The Miami-Dade Democratic Party has big egg on their face in the wake of qualifying last week that left the one incumbent who was most important to challenge this year completely unfazed: State Rep. Jose Oliva — who brought guns to our schools, ladies and gentlemen — was reelected already without even a sigh.
Duysevi Miyar, the teacher and failed Miami-Dade School Board and one-time state House candidate who said she was going to challenge him, told her friends on Facebook last week, after she failed to do so, that she wasn’t gonna dwell on it.
“Sometimes things happen, and it hits you like a truck! I sent my qualifying documents and they didn’t make it on time. I don’t want to look back in the rear mirror. I want to look foward,” she wrote on her Facebook page eight hours after she missed the qualifying deadline June 22 and two days after she announced having been endorsed by United Teachers of Dade. “I will now focus my energies on helping my colleagues that are running. I will not lose hope! Thank you all that supported me! For this I am blessed.”
Blah blah things happen blah. Sorry not sorry but it should not have been left to the last moment or sent with someone else. Or maybe Miyar shouldn’t have been “feeling fantastic” at Disney World a day earlier, according to her Facebook addiction. Did the mouse make her late?
Read related: Florida State Rep. Jose Oliva must go — before he is speaker
But, really, it isn’t her fault. A race this important should never have been left to this flake in the first place and qualifying should have been taken care of on Day 1 by the Democratic Party, which gets all the blame.
“I’m also extremely disappointed,” Dade Dems Chair Juan Cuba texted Ladra Friday. “Sevy feels terrible.”
Sevy feels terrible? Doesn’t really seem that way from Facebook. And anyway, you should feel worse. Wasn’t this the blue wave year to make a statement? And what better statement could you have made than to take out the House Speaker? We talked about this, Juan. We agreed he was the No. 1 target.
Cuba and any other self respecting Democrat leader should feel the total weight of this epic fail for the rest of this election cycle and maybe beyond. If they hadn’t been so busy meddling in a local county election getting Eileen Higgins elected (to impact a congressional race not local issues so much), maybe they would have been able to unseat the next Speaker of the House.
Read related: Dems push full court press for Eileen Higgins in special District 5 county race
Oliva was ripe for the taking. As the architect of the vile and widely hated Marshall Program part of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Student Safety Act, he was vulnerable. The Dems coudla shoulda ran someone else against him. Anybody would do this year. Just put Oliva with guns up on some billboards and bingo, we got ourselves a new state rep in Miami Lakes — and a new Speaker.
But noooooooo. Instead, he coasts. Like he’s done something to deserve a coast.
This is by far the biggest missed opportunity in state races that we’ve seen probably in a decade. It’s why Cuba wouldn’t call me back about it. Or text further. If some think that Miami-Dade GOP Chair Nelson Diaz should resign his seat for losing the Miami-Dade District 5 election, what does Cuba deserve for this colossal crapout?
And how can we have any confidence in anything else they do this year?
No matter how many seats they turn blue this is going to be the Dems’ legacy for 2018: Eileen Higgins for Jose Oliva.

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If there is one local state elected we need to replace this coming November, please let it be State Rep. Jose Oliva, the Miami Lakes Republican who sponsored the odious school “safety bill” (pffft) that doesn’t ban assault rifles but arms teachers in schools, instead.
This is the man who will direct the House agenda next year as Speaker. We can’t let that happen.
Oliva is the man who would put guns in the hands of the teachers who guide our children every day. He had already raised eyebrows with his speaker nomination, since he’s done so very little to deserve it, mostly sponsoring laws that benefit his cigar business and the industry and toeing the party line. This is the first major thing he does. This.
Related: Lawmakers vote to leave assault rifles on the street and arm teachers instead
Democcrats are actively looking for someone to run against Oliva, who should be beatable on this issue. Just let me write the robocalls.
“Our number one priority this year is to send a message to the Florida House that we will defeat your incoming speaker on this issue,” said Juan Cuba, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.
He said the party has opened a political action committee called Defeat the NRA and will be using it to push alternatives to the gun-loving incumbents — starting with Oliva.
“We can’t let these politicians who get an A from the NRA run unopposed,” Cuba told Ladra late Tuesday after the House bill that would arm teachers but not ban assault weapons was passed.  “We have to force them to explain to voters why protecting semi automatic rifles is more important than protecting our kids and loved ones.”
Ladra hopes that Cuba and the Democratic Party doesn’t pluck some Venezuelan woman who lives in Broward and was a Republican ten minutes ago to run against him. Or a lobbyist that will be easily attacked. And let’s pray they don’t just prop someone up and then abandon the campaign, like they did with the full House challenge “Fat Chance” candidates that they put up against Republican incumbents in 2014. They all lost.
Related: ‘Fat Chance’ Dems in full House challenge doing next to nada
Because this seat is definitely flippable. Last year, Carlos Puentes, Sr., a military veteran who loaned himself $2,400 for filing expenses, got 45% of the vote without a single advertisement and practically no campaign, against Oliva’s $314,320. Imgaine what a well-funded, credible and viable candidate, who can get her or his message out, can do.
Or let’s not just imagine it. Let’s make it happen. This would send a message that us voters are more important than the NRA.

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Ladra is lucky that her puppy is a graduating senior. The rest of you may need to start looking into home schooling after a group of Florida legislators on Tuesday voted to arm public school teachers — calling them “marshals.”
This is what House Bill 7101, proposed urgently by State Rep. Jose Oliva in the wake of the Valentine’s Day school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, would do. Because that’s what we learned we need most from this tragedy, more guns in schools.
If passed by the full House (maybe as early as Thursday), the law would allow up to ten teachers at each public school to be armed. There are 4,200 schools in our 67 counties, according to the Florida Department of Education. That would mean up to 42,000 guns in schools across the state.
“It’s no different than at the movie theatre, where there might be 10, 20 or 50 people with concealed firearms,” State Rep. Carlos Trujillo, chairman of the appropriations committee, told Ladra hours after the vote had been taken.
While there were many concerns about arming teachers — and many questions that are still unanswered — and despite Parkland survivors opposition to the bill, it passed 23-6, with four Democrats voting in favor: They are state reps Lori Berman (Boynton Beach), David Richardson (Miami Beach), Katie Edwards-Walpole (Sunrise) and Jared Moskowitz (Coral Springs). They must have felt like they had to vote yes because of the other parts of the bill — the ban on bump stocks, raising the legal age to own a gun from 18 to 21, a three-day waiting period for all  gun purchases and more power to law enforcement to confiscate firearms from anyone deemed potentially harmful. There was also the creation of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High Public Safety Commission, training for school resource officers, threat assessment teams and mental health programs.
How could Dems vote against all these good ideas being held hostage to the longtime desire by GOP lawmakers to put guns in schools?
It’s almost like the legacy of Parkland will be armed teachers. How sad.
Democrat members of the committee tried to amend the bill. One proposed a ban on assault rifles. That was voted down along party lines. Another wanted to require some document from a medical professional stating that the applicant for a concealed firearm license is not a danger to himself or others. That didn’t pass either.
If the bill becomes law, it would require teachers who want to bring guns to class to undergo background checks and a 130-hour course. “It’s basically a police academy, an abridged version,” Trujillo said of the training. Each sheriff’s department or municipal police agencies like Miami-Dade Police are required to establish these training programs for teachers who want to opt into the “100 percent voluntary program,” where the district’s school board or superintendent has approved it. Trujillo, who has been tapped as the Ambassador to the UN by President Donald Trump,  said he didn’t know that Miami-Dade School Board Superintendent Alberto Carvalho had already blasted the idea. But, while everyone at the committee meeting said that superintendents could opt out, Trujillo told Ladra after the vote that Carvalho is not the last word.
“That’s his choice, but it’s up to the school board,” he said. He knows full well that the nonpartisan group is nonetheless majority Republican, even though one of those, Board Member Lubby Navarro, already came out against arming teachers at Sunday’s school safety town hall at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus.
The law would also give those teachers who opt in a $500 one-time stipend, we assume towards the purchase of a handgun — assault rifles cannot be concealed firearms and, as such, are not allowed — and/or ammunition. Ladra can see the list of supplies parents can donate on the blackboard at next year’s open house night: Copy paper, crayons and a box of .38-caliber conical wadcutters with a beveled base. Students get extra credit for hollow points.
Isn’t it an extra insult that theese lawmakers can’t find the funding to properly stock schools with the supplies and tools teachers need to teach but we’re going to pay them to carry guns?
That’s not the only question we have.
Are teachers the only ones who can volunteer? Can staff? Can the janitor be armed? How about the lunch lady? The bus driver? That’s not clear. We know students can’t carry. Except, maybe, for the problematic ones still in high school at 21, the legal age to carry a concealed weapon. That means 18-year-old high school students must leave their AR15s and Colt 45s in their cars in the parking lot.
“Students with guns! Ha! That’s a funny one, Ladra!” Trujillo sure didn’t think so. “Democrats could have offered an amendment to make the legal age 18,” he said, and Ladra does not think he was kidding.
What if an angry or unstable student is able to take a gun from a teacher? Who is responsible for what happens next?
What if a teacher with a gun is confused for an “active shooter” and is killed by police?
What if a student is killed by “friendly fire” from the teacher’s gun?
A retired teacher and self described gun enthusiast asked the lawmakers not to take this step.
“I don’t want to think about target acquisition. I don’t want to think about field of fire in my classroom,” the woman from Escambia County said, choking up. “Do not ask teachers to choose between shepherding students to safety or confronting a gunman, drawing fire toward my students.
“Depend on us to fiercely defend our students. And fund well-prepared law enforcement professionals to do the work they are supposed to do,” she said.
The mother of Scott Biegel, the geography teacher killed at Stoneman Douglas, also begged them to reconsider. Her son became a teacher to mold young minds, not to be “a law enforcement officer,” Linda Beigel Schulman said.
Trujillo kept stressing to Ladra that gun-toting at school is voluntary, but that doesn’t make parents feel better. What kind of teacher would volunteer to carry a gun in class? Could it be the teachers that already have “personnel” issues? The ones that will be in headlines about sleeping with students or selling drugs or writing porn scripts or something? Those will be first in line to get the guns. And others might feel forced to volunteer because, well, if there are going to be 10 guns at work, they want to have one of them.
Other teachers are going to quit.
That’s okay, though, we won’t need as many. Aalot of students are going to withdraw. Watch as full time virtual school and home schooling numbers boom. Wait… oh, wait… could this be a ploy by Republican legislators to get their friends’ more charter schools?
Teachers are people, too. They have emotions. They lose their tempers. Considering that we still have that oh-so-flexible “stand your ground” law in Florida, what happens if an unruly student becomes aggressive with a teacher? We’ve seen that before. And we’ve seen teachers lose their tempers and react inappropriately by striking students. What if that teacher who feels really threatened — or is just over a particular student’s stunts — pulls a gun on a student? You know that is going to happen. You just know.
“If I take a gun to school, someone is eventually going to get shot,” one teacher told Ladra. She teaches 5th grade.
Trujillo told Ladra that this program might be better suited for rural districts where a police station or officer is typically more than 20 minutes away. And where racism and homophobia are more prevalent, too.
Is that a bonus feature — voter suppression?
This “marshal program” is a poor substitute for real gun reform and school and community safety. It does nothing to stop the next school shooting. It only guarantees that bullets will fly in more directions.

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Last week, Dan Gelber became the mayor of Miami Beach. This week, he is using his new political platform to back former Miami Beach Commissioner Deede Weithorn‘s bid for state rep in District 113.
This is Gelber’s first endorsement since his victory Nov. 7, but with 82% of the vote, it probably won’t be his last. Ladra is certain that he’s already gotten calls from congressional candidates in District 27, which include Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez and State Rep. David Richardson, whose seat Weithorn is running for.
Gelber will also co-host a campaign kick-off event for Weithorn Wednesday at Meat Market on Lincoln Road.
Read related story: Miami Beach elections end as expected with Gelber, Gongora, Samuelian
“I have known Deede for years and she is uniquely qualified to represent our community in the State House,” said Gelber, who served in the legislature for a decade including as Democratic Leader of the House before he became a state senator.
“She has proven herself a wonderful steward of public dollars, which is something we need desperately in Tallahassee,” Gelber said. “And most importantly she is unafraid to stand up against the wrongheaded ideas that are often born in Tallahassee.”
The election is next November.
Read related story: Will La Gwen’s retreat cause more musical chairs?
Weithorn — who has been running for 113 since 2015 when Richardson was supposed to run for Gwen Margolis‘ senate seat but then didn’t because she didn’t retire — was equally effusive.
“Dan has a distinguished record of public service and I’m proud to call him my mayor,” she said. “It means a lot to me that he was willing to come out in support of my candidacy so soon after winning his own race.”
It certainly gives her kick-off some ooomph.
And Ladra is certain that Comeback Commissioner Michael Gongora will also endorse her — but he only won with 65% of the vote.

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In the contest for State House District 116, the lesser financed, lesser known, lesser backed candidate not only won, but won with a 10-point spread.

And Republican Daniel Anthony Perez, a nobody from nowhere running for his first time, can basically celebrate becoming an elected today because everybody knows that whoever won this primary will win the general against that poser “Democrat” that the party propped up (more on that again later).

Perez got 55% to Jose Mallea‘s 45%, despite the latter being an establishment darling with a little more money and ties to Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush, both of whom he worked for as an aide, in the race to replace Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz, who resigned from the House to run for the Senate and won his own GOP primary Tuesday. Both Bush and former House Speaker Will Weatherford endorsed him, but not Marco, even though Mallea maybe tried to make it look like the one-time presidential hopeful backed him in one of his mailers.

How did Perez — who was endorsed by State Rep. Carlos Trujillo — pull ahead? By working harder, he said.

Read related story: Cuba engagement photos become issue in GOP 116 primary

“We won this election by knocking on more than 7,000 doors,” Perez wrote to Ladra in a text message late Tuesday. “My family and friends were a huge part. Every day for four months. this election came down to personal relationships with residents of District 116.”

It proably wasn’t by spending more money, because they were both about equal. According to the campaign reports filed this month, Perez had raised $168,000 — about half of it in the last six weeks — to Mallea’s $245,000, which includes a last minute loan to himself of $24,000. Of course, Perez had help from the Conservatives for Truth political action committee (connected to House Speaker Richard Corcoran and future Speaker Jose Oliva) that spent at least $40,000 on mailers attacking Mallea, who was also an aide to former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, a high profile Democrat, about tax increases during his tenure at the city.

And I don’t think it was the Cuba thing.

Mallea blasted Perez, and rightfully so, in mail and on video for having gone to Havana for an engagement album photo shoot with his fiancee. Perez said it was to visit a sick uncle and Ladra doesn’t know if she believes him. But it didn’t matter anyway. That kind of attack is not going to resonate with voters when everyone knows someone who goes to Cuba or even has sent medicine and clothing there for relatives. It’s just not as taboo anymore. And Mallea — who we later learned had Cuba ties of his own through a friend that’s a Castro apologist — counted far too much on outrage that never materialized.

Maybe, however, it was the Cuban thing. You don’t have to like it, and Ladra does not, but the whisper campaign that Mallea was not 100% Cuban (his mother is Ecuadorian) works with some older Cuban-American voters. And there are some 80,000 or so of them in this district. It works especially well when paired with his Castro apologist friend versus a cute cubanito named Danny Perez. It wasn’t pretty, but Mallea opened the door. Perez might not have said he was the only real Cuban in the race if Mallea had not attacked his engagement photos and called them a betrayal to the Cuban people.

Read related story: Democrat recruit for House 116 was a Republican yesterday

Or maybe it was the Pepi Diaz coat tails thing. Both Perez and Diaz share some political consultants (Steve Marin and David “Dis” Custin) and many lawns in the district boast the same yard signs.

Mallea will live and learn from this and run again, mark Ladra’s words. We have not seen the last of him.

But, for now, we fully expect Mallea to back Perez, not that he needs it against Gabriela Mayaudon (right), a Broward woman who wants to be elected in Venezuela (more on that later) and wasn’t registered to vote when the Democratic Party first recruited her to run for this seat.

Again, Perez won not just the primary Tuesday, but the general as well. Congratulations State Representative.

Now, about open primaries…

A new and practically unknown Democrat has filed in the race for Florida House seat 116, to replace Jose Felix  “Pepi” Diaz, who resigned to run for Senate. But it’s not her first time running for office.

Gabriela Mayaudon served in the Venezuelan legislature before moving to South Florida about 10 years ago, said Elezear Melendez, the new political director for the Miami-Dade Democratic Party.

“She was a congresswoman in Venezuela and she has an amazing story of fighting dictatorship there. She was looking to get involved in politics,” Melendez told Ladra Monday after Mayaudon filed her papers. He is listed as her treasurer but says that is only temporary until she gets her campaign team together.

Read related story: Cuba engagement photos become issue in GOP 116 primary

“She is someone who comes highly recommended by the civil leadership in Doral,” he said, adding that the city is at the northern end of the district and that Mayaudon became a citizen last year. The address listed on her paperwork seems to be the north part of Doral, however, just outside the district. And records show she and her husband, Carlos Rodriguez, own a house in Sunrise, where they claim their Homestead exemption.

Together, the couple also own Rock Health, a San Francisco-based venture fund that seeds and financially supports start-up companies at the intersection of health and technology. Mayaudon lists her occupation on LinkedIn as vice president of Rock Health. State records with the Division of Corporation show that RockHealth Inc., in Medley, is owned by Rodriguez and Maria G. Mayaudon — who also own the 3-bedroom, 2-bath house in Broward County.

Published reports show that in 2012, Mayaudon helped welome Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who visited Miami when she came to provide the U.S. Department of Justice with documents that showed a link between the Venezuelan government and drug trafficking.

A woman who answered the phone listed on Mayaudon’s paperwork took Ladra’s name and number and abruptly hung up on me. She said the candidate was unavailable and would have a press conference in 10 days, but she flatly refused to give me her name several times. Ladra is pretty sure it was the candidate caught off guard.

Former Doral Councilwoman Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, who Ladra always thinks of when she needs more info on a Venezuelan activist, said she knows Mayaudon and that she would be a good representative.

Read related story: Few hopefuls line up to replace Jose Felix Diaz in 116

“She’s taking my leadership course,” Rodriguez-Aguilera said. “She’s an awesome, fabulous woman. She was a Venezuelan congresswoman and supported many Venezuelan groups here. She will do great things.”

Perennial candidate Ross Hancock, who has run in two other state house districts, had already qualified to run for the Democrats so that they wouldn’t be unrepresented, he said. He had not yet decided if he would withdraw or not. He said he had been told by Melendez that Mayaudon would qualify, but she had not as of Monday evening.

“She has until noon tomorrow. Naturally, I don’t want to drop out and leave no option for the Democratic Party,” Hancock said, adding that he may bow out if the party was going to support her.

Ladra hopes he doesn’t. Voters deserve to have a choice, even in a primary. Particularly with someone as new and untested as Mayaudon.

In fact, Ladra is surprised that there was no better candidate for this open seat race in either aisle and thinks that all the current candidates are so blah that anyone with a little bit of money can take it.

This race would benefit from a surprise Tuesday morning.