Here’s a nice article from 1998 in the Palm Beach Post.
Goldberg Says Mayor Hit Him
Frustrations resulting from the betting breakdown Saturday at Hialeah Park produced a shouting match between Raul Martinez, the mayor of Hialeah, and a Miami radio sports talk show host.
Hank Goldberg, of WQAM radio and a horse race commentator for ESPN, said Martinez struck him in the throat during the argument. “It was not really a punch,” said Goldberg.”He just brushed me.”
“I didn’t hit him,” responded Martinez , a member of the track’s board of directors. “I did call him a slob.”
Following the shutdown of the track betting machines in the fifth race, Goldberg said he went to the track’s Director’s Room because he had been told he could place a bet there.
Unable to bet, he said to Martinez , “They should put this place mercifully to sleep.”
“Why don’t you get out of here?” Martinez said to Goldberg. An exchange of shouts followed.
“He definitely swung at me,” said the radio announcer. “He made contact. I wasn’t going to fight with him. He would have beat me up. He is a moose.”
– John Crittenden
And another about the same incident from the Sun-Sentinel:
Goldberg, Mayor Face Off
DAVE JOSEPH Staff Writer
Along with all the problems Hialeah experienced with its tote system and track, another developed Saturday afternoon when radio talk show host Hank Goldberg got into an altercation in the track’s Directors Room with Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez .
Goldberg, disappointed that he couldn’t wager when the AutoTote system crashed, turned around after leaving the window and said, “They ought to put this place mercifully to sleep.” This is where the versions differ.
“[ Martinez ] said if you don’t like it, get the bleep out of here,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg said he asked if Martinez was going to throw him out and added, “Give it your best shot.”
Martinez then allegedly lunged.
“He grazed me,” said Goldberg, who said Post Time USA publisher Gene Stevens helped separate the two. “Definitely, he swung at me.”
Martinez said he never touched Goldberg.
“Hank comes in here bad-mouthing the place,” Martinez said. “My comment to him was if he doesn’t like the place, he doesn’t have to come back. How can you blame anyone on computers going down?”
When told Goldberg had said Martinez had hit him, the mayor replied: “I’m not going to hit him. I didn’t touch him. I called him a slob.”
Goldberg, who hosts a show on WQAM (560-AM), said he had witnesses and called Martinez a liar.
When asked if he would pursue the matter, Goldberg said, “Only on my talk show.”
There’s a Herald article too. You can read them all at RaulMartinez08.com
I remember this incident very clearly. I listened to Hank’s show then and I remember Hank’s story on the radio. OMG, it has already been 10 years.
I went there a few times. La verdad que ese track daba pena ..it was a third world hipodromo after all. The real problem at the track was a combination of poor customer service , bad tote machines and ugly patrons
The facility itself was beautiful and its a shame that it closed. Slot machines are coming too late I’m afraid. Raul wasn’t responsible for the problems at the track, but his altercation with Hank Goldberg is indicative of his combative personality. Hank Goldberg is hardly the only guy who has been intimidate by Luca Brasi Raul Martinez.
I don’t understand what the big deal is about Raul Martinez getting arrested by the FBI for extortion. Other important Democrat politicians have been previously arrested, except Ted Kennedy when he careened off the Chappaquiddick bridge, drowned his paramour, but miraculously saved his own life! He is still in the Senate today. What an accomplishment.
Alcee Hastings got impeached and removed as a federal judge for taking a $150,000 bribe. He has been our Congressional Representative in Florida’s 23rd district for the past 15 years, and hasn’t been arrested again! Talk about rehabilitation.
Marion Berry, while mayor of Washington, D.C., was arrested in 1990 for smoking crack with a prostitute. He yelled in protest in the FBI arrest video: “The bitch set me up.” Berry served six months in prison but the good people of Washington, D.C. reelected him as mayor in 1994, just like Raul Martinez was re-elected mayor of Hialeah after his arrest and conviction for extortion. Barry’s supporters knew that he had been set up, just like O.J. Simpson, just because he’s black. Martinez’s supporters are convinced that Martinez was entrapped the FBI just because he is Cuban.
I was also set up by a prostitute because I am Cuban. That’s why I denied my ethnicity to the arrested officer, but it didn’t work.
Twenty-eight-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, an unwed secretary of Robert Kennedy until his assassination in 1968, did not DROWN, she SUFFOCATED. There was very little water in her trachea and lungs when the diver brought up her body. She was not wearing a bra or panties under her jeans and t-shirt. It was estimated that Kopechne was trapped in an air bubble in Kennedy’s overturned car in the pond for four hours. The cowardly senator first walked back to the cottage where the drunken party was still going on, while he took his lover to the beach, and tried to get his chauffeur to take responsibility. Kennedy then left the island, got a hotel room, and reported the incident twelve hours later. Kopechne could have survived if Kennedy had immediately gotten help, but the drunken senator was more concerned about himself than the life of one of the many lonely secretaries and interns who, like Chandra Levy, end up dead at the expense of trying to save political careers.