A judge last week dismissed a motion by a Miami City Commission candidate who thought her name should be first on the ballot and wanted the election delayed so that new ballots could be printed.
The frivolous lawsuit isn’t the only time that Denise Galvez Turros has been in court. But it’s the only time she’s been in court with that name.
She was just Denise Victoria Galvez when she was charged in 1994 with credit card theft of more than $300. But she probably wasn’t married yet. Another arrest — for driving under the influence and disorderly intoxication — is from December 2010 and under the name Danise Turros. No Galvez. And I guess she didn’t want to correct the officer who spelled her first name wrong (so it would be harder for anyone like me to find).
That’s probably why she’s smiling in the mugshot.
So, we guess she is only Turros when it’s convenient.
She doesn’t use it in her business. She doesn’t use it when she speaks on TV as cofounder of Latinas for Trump. She only uses it when she’s getting arrested. Or trying to get elected. Gotcha.
Galvez is in PR — she owns a boutique firm called GTMPR (which used to be Go To Marketing) — so she should know: If you want to make a stink about your name, make sure that stink doesn’t come back on you. If you have something to hide, don’t rock the boat. I hope she consults her clients better than this.
Read related story: Denise Galvez (Turros) sues for Miami ballot reprint — with her name first
The candidate made us curious when she sued last month to throw out the ballots and reprint new ones with her name in the coveted top space. Many political observers think this “pole position” gives the candidate an advantage among low information voters who might just check off the first name. Galvez — who didn’t know that she needed to hyphenate to get the G counted as her first last name letter — probably thinks that is her only chance against the other two candidates, Manuel “Manolo” Reyes and Ralph Rosado.
Well, maybe her only chance to get double digits.
But Ladra agrees with the principle: Her last name starts with a G. There are going to be more and more compound names sans hyphens and this community needs to have policies reflective of that. In the future. Ladra calls on Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White to do whatever it takes to make that change. That can be your legacy.
Galvez did not return several calls and text messages and one email to seek her comment or information about the circumstances of her arrests — or why Turros was good enough for the 2010 charge. She did, however, call my mom (she’s a friend of the family’s) 20 minutes after Ladra called her. But she didn’t answer when Mami called her back the next day. The candidate, who had already blocked me on Facebook, blocked me on Twitter last week after I started following her, which is a terrible sign for someone who wants to be a public servant.
What did she expect when she signed up for this? She already had to hope this didn’t come out. And then to file an injunction to stop the election two weeks before it’s over? After absentee ballots had already gone out? Boneheaded. You should only do that if you are okay calling attention to yourself and your name.
Another sign that Galvez is not ready for prime time.

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A no-chance Miami commission candidate at the rock bottom of all the polls wants a judge to toss out the ballots that have been cast so far and reprint them, claiming discrimination as a female and as a Hispanic because her name was put last instead of first.

Denise Galvez, who is now suddenly calling herself Denise Galvez Turros for the election, says she filed her complaint Wednesday afternoon in order to get the coveted “pole position” on the ballot, which many political observers and candidates think is an advantage among low information voters who just check the first candidate on some lists. She wants all the absentee ballots returned so far to be invalidated and for new ballots to be printed and mailed — which might delay the Nov. 7 election.

Galvez is running in the District 4 race against, in alphabetical order, Manolo Reyes and Ralph Rosado. Using Turros, Miami City Clerk Todd Hannon put her name under the two men. If he had used Galvez, she would have been listed first.

And while I think the founder of Latinas for Trump, who works in marketing by day, is a terrible choice for commissioner, she is right about this. On principle, anyway, if not legally. After all, Galvez is not her middle name. Her full, compound last name is Galvez Turros, which begins with a G. The process should not require that she hyphenate it. Our culture certainly doesn’t require it.

Read related story: Trump Latina Denise Galvez runs for Miami city commission

“City has written me last on ballot instead of first bc I’m a woman who kept my maiden name and didn’t add a hyphen,” Galvez posted Wednesday on her Facebook campaign page, where she is just Denise Galvez. And of course she didn’t add a hyphen because she never added his name ’til now. Ladra doesn’t think she has called her Galvez Turros even once in any previous stories, except to note that she suddenly added her hubby’s name and filed to run with both. She is just Denise Galvez to us who have known her for years. All last year she was on TV pushing Donald Trump as Denise Galvez, not Denise Galvez Turros. Google it.

So maybe this is poetic justice. She was trying to pull a fast one by adding Turros and it backfired.

But that doesn’t mean that this practice is not stupid and outdated. Ladra’s puppy has a compound name with no hyphen so this is an issue near and dear to me that needs to be addressed for future Hispanic candidates, male or female, that use both their parents’ last names. In our increasingly diverse and heavily Hispanic community, there will be more and more candidates with names like former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan or Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and no hyphen — although in both those cases, they benefit by being listed according to their second last name. Rosen Gonzalez was third on the ballot in the 2015 election, before Isaiah Mosley, Jonathan Parker and Betsy Perez. If the city clerk in Miami Beach had gone with Rosen, she’d have been listed last.

Galvez probably didn’t know this when she opportunistically added Turros to her name. Maybe she should have gotten some legal help with her qualifying documents. An attorney might have also advised that she hyphenate, which would have guaranteed Galvez came first.

She may have some issues with her case at this point. The main one is that she waited too long.

“After ballots have gone out, I do not see a court changing the names on the ballot,” said Jose “Pepe” Herrera, a longtime government attorney who has worked on election lawsuits before and said that Galvez, or Galvez Turros, should have made the case earlier, as soon as she saw how the ballot would be printed. He is not working for any of the candidates in this race.

“If somebody is using a non legal name they don’t normally use and I went ot court to remove him from the ballot, if I wait ’til ABs are printed and sent out, I am upsetting the calendar or timing of the election,” Herrera told Ladra. Any reprinting of ballots could delay the election and disenfranchise voters who have already casted ballots via mail this week.

“Courts have uniformly said if you wait too long knowing the problem exists, you have no case,” Herrera added.

Read related story: Finally! Manolo Reyes looks real good in Miami Commission race

Galvez did not respond to several attempts (read: calls, voice mails, texts) to reach her. She is mad at Ladra, who she blocked on Facebook — where she defends Trump and offends the rest of us with insensitive posts and fake news and smears of anyone who disagrees with the POTUS — after I pointed out that Puerto Rico was not A-OK eight days after Hurricane Maria had ravaged the island. Ladra can still see her feeds because we have multiple friends in common. I just can no longer tag her with the truth about Puerto Rico or the NFL players’ protest or, now, the condolence call crap-up.

But according to a Miami Herald story by David Smiley, Galvez did try earlier this month to have the city clerk and Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Christina White change the ballot:

Hannon declined to change the ballot after reviewing election law and speaking with elections officials at the county and state. He said precedent set by the handling of previous ballots holds that hyphenated last names be ordered based on the first of the two surnames, and that names without a hyphen be ordered based on the last of the two names. He also noted that Galvez didn’t specify by which name she wanted to be primarily identified on her qualifying documents.

“It is important to note that your name will appear on the ballot exactly as you provided ‘Denise Galvez Turros,’ Hannon wrote.

Even if the case is dismissed, Galvez will likely benefit from the free press and additional name recognition that this move could give her. And one has to wonder if that was the point in the first place. It is becoming almost part and parcel of any campaign to file a lawsuit or an ethics complaint, even if you know it’s ludicrous, to get the free PR. Check out this screen save of her campaign Facebook page where she announces her interview on a local news channel.

And it could work. Young women in Silver Bluff with no interest in this race might suddenly feel motivated to vote Nov. 7. And the abuelitas in Flagami might give her the pitty vote. It won’t make Galvez more viable, really, but a small increase in votes could force the other two candidates into a Nov. 21 runoff.

Some people are already saying that she did this to help Ralph Rosado.

Ya era hora. It looks like this might be Manolo Reyes‘ year after all. Every poll says so.

Even Ralph Rosado‘s poll.

These two guys have been running for Miami City Commission forever — or at least since when they both thought they would be on the 2013 ballot for District 4 before Commissioner Francis Suarez‘s first-time mayoral dreams crashed and burned after a series of campaign gaffes. Reyes a little longer even since the perennial candidate has six other commission races under his belt. Six!

People in the district — which is from Silver Bluff to Flagami, on the border with Coral Gables — are used to seeing Reyes on the ballot. He’s been running since 1985 and Ronald Reagan was in the White House — coming real close in 2009 when he lost by about 300 votes to Suarez. It’s no wonder that he’s leading all the polls. He’s practically an incumbent.

Okay, technically, Rosado has a 4 point lead in his poll. But that is within the margin of error and the poll was a push poll. If that is the only way that Rosado can get from 30 points below to a few points above, Ladra is going to go ahead and give that win to Reyes, too.

Read related story: Beleaguered Francis Suarez drops out of Miami mayoral race

The first poll we heard of was commissioned in February by former Miami City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who wants to stay relevant as a lobbyist and may run for county commissioner or something else in the future. He showed it off to donors as he sought contributions for Reyes’ campaign. Someone sneaked me photos of the pages. He was up by 35 points. Only 9 percent of the 300 voters surveyed knew who he was.

That was early in the campaign. But a Mason-Dixon poll conducted in late June for the city of Miami’s firefighters union showed Reyes holding those 30 points months later.

Commissioner Suarez has polled twice, and while he wouldn’t disclose the results with Ladra — the new mayor is being diplomatic so as to not rock the boat — several other people who he has apparently shared them with reported that Reyes has kept the comfortable double digit lead he had from the first poll to the second.

And then we have Rosado’s poll, done for $9,500 in August. Rosado claims in an email blast that he has the lead, and links to a Miami Herald story that says the two men are neck and neck. But the numbers weren’t disclosed in the story and three different sources told Ladra that Reyes was still up by four points, which is within the margin of error (hence the “neck and neck” description).

But it is important to note, however, that the point spread is within the margin of error. And that it was a push poll, with questions designed to identify issues and character traits that would turn voters off from Reyes. “Would you still vote for him if you knew he was a career politician,” type of question. Perhaps Reyes would have held on to his lead if the questions were not pushing voters away.

Rosado knows this. Despite his bravado on his email blast, he has started to attack Reyes in a TV spot and mailer that casts the high school economics teacher and former Miami-Dade School Board budget analyst as a career beaurocrat and loser candidate who has run unsuccessfully six times.

It seems desperate, for Rosado, who ran for state rep in 2010 and lost to Michael Bileca, later moving into the city of Miami. Like the best straw to grasp onto is the false security of a 4 point lead in a push poll.

Rosado did not return multiple efforts to reach him. Instead, he texted “my quote for the story” to Ladra: “Our internal numbers tell us that there is a path to victory. I’m very excited by the support my campaign has received in the community.”

Sounds like what they all say.

Heading into the final two weeks before the Nov. 7 election, Reyes — who has been active in the city and on boards for more than two decades — also has the majority of endorsements. He has nods from Mayor Tomas Regalado, Commissioner Willy Gort, former State Rep. Manny Prieguez, West Miami Mayor Eduardo Muhiña and West Miami Commissioner Luciano Suarez as well as the city’s firefighters, solid waste and general employees unions.

“Manolo has served our community his entire life and he is not part of the establishment,” said Freddy Delgado, president of the firefighters’ union. “He has as much experience as an incumbent commissioner, which is good for the citizens and those that serve them.”

Meanwhile, Rosado has the Fraternal Order of Police.

Read related story: Candidate Ralph Rosado exaggerates ‘his’ police initiatives

Oh, wait, Ladra almost forgot. There is a third candidate in the race. But marketing professional Denise Galvez, who made her claim to fame as co-founder of Latinas for Trump, is scoring around 1 or 2 percent on these polls and won’t get more than 5-8 percent on Election Day — and only if she is extremely lucky and snags that women’s vote. Then, just like her orange mentor, she will blame Democrats and everyone else but herself for her loss.

So now that we got that over with, this race is squarely between the two guys. And while there is still more than two weeks for Rosado to gain on Reyes, he may have a hard time doing that if he keeps squandering $10,000 on a push poll here and $5,000 on a billboard there and $3,400 for post-it notes on the Miami Herald — the billboard and post its are seen by thousands of people who don’t vote in his district or, even, the city of Miami. He should concentrate on direct voter contact and is getting bad advice from consultants Al Lorenzo and Fernando Diez. A billboard? Really? He could have sent two mailers with that money. And digital media is also sort of a waste in a district where about half the voters are over 55.

Rosado is spending his money faster and has less cash on hand than Reyes by about $16,000.

All this — the polls, the money, the community support — indicates that it’s Reyes’ turn. Al fin!

After having been part of the 2016 presidential campaign, Latinas For Trump co-founder Denise Galvez, a Miami mom with a boutique marketing shop, wants to run for Miami city commission.

Galvez filed paperwork earlier this month indicating she intends to run as Denise Galvez Turros in District 4, which is the seat Commissioner Francis Suarez will have to resign from when he qualifies for the mayor’s race this summer.

You might recognize her from TV. Galvez did a lot of television and radio interviews last year as a Latina Trump supporter. And while that may be a liability in some 2017 and 2018 electiions, this city district — which includes Shenandoah, Silver Bluff, Coral Gate and Flagami — might not be one of those. Trumpistas might do well here among the Cuban super Republicans.

Read related story: Local Latinas come out for Trump with Brickell event

“I was being asked to consider other positions in state office by people in the party,” Galvez said. “But I wasn’t going to do that to my kids and my family.”

Meanwhile, she was attending local events and hearing from local candidates.

“There was nobody I could see myself backing,” she said.

Someone suggested she stop looking for somebody else and throw her own hat into the ring. The timing made sense for her, to start campaigning over the summer. “I started to make calls and talk to people and the more excited they got, the more exicted I got. ‘This is your backyard,’ they would tell me.”

It’s a rare opportunity as an open seat, even though Galvez will face at least three other hopefuls so far: perennial candidates Ralph Rosado and Manolo Reyes as well as wannabe political consultant Tony Diaz. The one that concerned her the most was Rosado. The two are friendly. She has supported his causes and both went to City Hall to protest conditions at Douglas Park.

“I’ve known Ralph for a long time and have been a friend. I’ve helped him with other things,” Galvez said. But she feels he is out of touch with the district’s needs, campaigning on economic development and The Underline project. She says crime is the number one issue of concern to the people in her Shenandoah neighborhood. Her car has been broken into. Her husband, reknown musician and popular Miami High School Band Director Juan Turros, had his stolen.

Read related story: Patient Ralph Rosado re-launches Miami Commission bid

Rosado and Reyes (Diaz hasn’t raised a dime) may have had a head start with fundraising and canvassing, but let Ladra warn you know, Denise is a force to be reckoned with. She is a workaholic with boundless energy who is not afraid to say what she means and mean what she says, even when she is dead wrong, which she is often on the Trump stuff. And I suspect she will be able to raise money from some party people who may feel like they owe her one. Because they do.

She doesn’t need much. She is a marketing guru who will do a lot of her own media and has the name recognition that a year of TV appearances gets ya. But it will be important to have some.

Rosado has raised a whopping $436,790, according to the last finance report filed this month and counting through April 30. But he’s been fundraising for exactly four years, since April of 2013. he has also spent $165,998 of that so he has about $270,790 left, according to the last report as of April 30. Reyes has raised $140,940 and spent $82,900, leaving less than $60K in hand. But he’s got more momentum this time around.

Ladra can see where a smart, well-spoken woman might find an opportunity among these three Hispanic men.

Normally, this would be a good thing. It would be nice to have some estrogen up on that dais. And she will definitely use that sole female candidate thing to her advantage.

But Denise’s blind defense of everything Trump does causes me to worry about a future with “alternative facts” in Miami city government.