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.

For decades, the owner of M&M Liquors in Hialeah has used his store’s marquee sign to wax on current affairs and political news in his own poetic way. Recently, he’s used it to opine on transgender bathrooms, police shootings and, of course, Donald Trump.

In fact, today and tomorrow, Trump could see a message about him if he drives by the store on his way to or from the airport Tuesday or Wednesday.

It’s at least the second Trump sign he puts out there, after this one a few weeks ago:

M&M Liquors has also spoken out about gun violence and the intentional targeting of police officers.

The Republican Party is having a fundraising reception and dinner for Donald Trump somewhere in Miami tonight — but you can only know where if you pay $25,000 a plate.

Or you look for the protesters outside.

(Pssst! It’s at the Trump National Doral, of course!)

“And I don’t have any way of getting you in for free,” wrote supporter Juan Fiol, a member of the Miami-Dade Trump Committee, on his Facebook page.

No, for that you would have to contact the hosts, Gov. Rick Scott or lobbyist Brian Ballard or State Rep. Carlos Trujillo. Other hosts on the committee include former FIU President Mitch Maidique, sugar baron Pepe Fanjul Sr., Sunshine Gasoline’s Max Alvarez and lobbyist Syl Lucas.

Trujillo is the only local elected on the list. Maybe he feels emboldened because he is basically unopposed. There’s someone named Patricio Moreno, but he’s unlikely to make a dent, even in the district that went to Obama voters by the widest margin in 2012. Democrats just threw a bunch of challengers in at the last minute, not with any real expectation of winning. They are counting on Republicans staying home but Ladra thinks that just as many Democrats will be loathe to vote for Hillary Clinton. This bodes well for Trujillo, who still has $145,000 left to spend of $226,000 raised compared to the $2,000 that Moreno loaned himself.

Read related story: Rep. Carlos Trujillo draws protests over anti-immigrant bill

And Trujillo is not afraid of comparisons to Trump. Last year, after he proposed legislation that would make undocumented immigrants felons (it failed), Trujillo became the target of immigration rights protesters at his district office.

Many of those protesters will be back in front of the Trump property on 87th Avenue and Northwest 41st Street to protest the presidential nominees immigration policies and racist overtones. Traffic alert: Avoid the intersection at rush hour. The reception begins at 5:30 p.m.

Trump won’t be meeting with the Hispanic leaders he cancelled on when he was supposed to meet with them the day after the Dallas police officers were shot. According to the media reports, some of the Latinos aren’t going to be available. That includes Sen. Marco Rubio, who will be in Boca Raton and Chicago raising money of his own.

So does that mean The Donald will come again before the November election? If so, we need a traffic alert in Doral.

Perennial candidate Ross Hancock is running against another Democrat for the opportunity to face State Rep. Michael Bileca in November.

But it might also look like he’s running against Donald Trump.

Hancock has a mailer going out this week to Hispanic Democrats that plays on their alleged distaste for the brash millionaire GOP presidential nominee. It’s also entirely in Spanish.

“Existe Trump porque no hay respeto hacia ustedes, porque él no los escucha,” it says, or “Trump exists because there is no respect for you, because he doesn’t listen to you.”

Read related story: Perennial candidates may face off in House 115 primary

“I respect you and understand you,” it says on the other side of the 6X11 postcard, explaining how he’s taken Spanish classes — “despite being 60 years old” — to better communicate with the Latino voting bloc.

“My Spanish is not perfect, but I continue to study, as my task will be to represent the members of my community, and language proficiency, without doubt, will be a great tool value for this purpose,” he writes.

“English speaking by birth. Spanish speaking by choice. Democrat by heart.”

The piece, timed for the week before absentee ballots are mailed to voters, shows how much local pols think the top of the ballot will affect voters here. Some observers say 305 Republican incumbents could be in trouble because, in a blue county where Hillary Clinton leads the polls, even many voters are still #NeverTrump. A recent Bendixen Amandi poll for Univision and the Miami Herald showed that one out of five Miami-Dade Republicans would vote Hillary.

But a Democrat using it in a primary is still interesting. Ross faces another perennial candidate, Jeffrey Solomon, on Aug. 30.

Mostly, Ross is using his new Spanish-speaking skills to woo Hispanic Democrats now, and Latino independents in the general, to show that he will be a better listener and representative because, well, he speaks their language.

Ladra wonders if Sr. Solomon habla español.

Today is the last day on the Miami-Dade Trump Committee for the chairman, former Cutler Bay Mayor Ed MacDougall. Thursday, he will fly to D.C. to start working on the national campaign’s outreach.

MacDougall will be meeting with the Republican National Committee to talk about taking his efforts with community outreach to a national scale. A former cop and Vietnam War veteran, MacDougall — who ran in the 2014 GOP primary for District 26, losing to Carlos Curbelo — has been working with state veteran organizations and other voter niches to push Donald Trump locally as the presidential candidate of choice.

“I guess they caught wind of it,” MacDougall told Ladra, adding that he will be working with the national GOP and Trump campaign staff on delivering key messages to veterans nationwide.

Former Hialeah Mayor Julio Martinez will take over as chairman of the grassroots, volunteer group. Martinez makes sense, given the demographics of the 305 electorate and the success of the local group Latinas for Trump, which have become national media darlings. But then again, we don’t know who else is on the 15-person committee.

“We are here to get Donald Trump elected, not draw attention to ourselves,” MacDougall said when Ladra asked.

Maybe it’s because I’m a member of the evil media?

Not all Hispanics are offended by billionaire Donald Trump’s comments about Mexicans and stance on immigration. In fact, some Latinas just love him.

And they will show their love at a Latinas For Trump event in Brickell Tuesday.

Organized by Denise Galvez of Go To Marketing, the event is not a Trump campaign paid event. He is not a client. It was organized by volunteers.

“It’s not because I hate Hillary or love Trump. I’m just sick of politicians,” Galvez said. “I think he needs to surround himself with good, intelligent people who together can actually put the interests of our country first. I am sick of all the extremes as well.

Read related story: Some say ‘Bye Marco, Hello Hillary’ because #NeverTrump

“There’s a lot of hate being spewed and accusations of racism just because people support him. It’s awful. Most people who are supporting him are independent and just want someone who puts our country first,” she said.

“We are not crazy racists like the media loves to depict. Many as a matter of fact are business owners and quite accomplished. We care more about the economy and jobs,” she said.

Latinos/Hispanics for Donald Trump has 20,000 friends on Facebook and 20,000 followers on Twitter. CBS News reported on some Hispanics who live along the Texas border campaigning for Trump or supporting him. While a majority of Hispanics are disapproving of Trump in almost all the polls, some surveys have him doing better among Latinos than Mitt Romney did in 2012 (but that should be easy). And yeah, while I definitely believe Hillary is getting more Hispanics than The Donald, there is no argument that Trump has higher Hispanic support than one would have expected.