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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The obvious winners and losers in the special shotgun wedding District 5 county commission race, besides candidates Eileen Higgins (winner) and Zoraida Barreiro (loser), are the political parties: The Miami-Dade Democratic Party (winner) and the Republican Party of Miami-Dade (loser). We’ve said it all along and it’s no surprise so we’re not including them in the list.
Yes, it’s time for the list.
As always, there are other people, groups and institutions that we can say have gained or lost from this particular election — especially those who were heavily invested, whether emotionally or financially. It happens in every race. And in this race, in particular, there are people along the fray who got burned and people behind the scenes who need to be exposed.
As is now tradition, Political Cortadito’s winners and losers for the Miami-Dade District 5 race are:
WINNERS
Joe Carollo — What? Why? Ladra is off her rocker? Nope. While its been almost a year since the city commissioner beat Zoraida Barreiro for his seat, he certainly didn’t wish her success! Even if he wasn’t certain the Barreiros helped Alfie Leon in the city commission runoff after Zori was left out, nobody does a grudge like Joe Carollo.  It’s only all the more gratifying to him that his brother Frank Carollo was Barreiro’s political consultant.
Xavier Suarez — Not only did the Miami-Dade commissioner in adjoining District 7 endorse and campaign for Higgins in the city where his son is mayor, giving his nod more street cred, he is also one step closer to that chairmanship he’s always wanted and which would make a nice treat right before he heads into a mayoral contest with the current commission chair, Esteban “Stevie” Bovo. Or maybe this is just the first step in the Suarez power consolidation plan (more on that later).
Maria Elvira Salazar — Needless to say, you will find Bruno Barreiro in the losers list. His congressional campaign is all but toast. I mean, how can anyone (read: donors) believe he can get it done now, when he couldn’t even get deliver for his wife against a nobody who doesn’t speak that much Spanish in a district where more than 70 percent of the voters do? This is the single biggest boost to Maria Elvira’s campaign since she announced. It is now a race between her and sleeper candidate Angie Chirino.
Christian Ulvert — Who else is getting sick of seeing this guy’s name in this column?  He’s already cocky AF, he’s going to be unbearable today. Ulvert took time off from the high profile gubernatorial campaign of former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine to help Eileen. So everybody vote Gwen Graham or Andrew Gillum because otherwise we will have a monster on our hands.
Underdog candidates — Okay, so the party assistance is nice if you can get it, but this Higgins upset election still shows that even an entrenched establishment incumbent — and Barreiro was a defacto incumbent — can be unseated by someone relatively new to the scene with enough gumption and social. And it’s gonna be a boost to some of the first time candidates on the ballot this year (more on that later) as well as underdogs in larger seat races. It could help them raise money. It could help them get volunteers. At the very least, it should give them a little kick in their step for the next couple of weeks.
LOSERS
Bruno Barreiro — Talk about messing up. Bruno Barreiro, who resigned this seat for a congressional race he will now never win, could have stayed on the commission through November, which is what he’d do if there were a time machine available. He resigned abruptly like that thinking that it would give his wife the advantage in a special election. He didn’t realize it would turn into this partisan battle. He should already start thinking about what he’s going to do in September.
Carlos Gimenez — The county mayor endorsed Barreiro and really hoped she would eke it out.  She’s controllable for his last two years, which can now be a little rocky if Higgins pans out the way many of us hope. He may have to work a little harder and answer some real questions. He won’t have a pocket vote for whatever he wants, that’s pretty likely. And worst of all, he may not get another no-bid contract for someone on his friends and family plan.
Nelson Diaz — Yes, we said we wouldn’t list the local GOP but the chairman is another matter entirely. This is not his first loss. Diaz had just been made chair when Levine Cava was elected. You would think he might learn. Even though he couldn’t get involved in the primary, because there were two other Republicans in the running, he was slow to get the party involved in the runoff — and even then only did it halfway. Marco Rubio‘s robocall was weeks late.

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A partisan campaign likely made the difference
Even though Zoraida Barreiro was ahead for a tiny little bit in the special shotgun wedding election to replace her husband on the Miami-Dade Commission, she was never winning. The tiny 45 vote lead she had after absentee ballots were counted wouldn’t hold.
Democrats, who had made this nonpartisan election a grudge match, own early voting and election day results, for the most part. And this held true Tuesday as Eileen Higgins soared over Barreiro, matching her lead and getting a 277 vote gap in la gringa‘s favor with early voting for a 51 to 49 split. And that only grew as the night continued.
Read related: More people come out to vote in special Miami-Dade District 5 runoff
Partial election day results just before 8 p.m. showed Higgins with more than 53% to less than 47% for Zory, a 913-vote gap.  By the end of the night, when all 60 precincts reporting, Higgins kept the 53% vote with a 955-vote lead. So, as expected, Zory Barreiro won ABs — though with an insufficient gap — and la gringa won early voting and Election Day. A closer look shows that la gringa barely lost ABs while arrasando with the early and day of votes.
In the end there were 2,000 more people motivated to vote than in last month’s first round (13,943 t0 11,905 total votes) even though there were four candidates then, including former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who came in third ut still got more than 3,300 votes.
But even though two dynasty names were beat by a relative newcomer, the race was more a partisan thing than a dynasty thing.
This ain’t the first time that Miami-Dade Democratic Party gets involved in what is traditionally a non partisan race (Daniella Levine Cava was the first time), but this is the best time. Or, rather, the most intense time. We’re talking a reported 34,000 handwritten postcards sent to Democrat voters in District 5 from progressives all over the country! We’re talking a paid political consultant who took time from the heated Florida gubernatorial election to help Higgins get over the well-oiled machine of GOP veterans!
By the time the Miami-Dade Republican Party got involved it was too little, too late. That Marco Rubio mailer and robocall would have been far more effective three weeks ago, before absentee ballots went out. They got involved only a couple of weeks ago.
“It’s also been a bad year for Republicans. It also happened eight years ago and eight years before that,” said Miami-Dade GOP Chair Nelson Diaz.
Read related: Dems push full court press for Eileen Higgins in special District 5 county race
But most political observers in the 305 said this race was unprecedented because of the dem involvement.
“Higgins’ election win was more about winning the battle of expectations by the Democratic Party,” said Hector Roos, a political analyst and consultant who did not work for either campaign. “It was not just the result of three months of negative campaigning, criticizing ‘dynasty politics.’ That’s actually a very common and unusually unsuccessful campaign message.”
No, Roos said, this campaign was about whipping your base — Patrick Murphy beat Rubio by seven points in District 5 — into a frenzy.
“Like it or not, hyper-partisan strategies combined with limitless outside resources and funding in small turnout special elections win, as seen in examples across the country,” Roos said.
Higgins did not return a phone call and text message, but it may have been buried in a hundred other texts and calls.
A “very disappointed” Zoraida — wife of Bruno Barreiro, who resigned to run for Congress and thought he had this in the bag — said that the attacks on her as a dynasty candidate and the hyperpartisan rhetoric drowned out any debate on the issues.
“This woman has a mind of her own,” she told Ladra late Tuesday night, as she laughed, patted backs and said good night to volunteer poll workers who have been with the Barreiro campaign machine for 20 years.
“Unfortunately, this campaign wasn’t too much about District 5,” Barreiro said, “and these are the results.”

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It’s not even over yet, and already more people have voted in the runoff for the special shotgun wedding election in Miami-Dade District 5 than in the first round when there were twice as many candidates.
Early voting ends Sunday and already, through Saturday, there had been 2,055 ballots cast at the four early voting locations. Voters cast 1,696 ballots during early voting before the May 22 election, where Eileen Higgins and Zoraida Barreido got the top two scores (35 and 33 percent, respectively) to proceed into the runoff Tuesday.
And even though Carlos Garin and former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla got bumped off in the first round, there have already also been more absentee ballots cast this time: With 8,250 just through Friday compared to 7,715 for all four candidates last time.
That means more than 10,300 people have already voted. And does that mean that Higgins is closing the gap?
Common political thought has Zory — wife of former Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, who is running for Congress and timed his resignation to help usher his wife into office — taking Tuesday with 60% of the vote. Ladra thinks it’s going to be closer: maybe 54-46, which would still be an amazing finish for la gringa, a newby candidate nobody heard of before April.
Look, that’s not what Ladra wants, mind you. It’s just what is happening. Miami Herald reporter Doug Hanks tweeted that there were more Republican ballots cast than Democrats, by less than three percent. But the push that Barreiro and her supporters are making at the end is unprecedented among Republicans, who typically focus on absentee ballots.
Yes, Higgins is a good candidate and makes an attractive prospect, even before the Democrats put her on overdrive. She would bring a much needed voice and add checks and balances to the commission. And yes, I do believe those postcards from people outside the district urging Democrat voters to come out have made a difference and narrowed the gap.
But then: (1) This is a district where Hispanic voters have traditionally outperformed for Hispanic candidates; (2) A Barreiro, albeit Bruno, has represented the district for 20 years; (3) Most if not all of Carlos Garin’s votes and ADLP’s votes go Zory’s way.
And then there is (4) The Marco Rubio factor.
That mailer with Marco Rubio’s endorsement — the golden ticket of GOP nods — went not just to super voters, Ladra heard, but also to every single Republican registered in the district. It was really call to action, an effort to encourage Republicans who were going to sit it out, to come out Election Day. If there hasn’t been a robocall already, one is coming.
That means the numbers are just going to keep going up.

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The Republicans know former State Sen. Frank Artiles wouldn’t stand a chance against newly-minted Sen. Annette Taddeo in a rematch so close to his fall from grace: Artiles was forced to resign his seat last year after he was caught in a drunken, racist and sexist tirade against fellow legislators in a Tallahassee watering hole, setting up a special election in District 40.
Democrat Taddeo won the seat in a bitter fight with former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz.
But how would she fare against a Repubican superwoman? We’re about to find out.
In the “year of the woman,” the GOP has apparently settled on Marili Cancio to run against Taddeo and try to take that seat back. Because she wasn’t their first choice.
Several sources have told Ladra that former Miami-Dade Commissioner and State Rep. Juan Zapata and State Rep. Jeanette Nuñez, who terms out this year and has not found a place to land, were both encouraged to run before Cancio. Zapata said he had “been approached through third parties. I was clear from the get-go that I had no interest.”  Nuñez doesn’t want to have to move.
Las malas lenguas also say party honchos tried to convince two of the five Republicans running in the open race in House District 115, vacated by termed-out Michael Bileca, to switch — although not Bileca himself?
Everybody knows that Cancio, who has served on Republican clubs and is often invited to TV programs to present the GOP side of every argument — you know, because they’re always right — makes a great candidate. She’s knowledgeable. She’s smart. She’s pretty. She’s well spoken. She’s practiced. She doesn’t get nervous. She’s got access to people with money.
Okay. So she lost her first attempt at elected office in the 2010 Republican primary for congress against David “Nine Lives” Rivera, getting only 11% and finishing third, under even “Captain” Paul Crespo, who got 24% despite having been arrested for DUI. Not a good first showing.  But she is much more well-known and stronger now.
Some political observers might ask why she’d try again in a bluish district in a blue wave year. Seems like a waste of political capital. Ladra says it’s because Marili likes a challenge. If it were easy, she wouldn’t be into it.
But she also doesn’t buy into all the hype.
“I don’t think that special elections are a true reflection of what’s going to happen in a general election,” Cancio said, referring to a wave of Democrat wins in special elections across the state — including Taddeo’s. “Independents are going to be very important.”
Cancio, the daughter of onetime Miami-Dade Commissioner and concrete giant Jose “Pepe” Cancio, said she was courted to campaign and had already discussed moving to the district to be closer to her son in South Miami and her just pregnant daughter in Pinecrest. She decided to go for it — and will be renting in the Dadeland area while she puts her Key Biscayne house up for sale — because Taddeo has done nothing, she said.
“She didn’t bring back any dollars. She voted against gun control, she voted against the budget, she voted against a raise for teachers,” Cancio said, adding that her contacts would have her hit the ground running from Day 1. “I’m going to bring the money back to Miami-Dade that she’s not able to bring,” she said.
But when she said that Taddeo voted “against gun control,” what she meant was against the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Student Safety Act because of the Marshall Program that puts guns in the hands of school staffers, which caused a quite a few Dems to vote against the bill, which passed 67-50 after a divisive debate with some victims’ family members against it.
“If she wants this to be about arming teachers and the defunding of our public schools, then bring it on,” Taddeo told Ladra Wednesday. “If she had bothered to go to any of the town halls that I went to in the District, she would know that we are severely underfunded and that people don’t want guns in schools.”
As expected, Taddeo voted against the MSD bill, named after the high school in Parkland where 17 lives were taken in a mass school shooting, because it puts guns in schools and because “all it does is provide an unfunded mandate,” Taddeo said, referring to the $400 million the state said should go to school hardening. “And after we worked so hard to take out the arming of teachers, they left in the arming of other people — the lunch lady, the librarian, the janitor — and I’m not okay with that.”
She said she spent much of the first session building relationships. She studied all the Republican bills and tried to find one bill from each GOP senator that she could co-sponsor. “So I could meet them and talk to them about the bill I liked,” she said. “We have to find what we have in common.” She said Republican lawmakers expected a party first liberal and she surprised them by being a small business owner.
“I actually do make payroll every two weeks,” said Taddeo, who owns a firm that does language translating. “They didn’t know this.”
She ended up co-sponsoring five bills with Republicans.
But her claim to fame is a flood insurance (SB 1282) bill that she sponsored and really carried through session. It passed unanimously and basically forces homeowners to sign the part of their insurance policy that would show they know they don’t have flood insurance if they don’t specifically get flood insurance. It is intended to encourage more people to get flood insurance coverage.
“I worked with the insurance industry to make sure we didn’t overburden them,” she said.
Now, Ladra would hate to think that Cancio is the type of candidate that would stretch the truth to get elected.
But Taddeo also did happened to bring some dollars back home, including funding for the Miami Military Museum, a project originally sponsored by none other than Artiles. Sen. Taddeo will be at the upcoming ribbon cutting. Other appropriations bills she sponsored or co-sponsored include:

$250k for a Children of Inmates project “Babies and Brains,” which is targeted towards early childhood education of children with incarcerated parents (an extremely high-risk group of children
$25 Million for post-hurricane beach recovery
$80 Million for Miami-Dade adults with disabilities
$750k for the Miami-Dade Institute for Child and Family Health
$250K for the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust
$69k for the West Miami Community Center
$1 Million for Zoo Miami
$400k to fund the Miami Fire and Rescue Department Mobile Command Center
$1 Million for the University of Miami’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center to research cures for firefighters with cancer
Nearly $100 Million to FIU and MDC in education appropriations

“I actually had an extremely successful first session not only in money to be distributed, but even projects that had never been funded before,” Taddeo said.
Marili should have at least known about the money for Miami Dade College, where she has served on the board of trustees for seven years. The biggest “sacrifice” running for office is to give up that seat, she said. But she also believes that experience is going to help her get elected. “I know what we need here, the infrastructure we need,” Cancio said.
A known Trump supporter who often defends his policy decisions on TV and radio, Cancio said she didn’t think that would hurt her in this election. “The economy is doing better. Businesses are doing better,” she said. “I’m running for state, not federal, and I’m going to make that about local issues, transit issues.”
Well, one thing is certain: The debates are going to be interesting.

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Coral Gables taxpayers pay sweet property bills for sweet services like trash pick-up and crack code enforcement. For the last eight months at least, they’ve also been paying for the city manager’s political consultant.
Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark has old timey Gables political consultant Stan Adkins — who also runs Commissioner Pat Keon‘s campaigns — officially helping her with the long delayed annexation process in the High Pines and Ponce Davis neighborhoods. But he also seems to be unofficially helping her manipulate the commission, do damage control on bad news and even script what the mayor and employees are supposed to say at commission meetings, according to emails and text messages between them.
According to city records, Adkins has been making $4,000 a month since November, mostly it seems for PR projects for some of the most controversial or touchy city issues. That would amount to $48,000 a year, which is under the $50,000 that would require the city manager to get approval from the city commission. There is also an invoice that indicates Adkins and Associates did some flyers and door hangers for several city programs and a brochure on legislative priorities — for a total of $11,834.
Emails between Adkins and several city officials indicate that he is helping the city sell the annexation of High Pines and Ponce Davis to somebody — either the commission or the residents. He was also consulted on the selection of the logo for the city’s hurricane preparedness public outreach, a media buy of radio ads, messaging on the police vacancies and recruitment and PR for other city programs or issues — most notably the poop scoop campaign.
But it looks like he does poop scooping of another kind.
The City Beautiful’s own public information officer, Maria Higgins Fallon, keeps Adkins up with social media posts about the Gables and also sent him links to stories about Hudak’s pool party as well media inquiries.
Some emails and text messages make him out as the city manager’s personal fixer, ala Olivia Pope on Scandal, only not as pretty and no white hat.
Read related: Coral Gables manager spanked for interfering with background check
When the Sun-Sentinel published a series of stories and editorials last month about how Cathy had left Hollywood taxpayers o the hook for a $28 million giveaway grant to the Margaritaville developer, Adkins got a series of emails from Higgins Fallon, with links from the paper. No words. No instructions on what to do, because he knew what to do. Damage control with commissioners is Ladra’s guess.
Neither Adkins nor Swanson-Rivenbark returned repeated calls to their cellphones. Swanson-Rivenbark did not return text messages either.
There is no doubt that the Gables city manager needs political mentoring or advice. In fact, given her recent behavior, Ladra is surprised she has any. Maybe Adkins is losing his touch. Let’s reprise, shall we?
Swanson-Rivenbark has been hurdling one catastrophe after another since she was hired back from the city of Hollywood, where she was under investigation for mismanaging $1 million in city funds:

Almost immediately she started hiring lackeys and cronies.
She tried to appoint two police chiefs and was told she could not by her own city attorney.
She covered up the spying on citizens and commissioners by a police major.
She took it upon herself to cancel a study ordered by the commission to look at the impact of development along the U.S. 1 corridor, paying a $50,000 fee anyway.
She seemingly intentionally planned and designed a new public safety building without talking to or involving the public safety leaders.
She got into a pissing match with the beloved police chief, issuing an opportunistic and unwarranted reprimand from a bogus and politically-motivated anonymous complaint she later had to rescind.
Then it was learned that she interfered with the 2015 background check of one of her lackeys.
And now we find out that she’s been using a taxpayer paid political fixer or spin doctor.

Part of the scope of Adkins’ job description, it appears, was reviewing the script that Swanson wrote for herself, Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli and Chief Ed Hudak for the meeting in April when she was to rescind the unwarranted reprimand that she never should have issued in the first place.
“I accept the manager’s resolution and want to thank her. I respect the manager’s authority,” Hudak was supposed to say. “We both share a desire to have a government with the highest integrity. We have agreed to work together in the best interest of the city going forward.”
Adkins asked: “Has this been agreed to?”
Read related: Coral Gables manager’s petty reprimand on chief backfires on her
No, it had not. Hudak never ended up saying those words. Which apparently surprised some people. After Hudak accepted the rescinding of the reprimand, Commissioner Keon asked if that was it? Didn’t he have something else to say? Hmmm?
Now we know why she asked. She must have known about the script! What else has she and Cathy been conspiring because now we know why Keon seems to always defend the manager no matter what: They share a consultant.
Ladra doesn’t know how Keon is going to be able to look anybody else in the eye at the commission meeting on Tuesday, which should get pretty interesting now.
Commissioner Vince Lago was already going to discuss her inappropriate interference with the background check into her lackey, Assistant City Manager Frank Fernandez, who may have been hired without the safety net of a full and independent vetting.
Ladra is certain that the discussion will be expanded now to include this. How could it not?

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