Three times in one week, Miami-Dade Carlos Gimenez‘s secret non-profit has paid for robocalls to tens of thousands of voters saying that Raquel Regalado committed fraud.

It’s a lie.

So is the robocall saying she’s had to pay some elections violation fine. So is the mailer saying the Miami-Dade School Board member has been absent at many meetings.

All lies. Deliberate, malicious lies meant to smear her name and damage her chances.

But these repeated dishonest digs, false as they are, show how desperate Carlos Gimenez has become in his effort to keep the seat that serves as a gravy train to his family and friends. And how far he will go to protect his control of billions of dollars in county spending over the course of the next four years.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez’s links to lobbyists lead straight to his staff

Make no mistake: Carlos Gimenez knows these are lies. The property appraiser cleared Regalado of any wrongdoing. An investigator said that there was no intent to commit fraud and that Regalado did not benefit from the Homestead exemption status that mistakenly remained on her home after the bank took possession. So there is no fraud. Gimenez knows that. Ladra dares say he always knew there was no fraud. Just like he knows there is no elections law violation. An inquiry into a bogus elections complaint — its become commonplace, part of regularly scheduled campaign work to file a complaint about something — is not even completed, so there is no fine. At least not yet.

And Regalado has never missed a school board meeting. Not one. She just doesn’t go for all the proclamations in the first hour or so. Who has time for that?

The mayor’s campaign mouthpiece, Jesse Manzano, dared say that the people who are getting the employee of the month award or the school getting the day named after them for their recycling efforts or whatever deserve her attendance. I would say that the people who go to speak at commission meetings about the Pets’ Trust betrayal or the mismanagement of the special taxing districts or other instances in which Gimenez has simply gotten up and walked away would deserve his ear even more.

Manzano is just defending their lies. Because these lies are crucial to the Gimenez campaign. They have nothing else for him to get re-elected on. The Gimenez track record of broken promises, mismanagement and no-bid contracts to family and friends is well documented. So the entire re-election effort is centered around lies that they themselves planted. The story about the property issue was fed to a blogger by them. The blogger was the one that created the issue. The bogus campaign finance complaint that was supposed to stay confidential and was made public days before the election, what a coincidence (not!), is made by them. All of this was planned a long time ago as the crux of their campaign. Since Gimenz can’t defend his own terrible track record as mayor and because he knows that Regalado poses a real threat to his reign of power, he has to turn to the lies and absurd attacks.

Like the mailer that arrived in mailboxes Friday with Regalado’s face morphed into Donald Trump’s. It calls her the “mini Donald Trump Miami-Dade doesn’t need.”

Mini? Wow. Is that another jab because she is a woman?

Ironically, Trump is a client of the mayor’s son. CJ Gimenez has done lobbying for Trump in Doral, where he is still registered as a lobbyist. His boss Freddy Balsera was so happy to represent Trump and the Miss Universe contest last year that he tweeted about it.

The truth is the only mayoral candidate with ties to Donald Trump is Carlos Gimenez.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez’s next mancrush giveaway to Donald Trump

That was the second mailer making comparisons between Regalado and Trump. This morphed Trump face mailer is funded by an anti immigrant PAC called Leadership for Florida’s future, that also donated more than $180,000 this month to another PAC called Stop Benefits to Illegals Now. 

The group also got $184,000 from Citizens Alliance for Florida’s Economy and $105,000 from the Main Street Leadership Council. It’s like one of those PACs that look like they are laundering money through other PACs and you can never trace it back to its original donation.

What’s an anti-immigration PAC doing helping Gimenez?

The other negative mailer likening Regalado to Trump, sent a few days ago, was funded by a mystery corporation created just two months ago and calling itself Committee for Integrity. As if. Florida Division of Corporation records don’t have any names listed behind the nonprofit, just a registered agent service in Tampa. So we don’t know who is paying for the mailers and the dishonest robocalls. Integrity? That’s a joke.

Because the real story is that Carlos Gimenez is the fraud, hiding behind multiple secret nonprofit PACs that smear his opponent while he says on live TV that he won’t say anything mean to a girl. Pfffftt. He is not the man we voted into office in 2011. He has become the crooked politician he used to rail against. Power corrupts, ladies and gentlemen.

Or maybe he was always a fraud, a liar who intended to fleece us the whole time.

Because Gimenez has been lying to the people for years while his son’s construction company gets a $4 million no-bid contract to fix the roof of the performing arts center and, now, his BFF and campaign finance chair has a contract that pays him $200 an hour and could give him $18 million over the course of 12 years. That’s a mil and a half a year for mostly clerical work like filing documents and going to meetings. Soon, you’ll find out that another family member coincidentally got a job (wink, wink, nod) at another subcontractor that got the “public outreach” portion of that same $139-million water and sewer contract that pays his buddy $200 an hour.

All that, folks — unlike the BS spun from the other side — is true.

Raquel Regalado doesn’t have to lie about Carlos Gimenez to get elected. The truth about him is bad enough.

One of the main criticisms on Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez is that he is too comfy close with lobbyists.

It’s not just Ladra. A June 2013 poll showed that 55% of the people think he’s too beholden to lobbyists and special interests, and is being led by them rather than by the best interests of the county and taxpayers in his multiple, multi-million-dollar deal negotiations.

Little did they know, however, that he is soooo linked arm-in-arm with lobbyists that he has the sons of two cabilderos in the executive circle on his staff. Why not? After all, his own son is a lobbyist. Maybe he sees a little of his boy in these employees.

Read related story: Poll: Mayor Carlos Gimenez is too comfy close to lobbyists

Alex Ferro, the mayor’s chief of staff, is the son of lobbyist Simon Ferro. He’s been with Gimenez since the 2011 campaign, jumping from the Marcelo Llorente camp after the former State Rep. came in third in the recall replacement race. Llorente, also a lobbyist, is his cousin.

Ferro started as director of external affairs, a position that no longer exists (maybe because it was custom created) but became chief of staff in August 2014 after Lisa Martinez up and left for no apparent reason. Ferro got an 83% percent raise and makes $145,000 a year now. That’s more than Deputy Mayor Russell Benford (the black one). And he’s gotten to travel far and wide with Gimenez — to Denver, the White House (second from right in the photo here), even Paris.

His dad, Simon Ferro, has lobbied on land use issues, on zoning changes, a South Dade landfill and development of a Port Miami parcel. He’s represented Larkin Hospital, developers like Adrian Homes, shopping plazas and schools. Last year, he secured $400,000 in Building Better Communities bond monies for a Section 8 apartment building in Miami Beach. This year, he registered to lobby for two clients: Biscayne Housing, to argue for a tax exemption for a housing developer, and Bindor Somi, on issues related to a transit owned parcel in South Miami.

Michael Weiss is a mayor’s aide and the son of Richard Weiss, senior partner at Weiss, Serota Helfman, one of the main lobbying firms in Miami-Dade. Mike Weiss, who calls himself a policy and legislative analyst on his LinkedIn profile, was hired last year for an annual salary of $52,300.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez new chief of staff gets 83% raise

His dad is registered this year but has not listed any clients so far. Last year, Richard Weiss lobbied for the city of Miami Gardens in their fight with the county over control of zoning and permitting of then SunLife, now Hard Rock Stadium. In 2013, he represented the Miami Heat organization in its negotiations for an extended agreement at the American Airlines Arena — which came out very favorable for them.

It’s hard not to wonder if Weiss’ position had other applicants and if it was competitive. Was it even advertised? There are 12 mayor’s aides. One of the other ones is Dotty Vazquez, the known boletera who worked on Gimenez”s 2012 campaign and got paid $10,000 for consulting (code word for absentee ballot collection).

Could there be 13? Maybe 14? Or more. I mean, how many lobbyist kids are graduating?  Are Jorge Luis Lopez‘s sons old enough yet to be looking for a job? Does Brian May have any kids? Maybe a daughter for a change?

Gimenez has long been criticized for being too close to lobbyists and one has to wonder if this is not one of those ways they scratch each others’ backs.

Read related story: Boleteras alive and well — and working in the mayor’s office

The poll in June 2014 by Bendixen Amandi for The Miami Herald, showed that 55 percent of the 400 people asked thought that Gimenez was too close to lobbyists. Only 27% believe he is negotiating in our best interest.

Among Hispanics, where Gimenez showed the most support in that poll, 52% thought he was too close to lobbyists and acting on behlf of special interests. But the number skyrocketed to 65% among black voters and 60% among white Anglo voters. Among Democrats, 59% saying these special interests exert too much influence over Gimenez.

“These are the disturbing figures,” Fernand Amandi, one of the pollsters — who since then has developed a mid morning political talk show on 610 WIOD — told Ladra two years ago.

But imagine how much more disturbing the figures would be if people knew that Gimenez had the sons of two lobbyists working in his office as some of his closest advisers.

For all his exaggerated experience as a manager and fiscal expert, it’s ironic (and somewhat funny) that Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez would pay his re-election qualifying fee with a bad check.

That’s right. His original check was no good; it was back dated more than a year. The mayor was allowed to correct this with a “replacement check” — and yet nobody asks if this doesn’t render him unqualified to run our county’s $7 billion budget. Imagine that!

Gimenez, or whoever writes and/or signs his campaign checks for him, intended to qualify for the race on June 17. That’s when he presented his qualifying documents — a sworn oath, his financial disclosure with a net worth of $1.5 million — along with a check for the $1,800 fee. Only it was dated June 10, 2015 — more than a whole year earlier. Is he living in the past, or what? Someone at Elections must have noticed this before it went to the bank because they called and notified his campaign that the check would likely not be honored — you know, banks have a thing about checks that are older than 90 or 180 or 365 days — and that they needed a new check with a more recent date if the incumbent wanted to qualify.

It was like a “Head’s up!”

The deadline to qualify was at noon the next day. But, apparently, Gimenez couldn’t wait. Who knows? Maybe he was playing golf that morning. Because someone delivered the check right after 10:20 p.m. the night of the 20th, according to a stamp on a copy of the replacement check at the Elections Department.

That’s right, again! His second check was time stamped at 10:20-something p.m. You can’t really see all of the last digit on the time stamp, but it looks like a 1, like 10:21 p.m.

Deputy Elections Supervisor Carolina Lopez told Ladra that the same head’s up would have been given to anyone who writes a year-old check, even though nobody did. She also said that nobody had to come in on overtime just for the mayor. The office was already open and employees were already working to file qualifying documents online late into the night, Lopez explained. She said they would accept a check or missing qualifying documents from anyone, not just their boss, if someone came in the middle of the night.

That’s the time they are doing their quality control, Lopez said. Any and all candidates are notified when a deficiency is found. Usually, it’s a notarization issue. The document isn’t notarized or the notary commission is expired. Other times they forget to sign the oath or they sign the wrong oath for the wrong office.

“I dealt with many a candidate after 5 o’clock,” said Lopez, who is, indeed, extremely responsive after business hours and who reminded me that there were about 600 candidates on the ballot when you include all the party committee people.

Okay, I didn’t check 600 of them. But a cursory review of time stamps on dozens of other candidate qualifying checks — from judicial races to community council wannabes — shows that they all presented payment during business hours. Only Gimenez got a time stamp on his check after 5 p.m. Waaaaay after 5 p.m. What does that say about his ability to manage a $7 billion budget? What if he mistakenly backdates a grant application or something? Or doesn’t complete the paperwork on time?

Ladra is being sarcastic. Because obviously the competent Miami-Dade employees will take care of it. Proven by the eagle-eyed staffer at the elections department who noticed the backdated check and took care of the mayor’s mistake. So, at best it’s a sign that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. At worst, it could be an abuse of power. Because Ladra can’t understand why Lopez wouldn’t tell anybody who might be given a head’s up to please come in the next day. After all, we are busy working late into the night with the paperwork we already have! Even if there were a dozen employees there in some back room filing paperwork, the front door to the Doral Elections office wasn’t unlocked, was it? Someone had to call to get inside. The intake window wasn’t manned. Someone had to stop what they were doing to get the mayor’s new check right before 10:30 p.m.

“We do not provide any preferential treatment to anybody,” Lopez told Ladra, and I can understand why she might be upset at my doubts but it’s not about her. “Most of my calls are after 5 p.m. because that is when I have a chance to review the files,” she said. “In order to give our candidates the proper level of service, I give them every opportunity and entertain many calls after 5 p.m. I’m on 24 hours a day.”

Well, if this is a privilege allowed to everyone, I urge candidates in the next election cycle to beat the rush and go in the middle of the night on the eve before the deadline. Call Carolina. She’ll open the door for you.

The issue has become more relevant now because, even if there was no abuse of power, there is certainly a double standard being applied here when the mayor refuses to instruct the elections supervisor to start counting 127,000-plus petitions from voters who want campaign finance reform. A delay in verifying the signatures could mean the measure is not on the November ballot and the activists have sued the county to make it happen.

So maybe Gimenez is simply selfish. He moved hell and high water to make sure he was on the ballot to keep his gravy train seat but he won’t lift a finger to get the campaign reform measure requested by more than 127,000 voters on the ballot. Because he doesn’t represent them. He only represents himself.

By the way, that is more votes than he got for mayor in 2012.

But Gimenez is not known for sticking to process, is he? Look at what happened with the Liberty Square Rising redevelopment bid and the water and sewer infrastructure bid and a number of other business contracts in which he has impacted (read: meddled in) the process. Why wouldn’t he violate the process to keep his job? He has a history of thinking the rules don’t apply to him.

This should be investigated. The State Attorney’s Office and the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust should ask for video tape from the cameras in the lobby and sworn statements from everybody involved in procuring or receiving the replacement check, including whoever wrote the receipt for the second check and corrected the date from the 21st to the 20th. Because the first date hand-written on the receipt for the check was June 21 and the 1 was changed to a 0.

So did the mayor even qualify on time? When was that exactly? Did he get the replacement check in at 10:21 p.m. on the 20th, as indicated by the time stamp, or on the 21st, as indicated in the hand-written receipt? An investigation would end any speculation about what happened.

Because, at worst, Carlos Gimenez used his position to get an unfair advantage in the electoral process. And, at best, he doesn’t know how to write a check.

Voters deserve to know which it is.

The following is a letter written to one of the Miami Herald editorial board members by Michael Rosenberg and Rita Schwartz, co-founders of  the Pets’ Trust, after the paper’s Facebook live interview of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. With their permission, Political Cortadito is publishing it as an open letter to the entire editorial board.

“I don’t know if you and your fellow board members have watched the House Of Cards with Kevin Spacey, but if not….your interview with Carlos Gimenez was like an extension of that show, particularly when he spoke about the Pets’ Trust.  I have shared the Herald editorial video with several dozen people and they all commented on how visibly tense or annoyed he became when the words Pets’ Trust was brought up.

The Mayor loves to say about us “They just want to increase taxes and I’m not going to do it”.  He says that over and over no matter where he is (House of Cards!).  In 2012 when we first went to the Mayor and Commissioners about the idea of saving our animals, the economy was sinking, and there was no money. The only way to get the additional funds was to ask the community if they would agree to reach into their pockets to invest in our animals. The people of Miami Dade County said yes.  In 2014, 2015, and 2016 there was no need to ask for a tax hike. The property tax dollars were pouring in.   In 2015 over 250 Pets’ Trust supporters went to the County Commission meeting and 25 people spoke. NOT ONE ASKED FOR A TAX HIKE. They all said use the surplus to honor the vote. Watching the Mayor give you that same political answer, “they want to increase taxes,” is politics at its worse. He uses those words to dismiss the will of the people, rather than finding a way to honor the will of the people. He should not be our Mayor…EVER AGAIN!

During the interview he stated, “What do those Pets’ Trust people want?” I suppose you must believe he has been calling us day and night to find out that answer (House of Cards!). We have tried to meet with him for TWO YEARS! HE refuses to meet with us because facing the truth from those telling the truth is not something that is part of his make-up. He should be using us as an example of how democracy works. Of how people come together for a common cause. Rather, he denounces us publicly over and over.

How many more times do we have to hear him say and imply that that we are in it for the money!?!? He knows full well how those funds would be handled.

These slanderous charges are part of our lawsuit against him. The Mayor continues to tell the public that we are getting the money (House of Cards!).

We have written his office over and over and over demanding he stop saying this, or prove it. But, he doesn’t have to stop, and this shows us more than anything what kind of person and Mayor he is. When we hear this, we always ask for the proof.  What doesn’t exist can’t be found, but the Mayor keeps saying it. The bully pulpit is aptly named in this case!

You asked him if there was a personality clash. He denied it, but there most certainly is. The Mayor does not like to be challenged with persistence, determination and facts. Can you imagine the atmosphere he has created among the people that work for him, who wouldn’t dare challenge him for fear of losing their jobs? I once asked a police major how many more officers she needed in her district. She would not answer for fear that it would get back to the Mayor. Can you imagine how much better our County could be if we had a leader that respected his employees….and respected the voters, a mayor that implemented the will of the people. Well we don’t have that. We have a government of fear.

Soon you will make an endorsement. Your editorials in the past two years have practically BEGGED people from the community to run for office so fresh ideas could re-energize our thinking, our way of doing things. Take a look at your endorsements these past two years. Sometimes new people are simply not qualified and you endorse the same old same old….but sometimes new blood stands out with character ideas so refreshing that it would be a sin to not have them as our leaders.

The people of the Pets’ Trust have watched Carlos Gimenez up front and personal for four years. He lied to us. He slandered us. He missed an incredible opportunity of using our example to inspire people to become involved.

If the Miami Herald were to endorse a person like that, it would suggest business as usual is okay, and that the change you speak of so often and eloquently  for our community, will be delayed again.

In other words, the House of Cards continues to grow, and the people grow more and more distant from participating in government.  Forty years of public service is enough. We need new and younger people with bold ideas.

I read that in the Miami Herald.

Michael Rosenberg and Rita Schwartz, co founders of the Pets’ Trust.

Michael Rosenberg spent time in a cage to call attention to the plight of our animals.

As the election gets closer, Carlos Gimenez and those friends and family who benefit from his elected office have gotten more desperate in their attempt to hang on to power and the goose that lays the golden egg.

First, they say that she was against police body cameras. False. Regalado simply said that there needed to be a policy and standard operating procedures in place first. She testified to this in Tallahassee, as a leader should, urging for a uniform policy to guide departments. This month, she was vindicated when a study by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights raised concerns about departments that rush to use body cameras without any policies or standard operating procedures.

Then, they say that she has been late or missed a bunch of school board meetings. Wrong again. She doesn’t always go to the proclamations and awards given out for the first hour or so, but Raquel Regalado has probably introduced more legislation than any other school board member in the history of the school board. You don’t do that by missing meetings. And anybody who knows her knows that she is an absolute workaholic.

The next allegation is an even bolder lie, just as absentee ballots began to arrive: They say she committed fraud, claiming a Homestead Exemption on a home she did not reside in.

Last week, a blogger with malicious intent wrote about this false allegation that the Gimenez campaign had fed him. How do I know they fed him? Because three different reporters have admitted to me that they were provided with the same information. That’s standard for campaigns and not a surprise. We, too, have provided reporters with information given to us. Or did you think the Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks found out about Ralph Garcia Toledo and his $200-an-hour job at Water and Sewer all by himself?

Read related story: Raising money for the mayor; making money from his administration

The difference is, the information we provide to the media is true. I say “we” because I am officially on Team Raquel in a media and communications role. That means that when I get information or tips that I normally would write about on this blog, I instead try to get others to write about it in the mainstream media. Because I know the TV stations and the daily paper have a bigger audience. And that is part of my job on the campaign. Not writing about the campaign here, like some of the Gimenez apologists will charge. Recently, I have been forced to publish the information here because the election is getting closer and voters deserve to know. But everything I write and everything I forward to other reporters is true.

The mayor and Dotty Vazquez at his Hialeah campaign office in 2012. She now works in his office at County Hall as a county employee.

Like the fact that a well known boletera who helped Gimenez in 2012 — an election in which his campaign was tainted with absentee ballot fraud — is now working in the mayor’s office as a $36,000-a-year aide doing public outreach in the senior centers,no less. Or that the mayor — who gave millions away in federal housing grants to the wrong people (wink, wink) — has proposed to pay the demanded refund to the U.S. Housing department by promising portions of future federal grants for several years. You know, after he’s no longer mayor we’ll get less federal housing money. And the concern that his cuts of domestic violence funding and police units could be rooted in a personal attitude toward women and relationships because of his own 2004 charge and his son’s charges of domestic violence.

Meanwhile, the information provided by the Gimenez campaign is false. Raquel Regalado is at every meeting or almost every meeting (maybe she missed one or two of them in six years, I don’t want to overstate). She is all for body cameras — done the right way. And she never committed any fraud. And that’s why none of the mainstream or legitimate media jumped on the story when they first got the property information, which was public.

In fact, it took the blogger several visits to the property appraiser to make this story happen. That’s right. It wasn’t a story, there was nothing there, until the blogger took comments made by Regalado out of context, cobbled together a story ignoring any facts that didn’t support his theory, and then got the appraiser to go after her three weeks before the election. When he was told that she didn’t have a property for them to lien, this blogger took it upon himself to inform the appraiser about a family home she got 10 percent of after her mother died, so they had something to move on. Maybe the media should start reporting on how this blogger set this whole thing in motion. What motivated him to cobble together this story out of comments taken out of context and bent to his hypothesis?

Once Raquel provides the complete documents, this will all be over.

Because it is ludicrous to believe that, as a sitting Miami-Dade School Board member, Raquel Regalado would intentionally cheat her own constituency for what? For a measly $2,000 or $2,500? Because the rest of it is interest and penalties. It is even more ridiculous to imagine that even if she had been evil enough to take advantage of the situation, she wouldn’t have taken care of it when she decided to run for mayor. What’s $2,500 to millionaire Norman Braman, her main donor?

It wasn’t taken care of because she didn’t even know about it. Fraud, ladies and gentlemen, needs intent. It is defined as the “intentional use of deceit, a trick or some dishonest means to deprive.” Key word: Intentional.

Yes, she moved out of her house and into a rented home. She was in the midst of a contentious divorce and her ex-husband had a claim on the house they had once shared. Meanwhile, the bank was foreclosing because she could not afford, as a newly-single mother, both the mortgage payments and her daughter’s autism therapy. It was not a difficult decision for her to make and any parent can understand. She abandoned the house so that her ex-husband would take up residence and possession of the home he had some rights to, as per the divorce settlement. He had every intention of moving into the home. When he didn’t, the foreclosure moved forward.

She never rented the house to anybody, as is the case with real Homestead exemption fraud cases. Nor did she claim another Homestead exemption on the new home, as other people committing fraud do. She didn’t stay and live in the house for free during the foreclosure. And, in fact, since she wasn’t paying the mortgage, she didn’t continue to pay the taxes on it. Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia said the property taxes for both years that Regalado didn’t live in the house were paid for by the mortgage company that took possession of the home. Foreclosure proceedings take time. Her name was still listed on the property but the home was no longer Raquel’s. The bills were paid by the bank.

So the oversight isn’t even hers! The mortgage company got the tax bill and paid it, failing to make the changes to indicate there was nobody living in the home anymore and that it was in the process of foreclosure.

See? There’s no there there. But you can’t fit all that on a robo call.

Curiously, before Raquel could clear things up, the Gimenez campaign already had their own robo call out to voters using the word fraud three times. It went out immediately after the story — like it had already been written and edited and approved and produced. Paid for by some Committee for Integrity — yeah, right — that is unlisted as a PAC or ECO, probably a non-profit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors. Astute political observers might surmise that the robo call — and the whole story and complaint to begin with — are part of the long planned political strategy mapped out by the Gimenez team against the only real challenge they’ve had in five years.

There’s more. Please press this “continue reading” button to “turn the page.”