And could his daughter-in-law run to succeed him?
The rumors are rampant. Will Congressman Carlos Gimenez run for city of Miami mayor?
While he is enjoying el protagonismo of the national limelight, with regular spots on cable news networks to bash Joe Biden and China or to gush over Elon Musk, Gimenez hasn’t been tapped by President Donald Trump for any ambassadorship or cabinet position. There was an expectation he would be. Some political observers said, months ago, that Gimenez pretty much had “carte blanche to choose” where he wanted to go. But he hasn’t gone anywhere. The DOGE task force doesn’t count. It was an afterthought.
Meanwhile, Marco Rubio gets not one, but two titles! Not just Secretary of State but national security advisor, too. Does he get both salaries (all tied up in one check, of course)?
And this, after Gimenez has stood solidly by Trump the entire time — still does — and has been rightfully blasted for being un lambón. Most recently, Gimenez has been among the targets of a billboard campaign that calls him out for abandoning his immigrant-rich community and acting as un servil to a dictator.
Read related: Video blasts U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez for silence on ending TPS, deportations
Could what might be seen as a snub have changed the congressman’s appetite for Washington?

Miami is so much closer to home and his wife and his kids and his grandkids. And it’s where he started his political career as a firefighter and later as city manager. Some people, including several close to him, say Gimenez — whose name has been included in a number of polls — wouldn’t mind coming full circle, especially if he can be cast as the one who saves Miami from the fiery depths of hell.
He would certainly become an instant frontrunner among the field of current candidates, which includes Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, former Miami Commissioner Ken Russell and former Miami City Manager Emilio Gonzalez, all of whom have opened campaign candidates and filed candidate oaths. Commissioner Joe Carollo and former Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla are campaigning, but have not yet filed any official paperwork. The deadline to qualify is in September.
People close to his family have said that Gimenez is, indeed, considering it and will make up his mind by June.
But, then again, there’s the certainty and longevity he enjoys now. Gimenez is a sure thing in his congressional district. He can rule there for life if he wants to. A Miami election would be a risk, even if a small one, and come with term limits. Of course, at the age of 70, term limits seem relative.
Read related: Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins could join Miami Mayor’s race
There’s so much speculation about this, however, that the rumor mill has stretched into the musings of who might replace him. Some say that State Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez is ready to step in. She seems the heir apparent. People know her. She served a term in the Florida House before becoming a senator in 2020 and she was a Doral council member before that. Her District 40 encompasses much of Gimenez’s District 28 (formerly the 26th). She’s practically a shoe in — and this is just a rumor.
Other possible hopefuls are State Rep. Juan Carlos Porras or Miami-Dade Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, who is fresh off his far-right fluoride fight victory, getting his colleagues to override the county mayor’s veto of the removal of fluoride from the water, which is something he championed before the Florida Legislature passed its own statewide ban. But this is totally out of his league.
Both Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez and campaign operative Tania Cruz Gimenez like to wear their sunglasses on their heads.
Another name whispered about — mostly in horror — is Tania Cruz-Gimenez, the super smart, former Democrat attorney turned Republican campaign consultant who just happens to be the daughter-in-law of the current congressman. Cruz-Gimenez, who lost a Coral Gables commission race in 2021, helped Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz win the historic constitutional election last November with 56% of the vote, but lost last month with Claudia Miro, a Gables commission candidate that lost along with her in 2021 (Cruz Gimenez did better than Miro with 14% to 8% in a crowded field ultimately won by Gables Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson).
She is now working with Denise Galvez Turros, a marketing professional and co-founder of Latinas for Trump, who is running for Miami Commission in District 3. Galvez Turros lost a bid for city commission in District 4 in 2017.
Read related: Denise Galvez Turros announces she’ll run for Miami Commission in District 3
In 2017, Cruz-Gimenez also helped Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo defend himself against a residency challenge from Alfie Leon, who lost the race by 252 votes, and essentially keep the seat he has since used repeatedly to abuse his office since. In 2020, she mounted a recall against Carollo, in part out of a guilty conscience, but that failed after the city contested it in court, saying they were filed hours late.
Cruz-Gimenez responded to Ladra in a text asking if I was crazy, with one of my favorite expletives thrown in. “Is that rumor really circling,” she asked, via text. Subsequent efforts to reach her about it have been unsuccessful.
So, that’s not a no.
And people think a potential run is why she so dramatically swore allegiance to the Republican Party with House Speaker Mike Johnson at a fundraiser in late February, where someone just happened to have a bible. Everyone laughed when she renounced the Democratic Party and swore “full support to the America First agenda and the seven core principles of conservatism.”
Those were listed out loud: “Individual liberty, limited government, rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets and human dignity.”
Really? Because at least six of the seven seem to be dismissed by our current POTUS. Maybe an argument could be made that he’s ignored all seven.
There were photos and video taken that could very easily find themselves on a mailer to voters or in TV ads. Giddily enjoying the performative moment next to her are the congressman, his wife and his namesake son, Carlos “CJ” Gimenez, who is married to Cruz-Gimenez and just does not make as good a candidate.
You don’t have to swear allegiance to anything or anyone when you switch parties from Democrat to Republican, or vice versa, as has been trending lately. The only reason to do go through such theatrics would be to raise your profile, and, perhaps, bank some campaign material.
But it would still be a tough primary against Rodriguez, even with an endorsement from the congressman. Or mayor of Miami.
The post Will he or won’t he? Congressman Carlos Gimenez for Miami mayor? appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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… And Secretary of State Marco Rubio
A new non-profit that produced videos earlier this month critical of Congress Members Carlos Gimenez and Mario Diaz-Balart — calling them cowards for their silence and complicity in the detention and deportation of thousands of immigrants from our community — has ramped up its campaign with billboards in many of the neighborhoods they and other Cuban Americans in the Republican Party.
¡Ya tu sabes!
Keep Them Honest, Inc. a “nonpartisan public information organization,” announced on Monday the launch of a “paid advertising initiative aimed at exposing the cruelty and complicity of South Florida’s top Cuban-American Republican officials as immigrant families face unprecedented threats under the Trump administration’s inhumane and un-American executive orders.”
The multi-platform rollout — billboards, digital advertising, commercials and targeted social media messaging — the campaign specifically calls out Gimenez, Diaz-Balart, Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former Florida House rep and U.S. Senator, for failing to represent the very communities that elected them.
They haven’t even raised their voices for Cuban mother Heidy Sanchez, who is in Havana today, having been separated from her U.S.-born husband and 1-year-old daughter in Tampa and deported.
Read related: Video blasts U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez for silence on ending TPS, deportations
“The Secretary of State and these Members of Congress are the children of immigrants and represent Miami-Dade County, but their cowardice and silence has created fear throughout the community and this initiative calls upon them to speak up and take action on behalf of their constituents whom they have thus far betrayed with their silence and inaction,” reads a statement from the organization.
Earlier this month, Keep Them Honest posted their first video, calling Gimenez a coward who has betrayed his community, not just for staying silent on the revocation of Temporary Protective Status and parole protections for over 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, but also on the defunding of Radio and TV Martí. They later followed up with a similar video targeting Diaz-Balart.
“Mario? Bro? Wake up,” it says.
They are now placing billboards — like the one that the  Miami-Dade Democratic Hispanic Caucus has on the Palmetto Expressway between Doral and Hialeah — across every major highway in the county and web app in the districts that Diaz-Balart, Gimenez and Salazar represent.
“These ads spotlight the urgent need for these elected officials to speak up for human decency and take action for the people of South Florida,” the statement said.
Seven total billboards will be purchased on the Palmetto, the Don Shula Expressway, and the Florida Turnpike, said Chris Wills, the former co-founder of Cubanos Con Biden and vice president of  Keep Them Honest, Inc.
“No matter where you go in Miami-Dade County, whether you are one of these congress members or one of their constituents, you will see the message loud and clear,” Wills says. One of the digital ads says “Deporting good immigrants back to dictatorships is cruel.”
The photos chosen of the “Gang of Four,” as the Hispanic Caucus President Abel S. Delgado calls them, are not flattering.

Keep Them Honest is a 501(c)4 non-profit and does not have to disclose who is funding this campaign.
Read related: Cuban American congress members stay silent on TPS, immigrant detention
There are Trumpistas in South Florida who hysterically accuse the group of being funded by foreign enemies. “For all we know it’s Diaz-Canel people or the Chinese,” posted one of the crazy right-wing fans of Political Cortadito, referring to Cuban President (read: Dictator) Mario Diaz-Canel. She also said that Gimenez “doesn’t need to acknowledge provocateurs.”
This is what the Trumpistas think of anyone who disagrees with them. They are “provocateurs” that need not be acknowledged. Sound familiar? That’s exactly what Diaz-Canel says.
The most likely source of funding is some rich and outraged Cuban-American, like healthcare mogul, philanthropist and serial campaign contributor Mike Fernandez, who wrote an “open letter” to the Cuban-American politicos earlier this month calling their silence “complicity and cowardice.” Or someone like him.
“We don’t disclose our donors,” said Wills, a former Republican who is listed as the non-profit’s Vice President in the Florida Division of Corporation records. The president is Juan Carlos “JC” Planas, a former Republican state rep who later switched parties and ran for Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections last year, losing to Alina Garcia.
“As a former Republican who helped elect Republicans and JC Planas being a former Republican legislator, it would be a hard press to tie us to any communist organization,” Wills said, adding that they are getting checks “from people who agree with us, which is growing more and more by the hour.”
It’s apparently enough, he said, to make an “unprecedented” media buy in a year with no state or national elections.
“We’ve never had, especially in a non-election year, this level of investment into ensuring that the voice of the community that needs to be heard is heard,” Wills is quoted as saying in Florida Politics.
Planas, who is tasked with the organization’s legal compliance, said that the non-profit operates much like conservative non-profit Citizens United and others who have the right, protected by the Supreme Court. They have a CPA. They report to the IRS. Their bank would issue a red flag for any foreign deposits or checks.
“How do we know Citizens United wasn’t funded by the Russians,” Planas asked. “Because there are checks and balances.”
Well, so far. But that’s something that is also being attacked by the Trump administration — as the Gang of Four stand by.
The post Campaign ramps up vs Miami’s Cuban, Republican congressional delegation appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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It’s not scientific, or anything. But the results of a paper ballot survey of the Kendall and West Kendall residents who went to a town hall meeting Tuesday hosted by the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations was interesting nonetheless.
Not everybody answered every question, but the questions did get between 127 and 138 answers, that were later tallied up by KFHA President Michael Rosenberg.
Read related: Kendall residents take fight against 5G towers to Miami-Dade commissioners
Among the more interesting answers was whether or not Miami-Dade County should keep the fluoride in the water. The commission voted April 1 to stop adding fluoride to the water, but Mayor Daniella Levine Cava vetoed it. Contrary to the much more scientific poll done by La Alcadesa‘s political team — where more residents support keeping it the additive in the tap water than not — more people at the KFHA meeting said no, don’t keep it in the water. Not by much. They were pretty evenly split.
Still, this will likely be used as ammunition by Miami-Dade Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, who sponsored the measure and is likely to lead an override attempt against the mayor’s veto May 6. He had a staffer in the audience.
Predictably, an overwhelming majority of those who filled out the ballot survey also felt that Miami-Dade should stop charging property taxes and that the county should find another way to dispose of trash without having to build an incinerator, which commissioners have stalled on but will discuss again in June. Or is it July?
And because the room was full of Kendall people, they were overwhelmingly in favor of having a park in the place of the closed and abandoned Calusa Golf Course instead of something like 540 homes. Yeah, ’cause that’s still going on (more on that later).
What Ladra did not expect was the result to the question, “Would you like to have a town hall meeting with Congressman Carlos Gimenez?” It got the second largest yes response, after the Calusa question, with 101 in favor.
Hear that Gimenez? They want to have a word. Time to connect with your constituents.
Ladra doubts the former county mayor is going to go anywhere near a town hall these days, judging how those are going for Republicans across the country in the wake of what many see as a constitutional crisis happening in real time. Two words: Not well.
Read related: Video blasts U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez for silence on ending TPS, deportations
People also seem in favor of getting some sort of property tax discount if they have 5G towers abutting their property, and bringing the value of it down. But they weren’t big on incorporating Kendall and West Kendall. They like their UMSA there.
The saddest answer was the one about whether or not people think that their county government listens to them. Almost 4 to 1, they said no. Ladra wants to talk to the 21 people who said yes and ask what their secret is.
Well, maybe 20, if one of the ballots was filled out by the District 11 employee.

The post Survey of Kendall residents shows they agree on Calusa, split on fluoride appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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“¡Cobarde! ¡Mudo!”
Coward! Voiceless! These are the names the narrator calls Congressman Carlos Gimenez in a video released Thursday that shames the former Miami-Dade mayor for his silence and complicity on Donald Trump’s immigration policies, including the rollback of protected status for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, many of whom live in his community.
“Where is Carlos Gimenez hiding? Trump is stripping 500,000 cubanos, nicaraguenses y venezolanos of legal status, sending them back to hell,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot, which is viewable on YouTube.
“Nuestros compatriotas are stranded in tyranny and dictatorship and this monster is killing millions that fund charities and people that would have helped them,” the narrator says, in very cubanaso language, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development. “He even blew up Radio and TV Marti.”
Read related: Downtown Miami protest planned Saturday vs Donald Trump policies
Ladra can’t help but wonder if Gimenez and the other Cuban-American legislators are proud that Trump was able to do something that Fidel Castro tried desperately for decades to do but could not — end Radio and TV Marti.
“And all this time Carlos Gimenez has stayed silent. Coward! Mute! Betraying us all,” the man in the video says.
Well, not entirely silent. Gimenez was on WPLG Local 10’s This Week in South Florida last month and admitted to Glenna Milberg that he was not “entirely sure” what Trump’s cuts mean for TV Marti and Radio Marti. While Democrat Congresswoman and non-Cuban Debbie Wasserman-Schultz blasted the end of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Gimenez seemed to stand by Trump’s decision, while still promising to do something — in the future.
“I think it has to be evaluated and each agency head is going to do that. The people may be placed on administrative leave for a while, but you can be certain the the three republican members from South Florida will be fighting to maintain effective broadcasting to Cuba,” Gimenez said on the popular Sunday morning show. “There may have been some doubts about the effectiveness of TV Martí and Radio Martí recently during the Biden administration. We want to make sure that if it is reconstituted and it continues, that it’s effective.”
What? So Biden is being criticized now for the way the OCB communicated during the last four years? Can you imagine what would happen if Biden or another Democrat had called for the end of Radio and TV Martí? Protests that paralyze the expressways and shouts of  “¡Communista!” on Cuban radio. That’s what would happen.
The video ends with a call to action and the display of the congressman’s district office phone number. “Call Carlos Gimenez and tell him to man up to Trump.”
That number, by the way, is 305-222-0160.
The ad is sponsored by Keep Them Honest, Inc., a group that has formed to call out these liars and hypocrites. There is no political action committee or information on the Florida Division of Corporations website. And their address in Kendall is of a shared workspace office. This is their first video.

Cubanos Con Biden co-founder Chris Wills, who also worked with former Key Biscayne Mayor Mike Davey in his congressional campaign last year, told Political Cortadito there would be more.
“As somebody who was born and raised in South Florida, the son of a Cuban exile mom and a Venezuelan exile dad, I’m hearing from my own family, my neighbors, my friends that not only is there an incredible amount of fear over this mass deportation and taking away of legal status from those who have fled dictatorships, but increasingly there is a lot more disappointment and feeling of betrayal from Carlos Gimenez,” Wills said.
He said Gimenez and his counterparts on the Miami-Dade delegation have the power, because they represent three Republican votes, to force the administration to change its position on temporary protected status, which was revoked last month for more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
“If the three of them would unite and hold their votes, it would stop the Trump agenda in its tracks, until he resolves TPS,” Wills told Ladra.
Read related: Cuban American congress members stay silent on TPS, immigrant detention
Gimenez and Congress Members Mario Diaz-Balart and Maria Elvira Salazar, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a true hypocrite who has gone against everything he used to stand for, were also targets of a billboard off the Palmetto Expressway — right smack between Hialeah and Doral — paid for by the Miami-Dade Hispanic Democratic Caucus calling them traitors to the community and the American Dream.
While Congresswoman Frederica Wilson and Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava demand tours of the Krome Detention Center, where there are reports of overcrowded chaos and unsafe and unsanitary conditions, these Cuban-American politicians — who pander to the Venezuelan and Colombian vote, also — have not. Emails to his spokesman, Roberto Lugones, have gone unanswered. Constituent Services Director Beatriz Viera, reached at the congressional district office Friday morning, said she did not know anything about a tour but assured Ladra that Gimenez was “working very closely with the administration.”
So, then, he’s not just silent. Gimenez is complicit.

Viera, who was only in the office to receive the submissions for a congressional art contest, downplayed any criticism, saying that there were many people who supported how Gimenez was handling the current administration.
“That sign is irrelevant,” she said about the billboard. “That’s the party that’s against him.”
Wills said that Gimenez an the others “have refused to actually take any meaningful action to help those immigrants and families who are living with monumental fear.” He added that business owners are also feeling the pinch as fewer people fill restaurants and retail stores, staying home instead to avoid the authorities. He’s also noticed an increase in police presence, even before Doral and Homestead became the latest cities in Miami-Dade to sign 287g agreements with the federal government to help the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department in the identification and detention of illegal immigrants (more on that later).
Read related: Maria Elvira Salazar takes credit for judge extending TPS for Venezuelans
“This is not the America that Carlos Gimenez, Maria Elvira Salazar, Marco Rubio and Mario Diaz-Balart were brought to or raised in, to believe that we all should be hopeful of achieving the American Dream,” Wills said. “We have an immigrant community that is living the American nightmare.”
Where is Carlos Gimenez hiding? Behind a bill he has proposed to create a federal task force to focus on security for the upcoming major intentional events coming to the U.S. over the next four years — including the FIFA World Cup, some of which will be played in South Florida, America’s 250th birthday celebrations next year, and the 2028 Olympics. He’s hiding behind a call to end travel and remittances to Cuban families on the island prison from Cuban families in the U.S. (mostly in Miami). He’s hiding behind a petition to the Department of Homeland Security to deport Cuban nationals he believes to be regime agents. While Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen visits the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, to make sure that Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a man married to a U.S. citizen with U.S.-born children who the Trump administration admits was deported in error and ordered returned by a federal judge — hasn’t yet been killed, Gimenez is hiding in Guantanamo on a trip to check out the concentration camps where Trump had planned to send illegal immigrants.
He couldn’t help but take a selfie, ’cause he was in Cuba for the first time in 64 years.
Gimenez is just too busy to stand up for his community, right?
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And also Daniella Levine Cava vs Carlos Gimenez

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There are 17, count ’em, 17 candidates for the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s election — so far. But only one of them scored what is likely the mother of all endorsements.

Congressman Carlos Gimenez — the former county mayor who served as the de facto sheriff in that role — has come out for Miami-Dade Police Assistant Director Rosanna Cordero-Stutz, the highest ranking county officer in the race and the woman in charge of the transition to the first Miami-Dade sheriff’s office in 57 years.

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