It’s like he’s been backed into a corner.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez lied again last week and slandered, again, a pair of animal activists who worked hard to get the Pets’ Trust Initiative passed by 65% of the voters in 2012 and who are brave enough to keep fighting ever since for that vote to be respected.

Michael Rosenberg and Rita Schwartz certainly have been very active in politics since Gimenez first funded the Pets Trust initiative and then scratched it in 2013. They may get a little too excited sometimes. They certainly get creative — Ladra particularly loves this video with the chihuahua — and they certainly get passionate.

But they do not, ever, incite violence. In fact, their email blasts and protests seem exceedingly polite to a man who has repeatedly ignored these people while telling others that all Rosenberg and Schwartz want is the millions for themselves, a ludicrous and impossible claim since they would have absolutely no control over the county’s funds. Ladra has seen some of the many emails they send Gimenez gatekeeper Michael Hernandez to try to meet with the mayor or just set the record straight. They might be a tad bit sarcastic, but they are exceedingly polite. There’s no other way to describe their approach.

Happier times: Michael Rosenberg and Rita Schwartz talk and smile and take photos with Mayor Carlos Gimenez in 2013, when he said he was going to fund the voter-mandated no-kill initiative.

The mayor knows this. He knows that these two animal lovers do not incite violence. So when Gimenez outright makes that claim to a misguided Miami Herald reporter and then on TV to a Univision 23 cameraman, he is basically giving them a victory in court with their slander lawsuit.

There are three things one must establish to prove slander: The source must know he or she is spreading a lie. Check. He must have an intent to hurt or discredit the subject of the lie. Check. And the lie causes the subject’s reputation to be tarnished. Check.

Because some people might believe him.

But that will be the hardest part to prove. Because most people realize that this is Cry Wolf Gimenez’s desperate attempt to keep his job and maybe even an acknowledgement that the 65% of the people who voted for the Pets’ Trust knew what they were voting for and will prove it to Gimenez by voting him out of office Nov. 8. He knows that Mike and Rita pull votes. He knows that the Pets’ Trust supporters are one of the reasons he is facing a runoff in the first place. He knows that he is really hated by thousands of animal lovers who may have even voted for him in 2011 and 2012 but now feel he is the devil himself and hold him personally responsible for the continued killing of thousands of dogs and cats at the county shelter.

Many of these people do comment on Facebook and in stories in the Miami Herald. Many of these comments are entirely too personal and passionate. Some people say they want him to suffer what the animals have suffered. They call him an asshole and other names. They are understandably frustrated by his disrespect of their votes and the continued and, perhaps, even worsening conditions for animals in Miami-Dade.

I hadn’t seen any death threats,  however, until the Herald story about the single one they quoted.

“Better watch yourself in Miami i don’t have much to lose, ever see what s person that nothing to lose is capable of?? i WILL kill you if not ill start with your family and loved ones,” wrote someone calling himself “nakmuaythai.” Turns out his name is Daniel Bowes and he lives in Ottowa. And Rosenberg has never heard of him.

“Daniel who,” Rosenberg asked.

What’s more, a Miami-Dade police spokesman told the Herald that detectives do not consider the posting a “viable threat” (they were probably pissing in their pants from the laughter) but the investigation is “nevertheless ongoing.” Really? With our limited police resources? Because this is what the mayor considers a police priority?

Michael Rosenberg spent three days in a cage to call attention to the plight of our stray animals.

For the mayor to speculate that the threat was at the direction of Rosenberg and Schwarz is just ludicrous. For him to speculate out loud is dangerous. There are many people (Ralph Garcia Toledo et al) who stand to lose millions of dollars if Gimenez is not re-elected. They might go to great lengths to silence his detractors — who have now been singled out by name.

“I’m calling them out,” Gimenez told the Herald.

“The people responsible are Michael Rosenberg and Rita Schwartz,” he said in his choppy Spanish. “They have led a campaign called ABC, Anybody But Carlos, and that is part of their campaign, pretty dirty and with lies.”

Let’s forget for a minute that the ABC campaign you see on bus benches throughout the county has been paid for by the Dade PBA. Ladra doesn’t think she has ever seen any public official — let alone the mayor of the fourth largest county in the country — talk like that publicly about a couple of civilian activists. And for what? He knows that Mike and Rita have no ties to that man in Ottawa. But he’s mad at them and, boy, there is hell to pay for going against him.

In fact, Ladra wouldn’t be surprised if this story was pitched by someone on the Gimenez camp. Because we certainly have seen similarly hateful and vitriolic comments on the Facebook posts of stories about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump or Marco Rubio or David Rivera or Rick Scott. Especially Rick Scott. Why was the story just about Gimenez? Perhaps because it was pitched by someone on the Gimenez campaign in order to discredit a group that was hurting his re-election chances?’

Or was it to put a bull’s eye on Mike’s and Rita’s backs?

Rosenberg fears for himself and his family. He has gotten a police watch order on his home. They obviously think it’s a more viable threat than the comment against the mayor.

He also wants an apology from the mayor. He should get one, but he won’t. Gimenez is so arrogant that he is literally blind to the fact that he is wrong more often than he is right. In this case, he knew he was lying to begin with. It matters nothing because it’s all about perception.

It’s too bad that David Ovalle or some other Herald reporter doesn’t spend as much time as they did stringing together the worse comments they could find to actually investigate the claims of the animal activists — that the death count is only down because the county has changed the way it counts euthanized cats and dogs, that the increases in animal services funding has mostly gone to salaries and benefits, not spay and neutering programs.

There is still time to actually do a fact check on Gimenez with this, David. Wouldn’t that be more challenging? It’s a better story.

Meanwhile, Ladra is going to make a complaint about some commenter herself. We have taken to moderating reader comments here on Political Cortadito in recent weeks, since some people are (or one person specifically is) trying to use my space to malign others and myself without any context and to make threats. I have been told that I deserve to be “trashed,” whatever that means. And I have received multiple threats from the same source about shutting the website down. I haven’t taken them seriously but people say that I should and, in light of this story, perhaps they are right. Because some of Ladra’s friends and loyal readers say the commenter — who sometimes goes by the name of Got-A-Point and sometimes other names but with the same IP address — is Gimenez spokesman Mike Hernandez. Others say he is the mayor’s son, CJ Gimenez.

So let’s find out. Ladra will print out some of those comments and see if the Miami-Dade Police Department can’t find out who the commenter is.

But I am willing to bet that whoever it is is far more directly connected to Carlos Gimenez than some loudmouth in Ottowa is to Mike and Rita of the Pets’ Trust.

Gas to drive around to the bigger West Dade and Kendall precincts on Election Day Tuesday: $22.

Bottles of water to stay hydrated: $10.

Lunch at Subway: $8.

The look on Barby Rodriguez-Gimenez‘s face when she realized her father-in-law, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, had not won the Miami-Dade mayoral race Tuesday and would be forced into a runoff: Priceless.

It’s almost like she’s saying: “F—! I may have to look for a real f—— job!”

Because Rodriguez-Gimenez has a mouth on her and a juicy no-show job at the county. She does “public outreach” for the water and sewer department as part of the same $139-million contract with CH2M Hill that pays the mayor’s BFF and campaign finance chair, Ralph Garcia Toledo, $200 an hour for clerical work. She got the job with subcontractor EV Services around the same time the company got the contract. You know, like it was criteria or something.

So… if Garcia Toledo’s total payout could equal $18 million over 12 years, what is the total payout for the mayor’s daughter-in-law?

Sources have told Ladra that this family botella is being investigated by the authorities. So is Garcia Toledo’s fraudulent use of what are called multipliers to pad invoices when he has no office (it’s a P.O. Box) or staff. We don’t know if that means the State Attorney’s Office or the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust. But it makes sense that it would be looked into. At least if the authorities are doing their job.

Because this rampant cronyism is one of the reasons why a majority voters rejected Carlos Gimenez Tuesday. And the more they learn about him and his friends and family plan — the more relatives and buddies we find feeding on the public trough — the more likely Gimenez will be rejected again in November.

So, yes, Barby, you might want to polish off that resumé and make some calls.

You would think, from hearing Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez tell it, that he won the election Tuesday night. You would think wrong.

Gimenez, who may very well be the first incumbent mayor ever to be forced into a runoff in Miami-Dade, can claim victory all he wants. It rings hollow. He may have come in first with the most votes and almost 48 percent, but he really lost Tuesday.

I mean, does it look like he’s celebrating a victory here? A picture says a thousand words. Compare his face to his challenger Raquel Regalado‘s in these side-by-side Miami Herald photos of post-result candidates giving speeches. Is he holding back tears?

Gimenez tweeted that he had won every key demographic group. But he didn’t win the one key demographic that mattered most: A majority.

He told reporters in a mostly empty “victory party” room at the Miami Airport Doubltree Hotel that he was “well-poised to take this to victory in November.” Well, he thought he was “well-poised” to take this to victory yesterday — and look how that worked out.

Everybody knows Gimenez totally expected to win outright in the first round on Tuesday. He bragged about it to reporters. He dismissed Regalado as nothing more than a nuisance. Operatives were telling people that his early voting exit polls were at 53 or 54 percent.

But Gimenez and his team sure weren’t acting like they were leading. They blew his cash wad with giant mailers, constant radio ads and TV commercials. They went hyper negative with a mailer that morphed Trump’s face with Regalado’s (it totally backfired, by the way) and an uber repetitive robocall his campaign made disguised as Regalado’s campaign to piss people off, a dastardly deed and possibly illegal move (more on that later). In fact, they threw everything they had — actually everything they invented — against Regalado, who suddenly goes from underfunded underdog to front runner.

Yes, I said front runner. Everything changes now. Because, despite all the mayor’s talk, the demographics in a November race favor the challenger. She has the teachers, the cops, the nurses and doctors and the majority of the public employees. She has the librarians and the Pets’ Trust community. Because of her advocacy for immigrant children, she has the Dreamers and those who love and support them. In other words, she appeals to voters across party lines.

In November, there will be far more voters driven to the polls by the presidential election. There are a projected 600,000 voters or more who have never voted for Miami-Dade mayor — or for Carlos Gimenez. There’s no loyalty or history there for them. And many of them in this predominantly Democrat county will be excited about the possibility of the first female U.S. president topping the ballot. Regalado, who would become the first female mayor of Miami-Dade, is definitely going to get some of that #ImWithHer action.

So what on Earth does Gimenez see as his clear path to victory?

Maybe Gimenez suddenly announces today or next week that he endorses Hillary Clinton. The Democrats around him might even stage a big photo op or something.

He could even change his party registration to Democrat or Independent. He already toyed with the idea in 2014 — or just said he was considering it because he knew it would get him lots of free press.

Either of those strategies would be a way to appeal to Democrat voters in a nonpartisan race that now features two lifelong Republicans. In fact, he may not have to switch to pander for those blue votes. Just suggesting it is enough to put this into the news cycle for a week! People will assume he switched.

Certainly the Democrats surrounding him are mulling these ideas over. His county communications director, Mike Hernandez, who really wants to work for Hillary instead, is the one who came up with that whole party switch PR stunt in 2014. The mayor’s consultant, Freddy Balsera, might work for Donald Trump and his Doral resort, but he has advocated and campaigned for Clinton, most recently in Puerto Rico. And his golden goose fundraiser, Brian Goldmeier, is a former Democrat Party operative who worked for the gubernatorial run by Alex Sink and who would love nothing more than to be a blue blood again.

So it’s really not that far-fetched to think that Gimenez would switch to gain an advantage in an election. Not in Florida, where we have party switchers like former Gov. Charlie Crist and former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan.

Although it really hasn’t worked that well for them.

Because voters are smarter than he thinks.

That’s why Ladra bets Gimenez will have that same constipated look on his face in November.

Everybody knows already that I am voting for Raquel Regalado for mayor of Miami-Dade. I’ve listed my reasons for years, because it’s really a referendum on Carlos Gimenez and the lousy job he has been doing and the climate of pay-to-play politics he has created, all documented here. Just do a search on Carlos Gimenez. Go back to 2012.

But Raquel is a good candidate in her own right. In six years on the school board, she has helped turn what was once a chaotic laughing stock — the fourth largest district in the country — into a national model. She has reformed the way they do business, from an overhaul of their bus maintenance to pioneering social media and tech policies. From construction to facilities to special education — where she has helped bring education into the 21st century — Raquel has had a hands on approach to her job as one of nine school board members in charge of a $3.2 billion budget and overseeing about 50,000 employees, twice as much as the county.

She has a lot of good ideas. Just check them out on her very well written website (ahem).

And we’ve never had a woman as Miami-Dade mayor and I’m excited about that.

But there are a lot of other important races on Tuesday’s ballot, too. And because people are constantly asking me who or how I’m voting, I decided to post my recommendations for this Aug. 30th. As a proud, card-carrying NPA, this at least gives me the chance to cast a ballot, however straw it may be, in races where I otherwise have no say.

I’m not weighing in on every race, just the ones where I feel I can. And where I care. And I may not always have such an articulate and/or valid reason as I do with the mayoral race. But here goes:

FOR U.S. SENATE

Republican Marco Rubio because I don’t have to have a valid reason. See? I told you. I may not agree with a lot of his positions on issues like climate change and gay marriage, but I like him. A lot. I think he’s real and authentic and he isn’t just telling me what I want to hear. I like his story. I like his family. I like his boots. I like the way he talks. His words move me and I’m jaded AF. Ask anyone. It helps that he grew up down the street — who doesn’t want to root for the home team — and that his mom and I worked at the same K-Mart in Westchester (but I don’t know if it was at the same time). Plus I think that he cannot negatively impact gay marriage, which is legal now, or sea level rise response, which is inevitable.

Democrat Pam Keith because Ladra is half rabblerouser, like her. And because everything she says makes sense. And because the other two guys get on my nerves. Someone please tell Congressman Patrick Murphy that he shouldn’t email me more than once a day.

FOR U.S. HOUSE

DISTRICT 26: Democrat Joe Garcia, because no matter how hard she tries people just don’t like Annette Taddeo — or maybe it’s that they don’t trust her — and I still think Garcia has a better chance of beating Carlos Curbelo in November. And if Carlos Curbelo, a liar and lobbyist with a secret client list, isn’t upset this year he’ll be there forever, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. And we can’t have that. Garcia isn’t always right. But, like Rubio, he’s a true believer. He really thinks he’s right. He’s not doing it for a proxy. And I’ll take a true believer who just happens to be wrong sometimes to a sinister liar trying to game the system any day. The former congressman might have been beaten two years ago by Curbelo, but that was in an off year.

Read related story: Awkward! Annette Taddeo, Joe Garcia face off with polite jabs

DISTRICT 27:

Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen because none of the others can hit the ground running. IRL is a legend who still has a little pull in D.C. With Republicans. With Democrats. She is a popular senior in high school. She is not a Freshman transplant. She will be able to do more.

Democrat Scott Fuhrman because it doesn’t really matter since nobody can beat Ileana, not even a Democrat in a Hillary year. Her gay cred with a transgeder son and her pro-Dreamer immigration stance makes her a crossover darling. But Fuhrman is fun to watch and might make a good elected — one day. So let’s give him the practice.

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Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has siphoned (read: stolen) monies from the People’s Transportation Plan, approved by voters to build MetroRail extensions, and used it for operation costs. He raised bus fares in 2013 from $2 to $2.25 when he bought $40 million worth of new buses. And he has cut bus operations by $3 million this year, saying he’s okay with a 78 percent on-time rate because it’s acceptable for people to be late 22 percent of the time.

Oh, and he spent $33 million on an app that can sell us bus and rail passes on our smart phones and who knows how much on another app that can tell us that the 120 Beach MAX or the 137 West Dade route is going to be late 22 percent of the time.

Now, on the eve of his re-election effort, Gimenez announces his first major transit “solution” (and I use the word solution loosely): Uber ride-sharing!

Ladra is not making this up. And maybe we should have seen this coming when Gimenez and a few commissioners fell all over themselves to make the for-hire passenger service legal earlier this year. Because now, the county proposes that Uber, which was operating illegally for more than two years, be the stop gap between home and the MetroRail.

“The Department of Transportation and Public Works has joined forces with one of the most popular ride-share programs around: Uber,” reads the almost breathless press release from the county. “The collaboration is just another way DTPW is working to ease riders’ commutes and help reduce congestion on the roadways by encouraging more drivers to opt for public transit.”

Read related story: Watch as Uber’s intimidating tactics catch fire

This is public transit? Someone else’s car?

“At Miami-Dade County, we’re all about moving our residents forward and making it easier for all Miamians to get where they need to go,” Gimenez said in the release. “By collaborating with Uber, getting to and from our transit stations is easier — and faster — than ever.”

Well, wait. It will still cost you $3 a trip, so that’s $6 a day, assuming you use Uber also to get home. So that’s $30 a week, or $120 a month. Just for the stop gap ride. We would still have to pay the bus and/or train separately.

Oh, and wait. It’s only good for people who live within 15 miles of a Metrorail station. Live in Homestead? You’re still screwed. Wait for the bus that is late one day out of the week. Nobody is about moving you forward and making it easier for you to get where you need to go.

Oh, and wait. It’s a temporary fix. Only good for the next month. The “promotional fare” will end Sept. 30. After that, Uber will charge market rates — or you can go back to walking and hitching rides with your momma.

Or paying $4.50 for parking. Because Ladra predicts that the only people who are going to take advantage of this are the people who already drive to MetroRail and park their cars all day there. The difference for them is $3 a day. Or $15 a week for a someone else to deal with the traffic. That may be worth it to just about anybody. Do without lunch.

“A lot of our residents are curious about trying public transit, so we want to make the choice an easy one,” said Transit Director Alice Bravo. “By collaborating with the ride-share companies, our riders have the benefit of a quick and easy trip to one of our Metrorail stations for a low, affordable price, without worrying about parking.”

Bravo is really counting on Gimenez winning his re-election. Here she is at a honk and wave rally on a recent Saturday — protecting her $235,000-a-year job making ridiculous statements like that. And like this.

“Uber will get you to us, and then let us do the rest.”

Doesn’t it feel like a commercial for Uber? Did their lobbyist get the county to do this? Who benefits more? The county? The rider? Nope. Uber benefits more. This is the best PR you can buy.

But who is Bravo kidding? This ridiculous partnership is not going to attract a lot of new riders who can’t afford $120 a month for a stop gap trip. But it might cost Miami-Dade some parking revenue.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez moves to legalize Uber, pardon penalties

The county doesn’t care. “Don’t sweat your commute, and let Miami-Dade and Uber take you where you need to go.”  It sounds so good. Like a bumper sticker.

Tell you what, Mayor Gimenez, why don’t you make Uber pay all their fines from the many months they snubbed their nose at the law and operated illegally? Take that $3 or $4 million you want to forgive, and apply those funds toward bus maintenance and operations so we can be on time more often.

Because what good are the $40 million in new buses you bought last year if nobody will ride them? Because they’re late one out of five days?

Last year, everybody was so happy about the $40 million in new buses — nobody mentioned they’d be late 22 percent of the time.

Carlos Gimenez is not the man I voted for in 2011.

The man we once considered an outsider on the dais, the voice of the people, has turned into the consummate inside deal broker, a man so entrenched in special interests and corrupt that his best friend and campaign finance chair has a $200-an-hour county contract worth $18 million over the next 12 years.

Gimenez went from being Ladra’s “Golden Boy” to a “Tainted Boy” — after he hooked up with the Hialeah hoodlums — and then “Cry Wolf Carlos,” after he kept threatening to lay everybody off, to “Mr. Giveaway,” when he started just giving millions away to millionaires.

It’s been a slippery slope. And as he faces the first real challenge to his dark and arrogant rule, it’s time to remind everyone why Carlos Gimenez should not be allowed to have another four years, what would be his last four years as mayor.

2011 — The Year of Setting Up

The descent started right after being elected in 2011. The new mayor asked the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust for an opinion on deals that were brought to the county by one of his two sons — the red light camera lobbyist or the project manager for a major construction firm. He was told to keep an arm’s distance. So he created an arm. Or, rather, five of them.

The deputy mayor system was created specifically to insulate Gimenez from his sons as well as his lobbyist friends and their special interest and still be able to wheel and deal at arm’s length. But it’s all a show. Because don’t think for a minute that dealing with Alina Hudak or Ed Marquez is any different than dealing with Carlos Gimenez. They will do what he wants them to do.

He also cut taxes by 12 percent, without really considering how that would impact the county in the following years. He did this 19 days after being sworn in July 1, 2011. And we’ve been paying the consequences ever since. Talk about inexperience and mismanagement. It was irresponsible. But, heck, it sounds good in robocalls and radio ads.

2012: The Year of the First Taste of Power 

In the summer of 2012, Mayor Gimenez got the commission to approve up to $5 million in funding to meet the county’s insurance deductible for damage done by heavy rains that year to the Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Arsht Performing Arts Center. Somewhere around 2,500 patrons had to be evacuated after water came gushing through the roof during a May performance of The Lion King. Though the $5 million comes from county coffers, the independent Performing Arts Center Trust was charged with hiring the contractors to make the repairs. Normally the PAC gets the county procurement department to request bids for its projects, but this was an emergency, county staffers told Ladra. And the job went to the company that hired the mayor’s son, Julio Gimenez.

In August that year, his campaign against a challenge from former Commissioner Joe Martinez gets caught up in an illegal absentee ballot operation. One of several people caught and arrested with dozens of absentee ballots was seen walking in and out of his Hialeah campaign office. He may not have known about it, but he certainly didn’t do enough about it after he found out. The man who told me personally in 2011 that he would reform absentee ballots to cut down on fraud was now looking the other way because it benefited him.

Nothing happens. Investigators later say they were stopped from going into Gimenez’s Hialeah campaign office because the State Attorney, whose campaign manager was also working for Gimenez, would not seek a subpoena. Nobody got jail time. And nobody followed up on the investigation, even though there was evidence that there were more people involved.

It’s never been spoken of again.

2013: The Year he “saved” Libraries

An obsession with sports stadiums started when early in 2013, Gimenez proposed a tourist bed tax increase to fund renovations and a roof at Dolphins Stadium, something he needed the state legislature to pass. He thought the idea was so revolutionary and fantastic — “best idea ever,” he called it — that he went so far as to having it put on fast track for a referendum and having the Miami Dolphins pay for it. The measure failed to get any support in Tallahasee and died.

Not to get too depressed about it, Gimenez flew to Paris for the air show and then later met his pal, lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez, in Italy so they could get backstage passes to the Vatican.

When he came back, Gimenez proposed fire rescue cuts known as “brown outs” that would have some units at some stations out of service for several hours or days at a time. It would have severely impacted neighborhood service and response times. After firefighters had several street protests, the idea was dropped and money magically found (one of several times) to keep the fire rescue staffing levels.

But to fix the broken budget — which he had broken two years earlier, folks — Gimenez also proposed closing libraries and drastically cutting library programs and services. After much protest at County Hall and a number of budget town halls around the county, money was magically found again and the administration ended up only closing some branches on some weekdays and cutting staff.

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