Joe Carollo, ADLP are in, make Miami mayoral ballot a lucky 13 dog pile

It’s officially a circus — with 13 clowns crowded under the tent.
Both Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo and former Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, once allies but now estranged, finally entered the Miami mayoral election Saturday, making good on their threats. They will definitely stand out among the 11 other egos vying for that one chair.
That’s not a ballot. That’s a basketball team.
Read related: Commisioner Joe Carollo files initial paperwork to run for Miami mayor
The candidates officially are:

Joe “Crazy Joe” Carollo – The comeback king who just won’t quit, despite juries, judges, and almost fistfights telling him otherwise.
Alex Díaz de la Portilla – Suspended, scandal-plagued, and still shameless enough to want to come back. Or maybe he’s just creating a situation so contributors can pay for his cell phone and other goodies? Again. Everyone knows that Diaz de la Portilla lives off his political action committee.
Xavier Suarez – The “once and maybe future” mayor, forever chasing the glory days of the ’90s.
Eileen Higgins – The county commissioner who is abandoning her office mid term to scale up.
Ken Russell – The paddleboarding ex-commissioner who left the dais to run for Congress and probably regrets it.
Emilio González – The former city manager who sued the city to get this November election restored after commissioners voted to change election years from odd to even — and effectively cancelled this year’s races for mayor and commission. They’re back on tanks tooth’s guy. .

There are seven more: Laura Anderson, Elijah John Bowdre, Christian E. Cevallos, Alyssa Crocker, Kenneth James Desantis, Michael A. Hepburn and June Savage. But the aforementioned six are going suck all the oxygen out of the room.
Carollo, of course, waited until the 11th hour like the drama king he is. With the clock ticking toward Saturday’s 6 p.m. deadline, the 70-year-old commissioner shuffled into City Hall with wife Marjorie on his arm and an entourage of loyalists in tow. He agonized, he said. He wasn’t sure, he said. It wasn’t an easy decision, he said.
Yeah, sure. Like anybody is really surprised. And anybody who heard his morning radio show on Friday — when he told listeners he had a big announcement on Monday — knew he had made up his mind.
Carollo is termed out and has no place to go. And he needs to be elected so the city can keep paying his legal bills. Ooooh, I bet there’s a mailer in the works with that message. So, by 2:30 p.m., after a staged hour of suspense as the  commission chambers filled up with his supporters, Carollo strutted up to the clerk’s window, handed in his paperwork, and declared this was “the last time” he would run for office. (Stop laughing, Ladra hears you in the back.)
Read related: Eileen Higgins qualifies for Miami mayoral race, launches new video ad
Supporters — including his attorney and longtime enabler, former City Commissioner turned lobbyist Marc Sarnoff, who suddenly became just a “friend” — broke into applause as if they had witnessed a coronation instead of a filing. Sarnoff even predicted Joe would make the runoff, pointing to the turnout in the room as proof he will get votes.
We know he’ll get at least 50 votes, Marc.
And if Carollo was still thinking about it until the last minute, how did his supporters know to show up at the time they did? When did they synchronize their watches? Nobody else came with such a big entourage.
ADLP is likely jealous. He is back, too, qualifying Saturday only a few days after filing his initial paperwork. Diaz de la Portilla is looking for redemption after his arrest in 2023 on public corruption charges, including bribery and money laundering.
If there’s anyone who can turn Miami’s mayor’s race into a rerun of Caso Cerrado, it’s these two.
Carollo’s entry also sets up a juicy ‘90s flashback — a rematch with Xavier Suarez, the same guy who beat him in 1997 before the election was thrown out for fraud and Joe was installed as mayor anyway. Carollo reigned until 2001, when voters finally sent him packing, only for him to resurface in 2017 and make City Hall toxic again.
Read related: How much longer will Miami taxpayers pay for Crazy Joe Carollo’s lawyers?
Since then, the man’s been busy: getting slapped with multimillion-dollar judgments for political retaliation against Little Havana businessmen, stripped of his Bayfront Park fiefdom after accusations of self-dealing, and almost coming to blows with Commissioner Miguel Gabela on the dais. And now he wants to be mayor again — for the city, not for him, he says.
Riiiiiight.
This mayor’s race was already a clusterbunch. Now it’s officially a circus.
Or maybe more like a demolition derby, with 13 cars on the track and a few drivers who probably shouldn’t even have a license.
The post Joe Carollo, ADLP are in, make Miami mayoral ballot a lucky 13 dog pile appeared first on Political Cortadito.

Read Full Story