The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office is looking into three mystery mailers attacking former Coral Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera in Coral Gables and attributed to a political action committee that has said it isn’t involved.
Attorney and activist Jack Thompson sent the SAO an email with a link to an earlier Political Cortadito post about the first mailer, which said it was paid for and sent by Leadership for Florida’s Future. But a woman at the Jensen Beach PAC said it wasn’t them.
“Please review this news story and then open a criminal investigation,” wrote Thompson in a March 26 email with the subject “illegal campaign activity.”
Read related: PAC says it did not send hit piece on Ralph Cabrera — so who did?
Since then, two more mailers have come out with the same dark colors and bold letters warning voters about Cabrera’s ethics and ties to developers. Ladra sent the images to the SAO’s office on Friday and was told it would be forwarded to the right unit.
In the meantime, it’s hard to tell if it’s had any impact. Coral Gables voters don’t respond well to hit pieces and they’ve known Cabrera for decades. He was their commissioner for 12 years and has run for office almost since then. Those who support him are likely not swayed. And those who don’t might not fall for these mailers, which are awfully vague and short on attribution. In other words, they stink of smear.
The piece about the ethics quotes the actual complaint from former Mayor Jim Cason, an empty suit rubber stamper who Cabrera challenged twice, and not the findings from the close-out memo, which found he did nothing wrong. Shoot! You can say anything in a complaint. In fact, many campaigns now file complaints on purpose so they can quote them without having any basis.
A third piece landed last week insinuating that because Cabrera has taken developer money, he is in their pocket. Cabrera’s campaign has accepted some development money, notably $7,000 from Armando Codina, who is developing a 16-story luxury residential building on Salzedo, and Agave LLC, which is developing The Plaza, what used to be Old Spanish Village.
But what is Ralph supposed to do? Decline the money he needs to fight off the negative attacks that we knew were coming anyway?  He said these people came unsolicited to him. And it’s only a tiny fraction of Cabrera’s campaign funds that are tied to development.
He also has lots of residents, doctors, lawyers, plumbers. He has $1,000 from Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, $500 from former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and $300 from Gonzalo Sanabria, a Gables rabblerouser who was originally supporting another candidate.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera set to enter runoff with campaign cash advantage
Cabrera is not gonna be beholden to any of them anyway. Anybody who knows him knows he doesn’t owe favors. Even with his friends. Which is one of the things voters should like about him.
“Let’s stop Cabrera and his say one thing, do another agenda,” one piece says. But if there’s one thing that people know about Ralph is that he says what he means and means what he says, which is why some people don’t like him. There is no hidden agenda with Cabrera. His agenda is right there on his sleeve. He will talk ad nauseam about it and it usually has to do with improving city services or public safety. His sometimes self-depricating, brutal honesty is off putting because he won’t go along to get along. That’s another reason some people don’t like him.
In fact, the only thing these mailers prove is that someone is really worried about Cabrera. Perhaps he can win outright on Tuesday and avoid a runoff.
And even though they won’t have the answer before the election, the State Attorney should still find out is who is paying for these mystery mailers. If it’s not Leadership for Florida’s Future, it could be anybody.
It could be illegal foreign money, like in the Miami Beach case that derailed State Rep. Michael Grieco‘s mayoral race. If the Kathy Fernandez-Rundle investigates that and not this, then it looks like it was a personal grudge against a former prosecutor.
It could be the Eighth Street hotels that rent by the hour, including one in the Little Gables annexation area.
It could be the Russians.
Except the only ones who benefit from hurting Cabrera are the other candidates in the commission race. So, that means one of them is attacking Ralph with lies and innuendo using soft money from who knows where.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera’s commission race advantage: Others are unelectable
Only candidate Jorge L. Fors has ties to the PAC through his campaign manager, Steve Marin (right), who was paid at least $63,000 last year by Leadership for what he said was work on some state races. Political observers have also noted that the size of the mailers, the fonts used and the design seem similar to Marin’s. Campaign consultants often have signature looks to their materials.
But Marin told Ladra they were not his and that he would not hide behind a PAC to send mailers from his camp.
And his history with the Jensen Beach PAC could be the very reason that former interim city manager and current candidate Carmen Olazabal and her people may have chosen Leadership for Florida’s Future, to throw the scent off themselves. She has proven to be sneaky before.
Jackson “Rip” Holmes doesn’t have the money, political experience, guidance or, frankly, attention span to pull this off.
So it has to be either Olazabal or Fors, or someone in their circles, which is another reason to vote for Ralph Cabrera, who hasn’t used any of his campaign money — development or otherwise — to pay for a single negative hit piece.

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There is likely to be a runoff in the Coral Gables commission race after Tuesday, where none of the four candidates are likely to pull away with more than 50% of the vote.
And when former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera is headed for round 2, as expected, he may be better prepared than whoever the other candidate is: Cabrera would head into Tuesday’s election with more cash on hand than any of the other three hopefuls.
The latest campaign finance reports filed Friday show that Cabrera and attorney Jorge L. Fors are practically neck and neck on the bankroll, with $129,470 for the former commissioner and $122,250 for the Jorgie-Come-Lately with the illegal homestead exemptions.
Read related: Development interests fund campaign for Raul Valdes-Fauli
Both have some development money in their latest reports. Cabrera got $7,000 from Armando Codina, who is building a 16-story luxury condo on Salzedo Street and $5,000 from Agave, developers of The Plaza on Ponce de Leon Boulevard (the old Spanish Village). Earlier, he reported $3,000 from a group of developers on South Bayshore Drive.
There is a huge difference between the fraction of development dollars in Cabrera’s bank and mayoral incumbent Raul Valdes-Fauli, who has tens of thousands in sneaky bundles from developers and development interests. Only a small percentage of Cabrera’s campaign funds are tied to development.
The developers came to him, Cabrera said, because they respect his position and vision for the city. “It’s about the fact that I’m accessible. I may not always agree with them, but I’m always going to tell them the truth,” he told Ladra.
And the former commissioner has far more contributions from non developers, including, notably, $1,000 from the political action committee of Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, $500 from former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and $300 from Gonzalo Sanabria, a Gables rabblerouser (and failed commission candidate) who was originally supporting another Carmen Olazabal in this race.
Fors has some development money, too, but fewer bundles. He has several maximum $1,000 gifts from seemingly separate real estate development and construction interests, including $2,000 from Allen Morris. He also got $1,000 check from former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers, who lost his own commission race two years ago and is still licking his wounds.
But Fors also has more money from outside of Coral Gables, including contributions from Miami Lakes Councilman Josh Dieguez and former Miami Lakes Councilman Nelson Hernandez, who lost his bid for mayor. Most of Fors’ outside money is from lawyers in Miami, which might be expected of the past president of the Coral Gables Bar Association.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera’s commission race advantage — others are unelectable
Former interim city manager and compulsive liar Carmen Olazabal doesn’t have much development or attorney money because, well, she doesn’t have much financial support at all. Olazabal is a distant third with a total of $42,098 collected, much of it from relatives in Puerto Rico.
But both Olazabal and Fors are burning through their cash faster — spending $111,330 and $40,222, respectively — than Cabrera, who has spent less than $70K as of April 4.
That means that Olazabal has about $2,000 to spend between now and Tuesday. Fors has $11,000 or so and Cabrera has about $60,000.
If he keeps the trend, Ralph might have a nice nut to hit the ground running on April 10.

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Looks like the third time is the charm for former Coral Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera. Even if it’s just through the process of elimination.
Cabrera, an insurance consultant, has tried to get back on the dais twice since he left office in 2013. But both times he ran for mayor against Jim Cason. This time he is running for commissioner because, after all, it’s a city manager run government where all votes are equal. And because it was an open seat.
But because it was an open seat, it also attracted some people who would never even think of running against a sitting commissioner. And Cabrera — who is running on his experience and has the endorsement from the police union, the firefighters union, Gables Commissioner Vince Lago and SAVE — has the clear advantage in this election, which ends Tuesday.
Because the other three candidates are basically unelectable.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera outraises opponents in 4-way Gables commission race
The first to write off is Jackson “Rip” Holmes, an, um, colorful downtown property owner who has run unsuccessfully a bunch of times and whose single mission is to bring a department store to Miracle Mile.
But he has baggage galore: Holmes, who can barely finish a thought let alone a sentence, has a 2008 domestic violence charge, later dismissed, from one of his two mail order-type brides and a conviction in 1988 of threatening Jeb Bush, whose father was president at the time, that landed him in federal prison for three years. He has since said the whole thing was a misunderstanding and lavishes Bush with praise on his website, www.ripholmes.com.
Also, Holmes believes the Boston Marathon bombing, the Sandy Hook tragedy and other horrible attacks were inside jobs done by or with the assistance of extraterrestrials. And he has uploaded more than 500 videos to YouTube, the most recent of which are campaign related. Check them out. Cheaper than going to the movies.
Next we can lose former interim city manager and Cason crony Carmen Olazabal, who carried Pat Salerno‘s water and helped him lie to the commission about public safety. Olazabal learned everything she knows from Salerno. She doctored a document from the police department to indicate that there wasn’t an increase in accidents on Ponce de Leon Boulevard due to some palms planted on corners.
Read related: Commission candidate Carmen Olazabal can’t rewrite ugly past
Turns out there was. The cover-up ended with Salerno’s forced, on-the-spot resignation and the uprooting of several palm trees. Olazabal’s exit, not by choice, came months later. But not before she gave herself a 10% raise. Employees dislike her and distrust her so much, most of them are supporting Cabrera.
Today, Olazabal, who is basically running on her gender, has her own government consulting business, working on specific projects (read: no-show jobs) for municipalities, which could present a conflict of interest if she is elected. She was hired by Miami Lakes, for example, to manage the FDOT funded completion of a 1.5 mile route between an elementary and a middle school.
Olazabal is really looking for a job. The four-year commission term pays $31,585 a year.
The last to cross off is attorney Jorge Fors, who has never been involved in any Gables civic life and suddenly wants to be a commissioner because, he says, he had a baby. In truth, Jorgie Come Lately was recruited by the outgoing Frank Quesada, who endorsed his friend despite the fact that Fors has actually claimed an illegal Homestead exemption on a Little Havana condo he didn’t live in for almost a decade each and every year.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal homestead exemption
“I’ve known Jorge a long time and we’ve had cases together, he’s a great guy,” Quesada said in a text message last month after he declined to accept or return my calls. “When he discovered the homestead issue he resolved it.”
Except he didn’t just “discover” the homestead issue. He paid the back taxes, interests and penalties in January because he was running for office and after Ladra started sniffing around and pulling public records.
It’s not like he claimed a false homestead exemption once by mistake and forgot about it. Every year, before March 1, property owners have to claim their exemptions. For eight or nine years, every year, Fors checked the box to claim an exemption on a 5th Street condominium he admits he never lived in. The whole time, he voted in Coral Gables, not the city of Miami.
For a lawyer, he seems to have a disdain for the law. Because that’s not the only one he broke. He has a traffic history a mile long and was arrested for open containers and underage drinking in college. And he’s been caught parking in the handicap space — twice. He is trying to make annexation a campaign issue, using fear tactics to get votes, even though it was supported by a majority of the commission as well as the police chief.
So, we got a nut job, an opportunist liar and a scofflaw cheat fearmonger on the ballot with Cabrera, who may rub some people the wrong way with his brutal honesty but has definitely proven himself as a public servant. He didn’t go along to get along but why would any interested voter want that?
Read related: PAC says it did NOT send hit piece on Ralph Cabrera — so who did?
During his 12 years on the dais, Cabrera lowered taxes twice, brought free wifi and Giralda Under the Stars to the downtown, created the citywide traffic advisory committee, sponsored new residential zoning to fight against McMansions, strengthened the valet parking ordinance, spearheaded an insurance RFP process that saved the city 30% on renewals,  created a local vendor preference program and did a lot more you can find on his website. He actually has a good track record.
Next to the others, he’s a poster boy candidate. So strong are his chances that he is the only candidate being attacked by negative mailers that have no factual base and paid by unknown campaign operatives and donors, which becomes another reason to vote for him.
This should be Cabrera’s year. Not before a runoff with either the liar or the cheat. But he should win that, too.

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Voters might not be sure if Carmen Olazabal is running for a commission seat against three other candidate — or if she is running against activist Maria Cruz and little ol’ Ladra.
The girl has gone off on Maria and I, wasting precious campaign ink on our distaste for her unethical behavior and her role in covering up for former city manager Pat Salerno, instead of concentrating on the issues.
And I do believe she doth protest too much.
In a recent email missive — because that is all Olazabal can afford, no real mail — she tries to deflect attention from her own failures and unethical acts by calling any and all criticisms about her smears and falsehoods.
How convenient.
Read related: Commission candidate Carmen Olazabal can’t rewrite ugly past
Olazabal, who can’t spell my name right even once, also lashes out at the Gables  Good Government — which paid me to write a completely unbiased piece, which I still sometimes do — and Commissioner Vince Lago, who she said I interviewed to lend the post more “credence.”
First, the GGG came to me and after much initial discouragement, I took on the job because it seemed easy enough. If she didn’t like that one, Carmen should have seen my original version before they edited all the good stuff out.
Secondly, I don’t make electeds say what they say. Or, wait, is Olazabal suggesting that its irrelevant what Lago — perhaps the most respected elected there and future Gables mayoral shoe-in — thinks of her? By the way, it’s what a lot of people think. They either don’t want to be named or aren’t as relevant.
Earlier, Olazabal issued a “fact checks” section on her website that sounds a lot more like a fairy tale than anything resembling the truth, which Olazabal apparently has a distaste for. But since Olazabal likes to play with the facts, and voters need more than she said, she said, here is Ladra’s fact check check.
Fact 1: She was part and parcel to the lie that got her boss and mentor, former City Manager Pat Salerno, fired. She doctored the document that was prepared by the Police Chief for the commission about a 170% increase in accidents on North Ponce de Leon Boulevard related to some palm trees that caused some line of sight issues for drivers.
Carmen check: Ms. Olazabal, — as she calls herself to lend credence to the argument because it is presented as third person verification — says she simply edited the police memo. She and Salerno “discussed the numbers presented …and they determined they did not accurately represent the issue because the statistics covered a wider area than the median construction and included inaccurate construction dates,” she quotes her own excuses from a Miami Herald article. “Ms. Olazabal’s professional determination was that “if [she] would have forwarded [Hudak’s memo] to the commission, it would have been wrong.”
Reality Check: Um, no. It was wrong to change Hudak’s memo and present it as his own work. Is she really defending that. What she should have done, if she and Salerno thought the numbers were wrong, was add their own memo to the memo, explaining the accurate dates and median locations, which, by the way, did not end up being “wrong.” That’s just cover.
Read related: Coral Gables must remove Ponce palms Salerno lied about
And this photograph of an overturned car on Ponce de Leon Boulevard is not propaganda. It is real, it is really someone’s car and there was somebody in it when it really turned over. Nobody placed this car upside down on the street as a prop. It was taken during the time frame that the report looked at. The photo is not Ladra’s. It was provided by someone in Coral Gables at that time. It may have been part of the report. It was an example of an accident caused by a line of sight issue that Olazabal not only failed to address but denied even existed. There is no reason not to use it to illustrate a point. Of course, she doesn’t like it. It’s hard to look at. Especially since she tried to cover it up. She doesn’t want to be reminded of her mistakes.
Like…
Fact 2: Giving herself a 10% raise.
Carmen Check: “Rather, the Coral Gables City Commission approved her contract as Interim City Manager on May 5th, 2014, and her salary reverted back when a new city manager was appointed.” she writes, back to third person for validity.
Reality Check: Rather, the commission approved the interim manager’s agenda item on her own pay raise. Oh, and she asked to keep her 10% raise when the city hired the permanent city manager.
Fact 3: So inept at her job, Olazabal had to hire former county and municipal manager everywhere Merrett Stierheim to hold her hand.
Carmen Check: “Rather it was the Coral Gables Commission that directed the hiring of Mr. Stierheim.”
Reality Check: Again, the commission certainly approved the hiring of and payment for Stierheim’s services, up to $50,000, but the item was a recommendation from, guess who? The interim city manager. In fact, Commissioner Frank Quesada congratulated her on the idea at a public meeting.
Read related: Merrett Stierheim — Coral Gables’ extra city manager for $50K
Fact 4: Carmen Cason was identified as Olazabal’s campaign manager.
Carmen Check: “Rather, Mrs. Cason is an active and valued volunteer in the campaign.”
Reality Check: Mrs. Cason was described early on as the campaign manager before Olazabal brought FIU Professor and pollster Dario Moreno on board. But most people close to the campaign would say Carmen Cason, showed in a supervisory role in this photo, is a little bit more than an “active and valued volunteer.”
Fact 5: While she was acting as city manager, Olazabal decided to name Maj. Theresa Molina the acting police chief, against the wishes of the commission, which had called a special meeting to make the decision themselves. An email to voters from Cruz questioned her judgement, noting that Molina was the major who was later forced to resign when she was caught spying on the activist and commissioners.
Carmen Check: First, Olazabal said that the spying incident happened two years later. “Ms. Olazabal could not have known that Ms. Cruz’s incident would occur.  This is a standard misleading association common in propaganda materials,” she says, adding that Molina had “no prior violations or internal affairs investigations in her personnel file.” She said she had every right, as the city attorney said she had, to name an acting chief.
Reality Check: Nobody said you didn’t have the right, Carmencita. But it was kind of a shocker to the commissioners when she did that after they asked her to wait until the special meeting, which I believe was the very next day. So when Ms. Olazabal says in the meantime, she means 12 or so hours. Also, it was left unsaid but should be noted, that Ms. Olazabal also took it upon herself to fly former Maj. Scott Masington in from Tennessee or somewhere like that even though at least one commissioner had told her not to. As for Molina, who was being investigated by the State Attorney’s Office at the time, all Cruz and Ladra were saying was that, even if the spying incident was years later, it could serve as example of Olazabal’s terrible judgement of character.
The truth is that Olazabal needs to rewrite her history. And remember, she likes to edit. As assistant city manager, she cut and paste information from a police report to take out important data about public safety that didn’t jive with the administration’s perspective. Today, she cut and pastes — or juts cuts — comments from her Facebook page that call her out.
And she attacks those who recall her real history and she cries foul and calls them names, all the while saying her campaign is the cleanest. Tsk, tsk.
Maybe it is because she needs to deflect from the fact she is totally lost on the issues.

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Coral Gables voters got a mailer this week that attacks Ralph Cabrera on development, calling him a “career politician” and saying he approved 40% of the tallest buildings in the city.
But nobody is taking the credit.
Not only is the figure pulled out of the sky, with no reference to any research or parameters — are we talking about the five “tallest buildings,” for example? — the piece says it is paid for by a Jensen Beach political action committee that told Ladra Friday it had nothing to do with it.
So that means we do not know and may never know who really paid for the mail piece. Unless we can get the State Attorney’s Office to investigate. Because someone did break the law here.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal Homestead exemption
Ladra’s first guess was that the piece came from Jorge Fors‘ camp. Neither Carmen Olazabal, the onetime interim city manager, nor downtown property owner Jackson “Rip” Holmes have the funds you would need to do this kind of mailer. And, besides, the Leadership for Florida’s Future PAC has ties to Fors’ campaign manager Steve Marin, who got $63,000 from them last year.
But Marin, who said he was paid for work on state races, told Ladra he had nothing to do with the hit piece, either. “I don’t have a PAC for this reason, said Marin, adding that Fors’ mailers will come directly from the campaign.
Ladra specifically asked a PAC administrator if they had maybe sent it on behalf of Steve Marin. Debbie Millner, wife of PAC Chairman Michael Millner, vehemently denied sending it on behalf of anybody.
“We know nothing about it. We didn’t send it out,” Millner told Ladra Friday morning. “No one asked us if they could use our political committee at all.”
Leadership for Florida’s Future doesn’t have any contributions or expenses reported since October, except for $1,300 paid last month in accounting fees. The report for March won’t be filed and public until after the election April 9.

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In a desperate attempt to get votes in North Gables, commission candidate Jorge Fors is stirring up annexation fears.
Fors — who is running for the seat vacated by Commissioner Frank Quesada — walked North Gables streets last week, passing out petitions to stop the annexation of Little Gables, an unincorporated Miami-Dade enclave just south of 8th Street.
Only problem is, the process is pretty far along already, having been approved by the existing commission. Police Chief Ed Hudak told them that it would be better from a public safety standpoint. Gables Police and Fire Rescue already have to go into Little Gables all the time. It would be better f they can patrol it proactively and get the tax dollars for the services provided.
Read related: One thumbs up, one thumbs down after Coral Gables candidate forum
The annexation application — one of two, the other being the High Pines area just south of Sunset — is at the county level now, having passed the planning and zoning committee in December. Basically, it’s headed to a vote the full county commission and then a vote of the people in Little Gables.
But those kind of details don’t matter in a campaign. What matters is emotion. Some people in North Gables are unhappy about bringing Little Gables into the fold. Some are angry that they never got a chance to vote to let them in.
And Fors is taking advantage of that. He is the least known candidate in a four-way race against former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, onetime interim city manager Carmen Olazabal and downtown property owner Jackson “Rip” Holmes. He needed something to set him apart — other than the Homestead exemption fraud. Annexation was low hanging fruit. Early in the campaign, Fors sent a mailer out about annexation. Then he hit the streets with the petitions. Last Thursday, annexation was even turned into a campaign issue at the Coco Plum Woman’s Club candidate forum.
But can he really do anything if elected? He would only be one of five votes. And should he even try?
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal Homestead exemption
“When there are very limited issues to talk about — crime is not an issue, the state of our city is not an issue — certain candidates feel the need to drum up issues that don’t exist,” said Commissioner Vince Lago. “The police chief stood up and said that annexation is in the best interest of the city to patrol the area because it provides a more natural border and closes our geo fence.”
Little Gables has a penchant for drugs and prostitution, mostly from the trailer park and the Wishes Motel on 8th Street that rents by the hour.
Lago and City Manager Peter Iglesias — who got rid of two trailer parks in his previous life at the city of Miami — believe that they can incentivize property owners to redevelop and bring their properties up to Gables code. Lago says he even wants to see a city park for North Gables residents.
There have been at least five public community meetings about annexation since 2016, including one hosted by Miami-Dade Commissioner Rebeca Sosa. How much you wanna bet that Jorgie Come Lately didn’t go to one? He did not return several calls and texts to his cell phone.
Perhaps what Fors has shown is just how uneducated he is about the issues.

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