Former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz turned a 30-plus point deficit in early polls into a 32-point lead Tuesday when he won the special election for Senate District 40, beating former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla by a whopping 58 to 26 percent.

Someone tell Ladra again how negative campaigns don’t work. Or how money doesn’t matter.

Dean DLP, who must be in Europe already, came into the #thanksFrank race — scheduled after Frank Artiles was forced to resign on the heels of some public racist and sexist comments — with high name recognition that gave him a lead in his internal poll and a state GOP poll, too. But not all name reccognition is equal. Some of it is negative. Some of the positive name ID is soft, meaning it can be easily peeled away with a negative campaign of more than $2 million — what Ladra suspects is a record for a primary (more on that later) — that hit Diaz de la Portilla with near daily mailers on not just on his voting and campaign record but his messy personal life.

In other words, people figured out it wasn’t big brother Miguel. The elder and more diplomatic DLP represented the area as a county commissioner and is much more popular than the meaner middle brother any day of the week. He didn’t even beat third place finisher Lorenzo Palomares, who got 17%, by double digits.

Even though Alex DLP loaned himself close to $443,500 — $393,500 in the last month and nobody knows where he gets that kind of money — it was too little, too late. Ditto for his short, last-minute, Spanish-language TV commercial casting Diaz as a lobbyist pushing the soccer stadium that was seen in this household exactly once. By then, Alex already had lost in the absentee ballots, even with expert AB fraudster and former Miami Commissioner Humberto Hernandez working on his team, according to the latest campaign report (more on that later).

Perennial candidate Annette Taddeo, who finally won her first race Tuesday — and how! Trouncing former State. Rep. Ana Rivas Logan with 71% of the vote — isn’t making the same mistake. Or her supporters aren’t, anyway. The Florida Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has already been hitting Diaz with mailers to independent NPA voters casting him as a lobbyist who represents special interests in Tallahassee. It is smart to define him early as a lobbyist. Now Diaz has to spend time, and money, fighting that.

And he will. While Diaz seems to have spent his whole $2 million nut already, he knows where to get more. And the GOP will also spend its dollars to keep this seat from going blue again after winning it this past November. Taddeo, who almost physically cried to Michael Putney about the mailers that attacked how she invested her daughter’s trust fund (cue to roll your eyes) is going to have to get thicker skin. Because that is child’s play compared to what is coming. For someone as experienced in running as she is, Taddeo’s never been in a race like this.

Preparate, mujer! Her psychologisst husband may have to squeeze in a session or two for her.

She also has to raise more money than she ever has. She was able to win the primary with $120,000, between her campaign account and her Fight Back Florida political action committee combined. That was more than Rivas Logan, who maybe will have spent $15,000 of her own campaign money by the time the final reports are in. Rivas Logan did get the help from the Floridians for Accountability PAC that spent about $200,000 in the last two months, which we can guess was mostly on this race and mostly on negative attacks against Rivas Logan.

Maybe negative attacks only work when they are million dollar negative attacks.

Taddeo and Democrats are going to have to step their fundraising up if they expect to compete in the general. While the district is pretty evenly split, and was represented by Democrat former Sen. Dwight Bullard and his family for years before Artiles beat him — in, yep, a negative campaign last year — the numbers from the primary show that more Republicans voted (13,293) than Democrats (10,042) in this special election, a trend that is likely to follow into the general. Taddeo is going to need to keep her cool, raise more cash and attract more than the just the super angry Democrats to win on Sept. 26.

That’s a tall order.

Read related story: Both Democrats in SD40 race are compared to Donald Trump

And don’t expect any help from Rivas Logan, who lost with an abysmal 29% (which is still better than DLP) in a race that nobody cared much about except for the really angry Dems who remember Rivas Logan as a Republican, even before Taddeo’s PAC started attacking her as a turncoat. Which was pretty funny considering Taddeo ran for Lt. Gov. only last year with Mr. King Turncoat Charlie Crist.

Taddeo did not return calls and texts to her cellphone. But a statement she issued sounds like she is far too encouraged by the blowout in the primary, which she should not take as a sign that this will be easy.

“Our campaign is ready to take our people powered message to every voter in our district so we can bring change to Tallahassee. It’s time our community rejects the special interests and their lobbyist, Jose Felix Diaz and elect a champion who will fight for our public schools, take on traffic gridlock and enhance our healthcare system. With tonight’s decisive victory, we can, and will, send a loud message in September that the politics of division coming from President Trump and Washington, D.C. will not be tolerated in South Florida. Together, we will make history by electing the first Hispanic Democratic woman to the Florida Senate and a champion for our families.”

Rivas Logan could have been that, too. But she couldn”t even motivate the 5,002 people who voted for her in last August’s primary — where she came in second without campaigning — to vote in this race, maybe it’s best that she hang up her spurs.

“Right now, I’m going on vacation,” Rivas Logan told Ladra Tuesday night, shortly after calling and texting Taddeo (and getting no response). “I wish her well,” she said, adding that she was retiring this fall as a school teacher and retiring from politics altogether. She won’t even go on TV anymore, she said.

“It was my last race. I had nothing to lose. I’m going to retire and travel.”

She also said she was a bit relieved she did not have to face Pepi Diaz again, after he attacked her in 2012 when they were drawn into the same House seat through redistricting.

“I do think the seat now will stay in Republican hands,” Rivas Logan added.

Doesn’t sound like an endorsement card to Ladra.

Thank the political gods that millionaire Miami pioneer heir Bruce Matheson also smelled something fishy about Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s special no-bid deal to sell a county-owned parcel in Overtown to the Beckham United group that wants to build a soccer stadium there.

Matheson — who has the money and gravitas that comes from a track record of fighting Big Sports — filed a lawsuit last week to stop the sale of the property at 684 NW 7th St., used by the county’s water and sewer department as mostly a storage depot for equipment, to David Beckham and his business partners. They want to put it together with other adjacent parcels they have bought so they can build a stadium for a promised but as-yet unexisting professional soccer team. And the county commission approved the sale for $9 million last month.

The crux of the lawsuit is that the county should have issued a request for proposals for the property once the property was deemed surplus, and that the commission should then have chosen the highest paying bidder, as state and county laws require.

Because, after all, the process is not supposed to be rigged to benefit any particular person or soccer star. And the mayor of the county isn’t supposed to arbitrarily put a property on surplus all of a sudden to benefit the father of his campaign fundraiser.

That is what happened, folks. This property was not on the surplus list already. In fact, the 7 and 7 building — as it is known among county employees because it’s on 7th Avenue and 7th Street — was getting ready for renovations to remove asbestos. Furthermore, Ladra has been told by a couple of different sources that the county is looking to buy or lease another property so it can house the overflow of equipment and trucks — as well as staff parking for a nearby facility — that are at the 7 and 7 building now.

But the property was curiously put on the surplus list after the Beckham group purchased an adjacent lot owned by Chris and Tom Korge and Barry Goldmeier, father of Brian Goldmeier, who makes a great living raising campaign funds for Gimenez and his allies. That 1.37 acres, purchased in 2006 for $1.3 million went for $6.2 million to Beckham. But it is arguable that it wouldn’t have sold at all if the county land, which is three adjacent acres needed for the stadium site, wasn’t suddenly made surplus with a wave of the mayor’s magic wand. Remember, Gimenez signed a letter of intent to sell the land in December of 2015. The subpoenas that come with a lawsuit may tell us whether or not he was pressured or convinced to put the property on surplus so he could sell it cheap, like the mayor did with the land up in Northwest Miami-Dade that was subsequently bought by the American Dream Mall.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez’s pals own land for/near new soccer stadium

Matheson’s lawsuit states that the county sold the land based on an old appraisal — before adjacent land sales — and at $69 per square foot, when the lot next door was purchased by Beckham’s group for $103 a square foot.

Talk about a sweetheart deal. Such a deal that Matheson said he would buy it himself at that price. I bet a lot of people would.

Ladra thinks the lawsuit will shed light on many irregularities in the process. We will get a full vetting of the history of this property and find out things that Gimenez certainly didn’t want us to know.

Like the fact that this parcel was originally taken by the county in 1971 through eminent domain proceedings against the Canada Dry Bottling Co., which was paid $60,445 for the land and moving costs, and a few other property owners, according to Miami-Dade Circuit Court records (case nos. 69-12503, 69-15943 and 69-16872). J. C. Devine Company, an Ohio corporation, owned one of the lots taken through eminent domain for $225,979. Eric and Fay Manville owned a third parcel with Minnie Barnett Johns and Chauncey and Estelle Walden. Manville was paid $21,940, Barnett $28,325 and the Waldens got $24,650 for their losses.

Records show that the court allowed Dade County to take these lands from these private land owners through eminent domain “for the public purpose of urban renewal contemplating the clearing and redevelopment of a slum area.”

Apparently, the county felt that using the lot as an overflow station for trucks and backhoes and excavating equipment for most of the past 45 years was “urban renewal.” In light of the use its had, then certainly a stadium may be more in line with that public purpose of redevelopment.

But so would a park. Or affordable housing. Or an artists’ co-op space. Or a tech start-up hub. At the very least, shouldn’t there have been a conversation about what to have there? The lawsuit seems to have opened the door for that chat. Better late than never.

Mike Hernandez, the mayor’s mouthpiece, has already blasted the lawsuit (like he blasted the Skyrise Miami lawsuit and we saw how that went). His comment in the Miami Herald story, as always, targets the messenger in an obvious attempt to change the narrative. “It’s apparent that Mr. Matheson hates professional sports,” Hernández said, referring to the man’s fight to keep the Miami Open tennis tournament at Crandon, public land his family donated to the county, from expanding and privatizing the park.

“He’s doing his best to drive out the Miami Open from Key Biscayne, and now he hopes to block Major League Soccer from coming to Miami,” said Hernandez, who is an extraordinary spin doctor and is taking the side of Big Sports against the Joe Public. Notice he did not even address the procedural irregularities. Because it’s easier to create a boogie man and make it about that than it is to defend the lack of transparency and due process in this administration.

Read related story: King Petty Carlos Gimenez gets goofy over soccer stadium

The county will say that Beckham got the no-bid deal, approved by the commission last month, in exchange for a package of community benefits that include hiring locals and salary requirements. The problem is that those things have become common requests of any developer coming to town asking any kind of variance or site plan approval and commissioners certainly could have offered the same opportunity for others to bring those same benefits to the table.

Also, to comply with the requirements of eminent domain, at least some of the proceeds from that sale, we believe, have to go to some kind of urban renewal project in the neighborhood. Not to the lease or purchase of an additional property to take the facility’s place (because it wasn’t really surplus to begin with).

Wouldn’t a bidding war — or even just selling it at true market value — benefit the taxpayers of Miami-Dade? Especially at a time when the mayor is saying we have no money for light rail and, in fact, cutting transit services and hiring only a net gain of 12 new officers for 2.5 million people? Wouldn’t a full conversation about options for “urban renewal” on this property benefit the people of Spring Garden, who are afraid the stadium will break their quality of life, and really everybody?

Of course it would. Yes, yes and yes. But there was never an honest conversation about options because this was rushed through. Hurry, hurry! Mr. Beckham needs this to get his team. Mr. Beckham needs this vote to get his financing. Hurry, hurry!

Also, by the way, a judge is not the only one that can stop this stadium or slow it down if she or he rules in favor of Matheson, who lives in Spring Garden (and thank the political gods he does because that gives him standing in court). The county commission may have to revisit the sale it approved June 6 anyway, regardless, because of a requirement — imposed by Commissioner and DUI ducker Jose “Pepe” Diaz, channeling the Godfather — that county cops be hired for overtime inside the facility. The city of Miami has an issue with setting a precedent on a private facility hiring county officers for OT rather than city cops.

Gimenez already publicly said that he could renegotiate the deal to address that issue. But if the county can undo the police OT requirement that means they can likely undo more. Maybe all of it? At the very least, they can try to get a better deal for the taxpayers they are supposed to represent. Or a better project.

Commissioners are always saying that they wish they could rewrite the Marlins stadium deal and here is a chance to rewrite the soccer stadium deal. They could open it up to proposals and let the highest bidder win. If the best use and highest bidder happens to be the soccer stadium, then so be it.

If not, then they’ll know they did the right thing.

Oh, who is Ladra kidding? It’s going to take a judge. Thank the political gods for Bruce Matheson.

Some voters in Senate District 40 got a mail piece this week that attacks former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz for being a lobbyist. But it wasn’t any of his opponents in the GOP primary who put the piece out. It was the Democrats.

The mailer is paid for by the Florida Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and says that “Dirty Diaz” is a “superhero for special interests, a villain to Miami families.” The front has a cartoon character in a suit or buglar eye mask — legislator by day, lobbyist by night — and while its not a Bitstrip, the character looks a little like Pepi Diaz alright. Down to the facial hair and the smirk.

“Don’t expect Dirty Diaz to represnt us in the Senate. His lobbying clients pay much more,” it says, adding that he voted to raise property taxes and increase property insurance costs.

But this may not be just bad news for Pepi Diaz. This mailer could be bad news for former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla and constitutional attorney Lorenzo Palomares, who is likely to win the bronze, because it could mean the Dems think Diaz is going to win the primary. DLP might tell you that they’re hedging their bets, since he has already been hit with so much negativity.

But why waste the money if there’s a chance DLP wins? Why not wait until after the primary? Why not put everything together and have it ready to pull the trigger on Wednesday next week?

Unless… hmm, could it be they are trying to help DLP because he’s an easier target in the general? Ladra thinks that Diaz is a much tougher challenge in the general, principally because of the amount of money he has and has shown to be able to raise, but also because DLP is less moderate than Pepi Diaz, who — especially with his mother and wife being public school teachers — will be more easily able to get NPAs and peel some Democrat votes in the general than the Dean, especially when he’s been channeling The Donald.

So could this be Senate Democrats actually being smart?

Sure, the mailer was sent to an NPA. But it was sent to an NPA with a super voter Republican in the house. You don’t think they know that?

It was bound to happen. In fact, one might wonder what took Annette Taddeo so long to bring up Ana Rivas Logan‘s Republican stripes.

It happened this week, when Democrat voters received a mailer where Rivas Logan is pictured between President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who she only served in Tallahassee with for a year. “A history of voting Republican,” it says on one side. And that’s true. Because Rivas Logan only became a Democrat after she was beaten out of office by another candidate in the SD40 race, former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz (who happens to be running in the GOP primary).

The year was 2012 when Rivas Logan and Diaz were thrown into the same district via redistricting. Neither one would move out. The party backed Diaz, who went on a negative attack questioning her Cuban roots and calling her an unfit mother. One piece linked Rivas Logan, a former Miami-Dade School Board member to then Superintendent Rudy Crew, who was unpopular and hated by Cubans, in particular, for allowing communist books in the curriculum. Rivas Logan switched parties shortly after, citing the anti-immigrant sentiment in the GOP but everybody knows she felt abandoned by the party, even stabbed in the back.

Read related story: Outing non-Cubans in Miami politics

In this primary, it’s all about the fact that she was even in that contest.

“Once Republican, always Republican,” the mailer says. Well, wait a minute. Wouldn’t that also apply to former Gov. Charlie Crist, who ran as a Democrat with Taddeo as his running mate?

The mailer points out that Rivas Logan is still getting “Republican money” because 90% of her money is from the Lewin family of Davie, who own 411-Pain and other healthcare interests and are registered red. Of course, 90% equals $10,000 of the $12,925 she’s collected (and it’s actually more if you consider that she loaned herself $2,500), so big deal?

The piece is paid for by Fight Back Florida, Taddeo’s PAC, which is chaired by Raul Martinez Jr., who used to be former Congressman Joe Garcia‘s chief of staff and who Taddeo ran against in the congressional primary last year. The PAC has reported raising $37,500 since May, including a $10,000 contribution last month from Diario Las Americas Multimedia.

But the piece seems late, landing more than two weeks after absentee ballots went out, and short, coming on the heels of not one but at least three anti Taddeo pieces put out by Floridians for Accountability, an election communications organization that has been inactive since 2008 and didn’t report any activity last month. One of the pieces also tries to compare Taddeo to Trump repeating false allegations from 2014 that she was under IRS investigation for not paying her employees. That simply isn’t true and the complaint that was filed was done so for political purposes. Two other hit pieces targeted where Taddeo invests her money — which includes Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, none of which are Dem darlings.

Read related story: Dade’s newest Dem, Ana Rivas Logan, hails First Lady

Ladra still thinks Democrats will have to hold their nose and vote for Rivas Logan if they want to get that seat back. They should have never lost it to former Sen. Frank Artiles, who was forced to resign in April after he was caught making racist remarks to black legislators in public. But their best chance to get it back is Rivas Logan, who came in second in the primary to former Sen. Dwight Bullard without spending very much or campaigning really. Because the very Republican background that is a liability for Rivas Logan in this primary is what is going to make her a better candidate for the general against Diaz, for a rematch, or former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who would enter the general limping from the full frontal attack campaign in his primary that has included allegations of violent outburstss and improriety with women. 

Or maybe all this drama in both primaries gives the NPA candidate, Christian “He-Man” Schlearth, an advantage.

While it is not the only reason they are the frontrunners in the November election, it helps that former Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Gongora and comeback candidate Mark Samuelian have each raised more than $170,000, leading the pack in their respective commission races, according to the latest campaign reports filed last week.

And leading by quite a distance.

Gongora, who enjoys the most name recognition as a former commissioner and one-time mayoral candidate, has the most of any of this year’s commission hopefuls, with $188,785 raised since March. Or actually $168,785 since $20K is reported as a loan to himself. Also, a quarter of last month’s $40K, or $10,000, comes from Adam Walker of Boardwalk Properties, a real estate investor who owns several small apartment buildings in South Beach and who bundled $40,000 in contributions to Commissioner Michael Grieco, who is running for mayor. Maybe Gongora saw the Political Cortadito story about it in May and hit Mr. Walker up the next month.

Read related story: Michael Grieco its $500K, with help from real estate investor

Nobody else in the Group 3 race even comes close to Gongora’s bank. Adrian Gonzalez, the owner of David’s Cafe and Gongora’s most serious challenge, has raised just over $55,000 and Zachary Eisner has raised $17,250.

In the Group 2 race, Samuelian has raised $170,747, an impressive amount in two months. Until you read the fine print and realize that more than half of that — or $91,000 — is in loans from the candidate to himself. He loaned himself $56,000 in the first report for May, to make it a total of $105,472, and then made another $35,000 loan to the campaign in June, so he could report a total of $62,275. Without the loans, he would be reporting only $79,472 in the same two months — which is not really “more cash on hand than all our opponents combined,” as he claims in one of his email blasts.

Attorney Joshua Levy has reported raising $76,070, but $24,700 is on loan from himself. Rafael Velazquez has managed to resist loaning himself anything to artificially pump up his numbers, even though he has only raised $31,476 so far.

Is Samuelian trying to scare more challengers away? Already, Eisner switched to the Group 3 race against Gongora and Robert Lansburgh (who had loaned himself $50K) withdrew completely, giving Samuelian his endorsement. One of many.

Samuelian boasts basically everybody’s endorsement. Former Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower, former Beach Commissioners Jorge Esposito, Saul Gross, Nancy Liebman, Ed Tobin and Deede Weithorn and former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Katy Sorenson have all given him their nod. So have a number of community activists like Daniel Ciraldo, Frank and Marian Del Vecchio, Brad Bonessi, Carla Probus and Michael DeFilippi, to name a few.

And as the former president of Miami Beach United (he resigned last month), Samuelian not only built a track record opposing the “train to nowhere” and fighting Watson Island development, but he also doubled the group’s membership and increased its influence, which means he made a lot of friends and gained a lot of supporters along the way. Add that to the name recognition he built in 2015 with the 4,999 people who voted for him against John Elizabeth Aleman and you have all the makings of a winner winner, chicken dinner.

Read related story: Mark Samuelian runs for Miami Beach commission, part II

Name I.D. and wall of endorsements are those other reasons that Samuelian is the one to beat, because money alone doe not always do it. After all, Samuelian spent $416,560 in is first bid against Aleman and he came real close — there was a 77 vote difference — but he spent way more than Aleman, who only spent $274,045. In fact, Samuelian also significantly bankrolled that race, too, loaning himself a whopping $216,247,  or more than half his total bank, in installments of $25,000 loans every month, $50K the last month and a little more than $16,000 that he apparently needed at the very end to make ends meet.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Mayor Philip Levine is not running for re-election and will no longer be there to pull the strings, so he’s not going to back any puppet candidate against anyone — at least so far.

Oh, that and there are still four full months to raise funds for the November election.

¡Que arroz con mango!

The Senate 40 race has become a total telenovela in the final weeks, with a five-year old, out-of-state misdemeanor arrest record surfacing at the last minute, implicating something selatious and improper between former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla and the daughter-in-law of the county mayor, who were taken into custody together in a Boston non-smoking hotel room where they were chainsmoking, despite repeated warnings, on a late rainy night.

Shortly after the 2012 incident was first reported in the Herald last week, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez withdrew his support for The Dean’s opponent, former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz. Gimenez will not be the guest star, after all, at a fundraiser planned next week at the Biltmore Hotel (which Ladra assumes will be cancelled), citing the negativity of the Diaz campaign.

“He believes that the tone of that particular race has been unnecessarily negative and will not be endorsing any candidate in that primary,” said Gimenez spokesman Michael Hernandez, because, apparently, the mayor’s political life and endorsments is part of Mike’s job now, too.

Also, btw, the race has been unneccessarily negative for weeks and it wasn’t until his family’s dirty laundry started to come out that G found the campaign offensive.

But what if the information didn’t come from Pepi Diaz? What if it came from ADLP himself? Wait for it… wait for it. I know! Brilliant, right? The guy’s a genius!

If Pepi Diaz — or any of the Tallahasee ghosts who are supporting him (more on that later) — wanted to expose this embarassing episode (forget the girl, the behavior is atrocious enough), they would have spilled the Boston beans before the absentee ballots went out on June 27 . Not weeks after people have already voted.

And ADLP isn’t hurt by this. He is not the married one. In the eyes of most Cuban-American Westhchester super voters, he has done nothing wrong. Heck, some of them will want to high-five him. It may pain Ladra to say it, but this doesn’t resonate. Sure, ella es una sucia, azqueroza. But she is not running for office. And him? He’s a charming, womanizing, fast-talker who has women throw themselves at him all the time. El no tiene la culpa. He’s not to blame, they’ll say.

Ahora, el sinverquenza que saco los trapos? Yep, this actually hurts Pepi, who is seen as the desperate villain who besmirched a woman’s name to get elected and, to boot, won’t have the extra dollars that he expected to have for the end game from a Gimenez anointment. Notice that the news of the arrests came only a couple days after the announcement that the mayor — who should have stayed out of the primary out of loyalty to ADLP for his 2011 win — would headline the Biltmore event for Pepi.

This must have irked The Dean. After all he’s done for that cardboard box! It’s not completely unreasonable to think that he put this arrest info out himself to get the cancellation and also a little bit of free publicity as the smeared former Senator trying to defend “the mother of two young girls,” as he said in the Herald story. Another thing: Tania Cruz, the daughter-in-law in question (and this is the good one), gave a long and impassioned statement as well — which there is no way she would have done without ADLP’s consent. In fact, Ladra suspects he wrote her comments.

Then, boom! Gimenez canceled on Diaz.

Then, boom, boom! His lobbyist son and the presumed tarrudo, CJ Gimenez, also lashed out at Pepi Diaz on Facebook Thursday.

“For those of you that did not receive the latest email from the Jose Felix Diaz campaign due to limited circulation, my father, Mayor Carlos Gimenez is no longer involved with the Rep. Jose Felix Diaz event at the Biltmore on July 18th citing the negative tone of the campaign,” wrote CJ, who celebrated an anniversary with his wife only weeks ago.

“My position (me, CJ Gimenez, not the Mayor) is that I am utterly disgusted with the actions of the Jose Felix Diaz campaign and their pathetic personal attacks against me and my family. So I ask you, do not reward Jose Felix Diaz with your support. Please share this post with your friends and family! I thank you!”

Ladra was told that his other sister-in-law (the bad one) also posted something on Facebook about it.

But what if they’re being played by one of the best in the business? Yes, it would be somewhat Machiavellian to have orchestrated this wag the dog scenario right in front of our eyes.

But look who we’re talking about here.

Brilliant!