Both the Florida Democratic Party and the Republican Party of Florida will claim victories in Tuesday’s election after several state seats switched colors.

In the 305, we had four seats flip — two in the House and two in the Senate.

Both House seats were open (one due to term limits and one due to ambition) and both went from red to blue. But the Senate seats were one up, one down, thanks mostly to redistricting that left both incumbents vulnerable to state reps that ultimately got the best of them.

The first of those is Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, who lost a negatively charged contest with 46% of the vote against State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, who got 49%. The senior of the DLP political brothers, Miguel raised and spent more than twice as much as Rodriguez (that we know of). DLP’s latest campaign finance report lists $937,000 in contributions compared to J-Rod’s $479,000. Plus DLP had another $750,000 or so in two PACs (Floridians for Ethics in Judicial Elections and Foundation for Human Values). Nobody knows how much more he had in non-profits or secret non-existing PACs like the one that sent a mailer recommending Democrat candidates — and DLP and Sen. Anitere Flores in her senate race.

He should have stressed his track record as an independent moderate, reminding people not only about his single-handed murder of those outrageous guns on campus laws last year but also the fact that he created the required county commission super majority vote to move the urban boundary line. His message, which wasn’t delivered effectively, should have been that he is in a better position to represent his district in a GOP majority Senate where he would be Big Man on Campus next legislative session. He tried to knock down Mr. Do Gooder and failed.

Meanwhile, J-Rod stuck to the ground game that helped him beat the younger brother, Alex Diaz de la Portilla, in 2012. The DLPs need to get back to basics. Knocking on doors and actually pressing the flesh is harder than recording robocalls and cute radio spots that use old Cuban sayings like a crutch. But it is also effective.

Maybe Miguel can do that when he runs for Coral Gables mayor.

Flipping the script on that race, but ending another political dynasty nonetheless, Democrat incumbent Sen. Dwight Bullard was rejected by voters who instead elected Republican State Rep. Frank Artiles to the position (51% to 41%). They must have been moved by the multiple mailers and TV and radio spots calling Bullard a terrorist sympathizer.

Andrew Korge might also want to apologize to the Democratic Party for causing some early primary damage to the cause.

Does this mean that Artiles can move back into his house in Palmetto Bay? We are going to hold him to his promises about beating back the MDX tolls and electing a sheriff in Miami-Dade.

But Ladra suspects that his victory is bittersweet, knowing that he left his House seat to a Democrat.

Robert Asencio could be this election cycle’s unicorn, having won a Florida House seat with less than $100,000 and proving that anyone can get elected. He and Daisy Baez were elected to the Florida House in districts 118 and 114, respectively. Asencio beat David “King Nine Lives” Rivera, who maybe has run out of lives, by a mere 45 votes to become a state rep. Even though Rivera outspent him by at least 3 to 1 and tried to label him as a “child abuser” based on an internal affairs investigation that was possibly taken out of context. Maybe it worked. Maybe Asencio would have won with a bigger margin had that child abuser thing not surfaced.

As of the latest campaign finance reports, dated through Nov. 3, Rivera had collected $272,000 in contributions (on top of a $50K loan to himself). Asencio raised $77,768 and loaned himself $11,650.

Daisy Baez had to spend a lot more to beat off Republican John Couriel as both vied for the open seat left by termed out State Rep. Erik Fresen. She spent $274,000 as of Nov. 3, but also had $118,000 in in-kind assistance, mostly from the Democratic Party. She needed it against the Couriel bank of $438,500, plus $60K in in-kind (maybe the state GOP ought to step it up).

Each had run before — Baez got a respectable 44% against Fresen in 2012, the same year Couriel lost to Sen. Gwen Margolis — so they each had campaign experience and some name recognition for newbies.

But Baez got just under 51% and a lead of 1,301 votes.

So, if we’re keeping score, there was one switch from red to blue in our Miami-Dade delegation and one switch from blue to red in the Senate. But there were two switches from red to blue in the House for a net gain in the 305 of three Democrat flips.

That there weren’t more is a big failure of the state and local Democratic Party because more seats were flippable. After all, someone you never heard of named Anabella Grohoski Peralta got 45% of the vote against Sen. Rene Garcia with less than $5,500 raised against his $190,000 spent through Nov. 3. And a guy named Patricio Moreno got 45% against State Rep. Carlos Trujillo after he spent $5,764 against the incumbent’s $385K. Y un fulano Carlos Puentes, who got 45% of the vote against Jose Oliva, the next speaker, without raising a dime on a loan of $2,240. Oliva has spent $243,000.

Imagine how many more seats would have been flipped with more resources.

Most of us have been preoccupied — perhaps obsessed is a better word — with the presidential or the Miami-Dade mayoral election. But there were a lot of other races that culminated with Tuesday’s vote. Here are some highlights:

Sen. Marco Rubio beat Congressman Patrick Murphy back to gain another six years in office. He has said he will serve all six years. And that is probably true — especially now that Donald Trump won the presidency. If he likes it and wants to stay, the Republican Party will have to back The Donald in 2020. So this means we will have to wait until 2024 to have our first Hispanic president. Good thing Marquito is a young man.

Rubio’s onetime BFF, former Congressman David Rivera lost his bid to go back to the State House — by 45 votes. Isn’t that close enough for a mandatory recount? His 49% showing is much better than he fared in his bid to get back into Congress in 2012, where he lost the primary with just 8 percent in a five-man field (even Joe Martinez beat him). But still, we have a new face in Tallahassee: Robert Asencio, a former Miami-Dade Schools Police lieutenant won one of two House seats that turned blue. Rivera had waged a negative campaign, calling Asencio a child abuser based on a 2003 complaint from the mother of a student who was physically pulled off a bus for acting inappropriately. The investigation was closed without any findings.

Read related story: ‘Child abuser’ allegations in House 118 race ring hollow

But 118 is the second of two local House seats that turned blue Tuesday after Democrat Daisy Baez eeked out a victory over Republican John Couriel to replace termed-out State Rep. Erik Fresen (who is rumored to be after J-Rod’s new Senate seat). Both of them had run previous campaigns and had the benefit of having some name recognition, despite never holding office. But Baez got just under 51% and a lead of 1,301 votes.

Former Congressman Joe Garcia lost his own bid to get his own seat back, but not as closely. There’s a glaringly wide 11-point gap between U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo‘s 52% and Garcia’s 41% performance. Ladra suspects that when the numbers are crunched, we’ll find a bunch of Democrats who voted for Curbelo because of his liberal ways marriage equality and sea level rise and his early rejection of Donald Trump. And I bet Garcia is rethinking those ads that compared Curbelo to Trump, who is the apparent winner of the big POTUS prize. Anyway, that giant gap in the year that Curbelo would be allegedly vulnerable — because that’s it, folks, he is welded into that seat now like IRL — should certainly encourage Garcia to stay in the private sector. Ladra said it long ago. The only person that could have beat Curbelo was Ana Rivas Logan. Too bad she decided to run for state senate. Now we’re stuck with him.

Senator Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, a former Miami-Dade Commissioner and flagship of a political dynasty, lost a heated battle with State Rep. (now Sen.) Jose Javier Rodriguez, 46 to 49% — and turned the longheld Republican seat (brother Alex Diaz de la Portilla sat there for a decade before DLP took over in 2010) blue. The senior DLP outspent J-Rod more than 2 to 1, which almost proves that it is worth more to knock on 150,000 doors than it is to buy slick commercials that tries in vain to cast a liberal onetime legal aid attorney as beholden to special interests. It’s too bad. Miguel DLP was my favorite senator and, while J-Rod will likely be stymied, the incumbent actually did some good as a senior member of the majority party and may have better represented the district. Oh well. Maybe DLP will run for Coral Gables mayor next year.

Ending another political dynasty in the other really heated and mostly negative state senate race — and flipping the seat the other way — State Rep. Frank Artiles will move to the other chamber after he beat incumbent Sen. Dwight Bullard, 51% to 41%. Guess all that business about Bullard being a terrorist worked. It’s scary to think we may see a resurgence of Artiles’ ugly bathroom legislation targeting transgenders. But does this mean he can move back into his Palmetto Bay house? He was forced to move out after Ladra caught him living outside his state House district in 2010.

There will be two runoffs for the mayor’s seat in Doral and in Miami Lakes, where none of the candidates were able to garner 50% of the vote.

Read related story: It ain’t over in Doral, Miami Lakes with mayoral runoffs

There was a big upset in the Miami-Dade School Board race where Steve Gallon III beat incumbent Wilbert “Tee” Holloway III with a resounding 61%. Gallon got a lot of the community support in a district — which includes Miami Gardens, Carol City and North Miami — where Holloway was cast as an empty suit. And it earned him a 22-point lead Tuesday. The other school board seat went to Gimenez in-law Maria Teresa Rojas, as expected. Not just because she is a longtime teacher and school administrator but also because the voters in that district probably reacted vehemently to a negative campaign in which her challenger was cast as a Fidel Castro sympathizer. Look soon for an announcement of Political Cortadito’s expansion into school board coverage.

We can also smoke pot to relieve certain debilitating conditions and chill out about having our own solar energy one day as voters approved the medical marijuana constitutional amendment but rejected the amendment on solar energy choice that would have basically limited our choices and allowed Big Energy to control everything. Voters were not fooled by that one — except in Miami-Dade where we actually had a majority vote yes on this wolf in sheep’s clothing (56 to 44%). Shaking my head.

There were also a bunch of questions in municipalities from Homestead to Sunny Isles Beach and we will get to those individually if they warrant it in the next few days. Some notable examples: Voters in Palmetto Bay rejected a proposal to annex a part of West Perrine. In South Miami, they gave the green light for the building of a new City Hall. And, in North Miami Beach, voters approved a slew of charter changes, including term limits and one that makes it easier for the council to fire the city manager. Please feel free to make suggestions/ask questions.

In fact, Ladra has a feeling we will be writing and reading about the results of this ballot for weeks to come.

When we went to sleep last night, it really looked like there was going to be President Donald Trump today. Shiver.

But that’s not the only bad news.

We also have a new state senator in sucker-punching homophobe bear hunter Frank Artiles. Sigh.

U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a lobbyist with a secret client list and a penchant for lying to get his way, won another two years basically solidifying his congressional seat for the next decade. Gosh darnit.

And we get four more years of the Carlos Gimenez gravy train for his friends and family members and those who gave to his $10-million campaign. Shake my head.

It’s enough to make Ladra wanna cry.

Bet there’s going to be a lot of tears Wednesday. A lot of Monday morning quaterbacking, too. But the regrets? They’ll come later. Like when Artiles sponsors a law in the Senate legislating bathroom use. And when the mayor goes back to his key role — giving away pieces of the county to his connected friends and fam.

Everyone knows Ladra supported Raquel Regalado, even before we joined her campaign team. Because everyone knows Ladra lost her love for Tainted Boy Gimenez long ago. But now they will see why. Because with no future election to hold him back, Gimenez now has four years to collect as many contracts as he can for his friends and family before he is forced out by term limits in 2020.

He has no incentive to fulfill any of his promises. There is no reason for him to fix the broken transit system. There is no reason for him to open libraries five days a week. There is no motivation for him to hire  more police officers. He certainly won’t think twice before violating process again. The voters have said they don’t care about those things so he’ll make sure he keeps doing what he’s been doing — giving millions away to friends in high (and low) places.

He has billions in capital improvements for transportation and federally- and state-mandated water and sewer improvements to dole out. Can’t you see all his contributors salivating already?

And then, buoyed by this victory that he will call a “mandate,” and — tapping those same people again for another $10 million investment that they will happily pay to continue feeding on the public trough — he will run for Miami mayor in 2021.

Just watch.

Carlos Gimenez — and the decisions he makes in the next four years — will haunt us for decades to come.

Voters can hear directly from the candidates in two of the more interesting state races Tuesday when the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations has its first forum after the August primary.

Former congressman and state rep David “King Nine Lives” Rivera, who won the Republican primary, and former Miami-Dade Police Lt. Robert Asencio, a Democrat, both vying for the House seat vacated by Rep. Frank Artiles move to a senate race, have confirmed, according to an email from KFHA President Michael Rosenberg.

Artiles and incumbent Democrat Sen. Dwight Bullard, who survived brutal primary attacks from carpetbagging trust fund baby Andrew Korge, have also confirmed.

The meting starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the pavilion in the Kendall Village Center, 8625 SW 124 Ave.

Expect Rivera to bring up Asencio’s disciplinary file from 2003 in which he grabbed a teenager by the neck and shirt to pull him off a school bus.

Fireworks could fly.

God help us, but Ladra thinks State Rep. Frank Artiles could very well become my state senator in November.

Yes, he is a homophobic, sucker-punching Fight Club aficionado who looks like Magilla Gorilla (it’s the jaw line), lied about his residency when he was first elected and wants to kill a Florida black bear. The only real thing to admire about him, personally, is that he’s a Marine.

But legislatively — and despite last year’s unfortunate and hateful transgender bathroom ban law that never got traction — Artiles has had some good ideas. Boy, that was hard to say. But he has. He wants to make Florida the 34th state with a cancer presumption law that would make it easier for firefighters to get health and disability benefits — which could be to cleanse his soul from saying in 2012 that they had firefighter/paramedics have cushy jobs. And he wants to make the top cop job at Miami-Dade Police an elected sheriff’s position, like in Florida’s other 66 counties.

And, now, for his first campaign for state senate, Artiles has tapped into another winning issue close to his constituency in Southwest Miami-Dade: Highway tolls.

Read related story: State Rep. Frank Artiles wants to kill a Florida black bear

He’s hit independent voters (like Ladra) at least twice with mailers vowing to take on the tolls in Tallahassee. They doesn’t say how, mind you. Just that “together we can fight excessive tolls on our expressways.”  What the mailer does is offer a “petition” that voters can sign that is really a postcard back to his campaign office — so they can target you again now that they know what pushes your buttons, maybe get you to vote absentee.

UPDATED: Artiles even has this hilarious web video on his Facebook page of people stripping their shirts off their backs — to express how the tolls are affecting us. One by one, they take their tops off for the camera. But don’t worry, there’s no nudity. It’s G-rated.

Whether Artiles can end excessive tolls or not is moot. Just the mere fact that he is willing to advocate against the increasing highway tax is going to be enough for many people who feel politicians have just been completely deaf to them about this issue.

It’s such a good issue that State Rep. Michael Bileca also put it on a mailer. But he actually has ideas about restructuring MDX and forcing it to recalculate the cost of tolls.

While everybody was concentrated on the primary last week, several Republicans without August challengers were eager to get to November, with mailers and TV ads already — since even before qualification and the Fourth of July.

That would be State Rep. Frank Artiles, who is running for Senate in District 40 against incumbent Sen. Dwight Bullard, who won Tuesday. Artiles, whose also had people knocking on doors, sent a Happy Fourth of July piece with a framed picture of his family. In others, he touts himself as an education champion. He even sent a 2016-2017 public school calendar as school started. Smart.

Read related story: So much Andrew Korge in the mailbox — maybe a record 

And Artiles is targeting independent voters, which is also smart. He’s got the Republicans sewn up already. And maybe he can win some Democrats over with his campaign against the MDX tolls. The most recent mailer Ladra saw touted Artiles’ fight against these tolls.

Incumbent Sens. Anitere Flores and Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, as well as State Rep. Michael Bileca, have also been working it alongside the August wannabes.

Flores has traveled to the Keys, which are also in her district, for months and she has been airing a TV commercial for a couple of weeks that features her husband, Dustin, and their two boys, who she is raising in the same neighborhood where she grew up.

The Flagship DLP started airing a TV ad this week, paid for by the United Teachers of Dade, featuring real teachers thanking him for listening to them and voting to increase their funding. He also sent a couple of mailers way before the primary. One of them had voter petitions enclosed, so it was even before qualification. The most recent used the Zika scare to offer voters a list of tips voters can keep on the fridge.

Read related story: Miguel DLP vs J-Rod make it a hard choice in Senate 37

Bileca’s most recent “fighting for taxpayers” mailer touts the old Miami Dolphins stadium financing he helped kill in 2013. What? He’s got nothing fresher from the last three years? He, too, is very smartly targeting independent voters. 

But his first piece — “Working Hard. Delivering Results.” — was sent in both English and Spanish and was a four-panel bi-fold. The latest piece is a 8X11 flat card.

Up to the north, State Sen. Rene Garcia and State Reps. Manny Diaz, Jr., Jose Oliva and Bryan Avila have been hitting the streets since at least mid August, when they opened their collective headquarters in Hialeah.

Maybe these early birds know that the weeks ahead are going to give our mailboxes a bellyache, so they snuck in before prime time.

Let’s see if voters remember come November.