The Office of Public Relations (OPR) in the Miami Dade County Public Schools confirmed yesterday that a Greg Gomez, who would be in his late 30s, taught at three public schools in the South Florida district. John Schuster, chief communications officer in the office, said records show that a Greg Gomez taught at Carol City Middle School, Lawton Chiles Middle School and Thomas Jefferson Middle School.

Those are the same schools that Free National Movement (FNM) North Abaco candidate Greg Gomez, 39, said he taught at. The office could not provide the dates he taught at the schools, however. Controversy erupted when Gomez, in an interview with The Nassau Guardian, had trouble naming the schools he said he taught at while living in the United States. However, he later called back to list the schools. FNM Senator Zhivargo Laing said the party has no doubts that Gomez worked at the schools.

"We have irrefutable evidence of his employment at the places that he said he worked. No question about it, none whatsoever," said Laing at a Guardian Radio town meeting in Abaco last night. Laing said Gomez had a hard time in the interview because he is still feeling his way through politics. "Generally speaking, in these general elections, those who come into it for the very first time have the benefit of being one of many," Laing said. "This happens to be a one on one race for a seat that was occupied by a legendary politician (former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham) and there are many eyes on this seat.

So if you have in an interview a new candidate who sometimes is feeling his way; man I feel my way from time to time in a course of an interview." Gomez said he spent about 10 years in the United States, dividing the time with about five years teaching and five years ministering. He said on his candidate's declaration form that he is an educator. However, he said in the interview that he is also a minister and his only source of income last year, and now, are the "love offerings" he receives from speaking at different churches. On his declaration form, he listed a "salary" of $28,000. Laing said Gomez was honest in his declarations. "What this young man did was declared what he received in a period," Laing said. "That's the honesty that he was expressing in what he received in terms of his income."

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