Let’s make it an even dozen.
Attorney Ignacio “Iggy” Alvarez, who started his career with the Miami-Dade Police Department, is the latest and 12th candidate to jump into the 2024 county sheriff’s race.
Less than two weeks after Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez drops out of the 2024 county sheriff’s race, a new name is floated that immediately becomes a top contender if not the front runner: Former Miami Commissioner Joe Sanchez, a retired Florida Highway Patrol officer.
And judging by the email statement he sent over the weekend, he is going to position himself as the right wing Republican choice in what is more and more apparently going to be a hard partisan race.
Community activist Damian Pardo, a candidate in Miami’s District 2 commission race, has been endorsed by retired political journalist Michael Putney, who recently left WPLG where he was the longtime host of the most popular Sunday morning political show, This Week In South Florida.
“In all my years covering Miami politics, I never endorsed a candidate. Couldn’t do it. But now that I’m retired, I can,” Putney says to open the 30-second spot, on the candidate’s website and on YouTube.
Meet and greet forum for candidates this Tuesday
That clock that Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago wants to put somewhere downtown was manufactured by a company that held a fundraiser for his BFF Miami Mayor Francis Suarez‘s now-abandoned presidential campaign in June.
Lago brought up the Masion F.P. Journe clock again during a discussion in a commission meeting last month, where he sought direction on where to put it. Where the sun don’t shine was not an option. The mayor liked a corner on Miracle Mile and Ponce de Leon Boulevard. Commissioner Melissa Castro wondered out loud if it was in front of Crema, which apparently the mayor has some financial interest in (more on that later).
We already missed one candidate forum in the Nov. 7 Miami elections. Who knew? But there are at least three more scheduled for voters to get to know the people running for office in Districts 1, 2 and 4.
One Grove, the group of Coconut Grove residents and stakeholders who organized during the city’s flawed redistricting process, will have a candidate forum Tuesday beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove. Former New Times Editor Chuck Strouse, now assistant director at the Lee Caplin School of Journalism at Florida International University, will moderate a panel that includes The Miami Herald’s Nancy Ancrum, former Miami Herald reporter Don Finefrock representing the Coconut Grove Spotlight and someone from the League of Women Voters.
