuba – stretches back many years. He was a full-time air traffic controller in the 1990s when he took up cigar making and debuted at a long-ago trade show in Las Vegas called the International Cigar Expo with a single booth and a one-page price list for “Nick’s Cigar Company.” Little more than ten years later, his Tabacalera Perdomo sells millions of cigars per year and has its headquarters in Miami Lakes and a well-known factory in Esteli, Nicaragua. He not only survived the Cigar Boom, but has thrived thanks to a knack for being in tune with consumer desires, brilliant packaging . . . and the cigars aren’t bad, either. It’s a rather bold move for Perdomo, and he’s hardly alone on the ballot. According to the Herald, “Dentist David Bennett, ice cream distributor Peter Diaz and family law attorney Cesar Mestre, Jr. also wants to occupy Seat 1.” It’s worth noting that the position of Town Council member in a small city such as Miami Lakes isn’t quite the same as in Chicago, Los Angeles or New York. The Town Council generally meets monthly and the Council members serve without compensation; a professional Town Manager is the key administrator who oversees municipal operations. The general election in Miami Lakes is scheduled for October 7 with a run-off (if needed) on October 14. If Perdomo wins, he’ll be adding to his already busy schedule, but his position as an elected official could give him a worthwhile nexus to county and state government officials to better educate them on how cigars and pipes differ from cigarettes and that they should be regulated differently. But he has to win first. Key West raid yields five arrests for sales of counterfeit cigars: The continuing push against the manufacture and sale of counterfeit, brand-name cigars yielded another wave of arrests as five individuals were taken into custody last month by investigators from Monroe County and the Florida State Attorney’s Office, along with support from a host of other agencies. The action was taken against seven retail establishments and those arrested are reported to be the owners of those seven shops. According to a statement from Altadis U.S.A., the authorities “seized a substantial number of boxes of counterfeit Montecristo, H. Upmann and Romeo y Julieta cigars, and also counterfeit Cohiba cigars as a result of the cooperation of General Cigar.” |
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Did you know?
“After popularizing so many Havana brands, Dunhill had its own brand, made in Cuba, from 1970 to 1991.
