The Cortadito calendar is back in time for May.

Yes, we missed the last couple of weeks in April but, other than the Gables runoff, nothing important was happening. Ladra needed some time off.

This week, we resume with a few meetings and candidate events. But there must be more going on.

Please make it easier for me and send me information about your government meetings, candidate forums and political protests to edevalle@gmail.com and they’ll keep — or start — appearing in the Cortadito Calendar.

TUESDAY — May 2

8:30 a.m. –The Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club seems to be going through the candidates for this year’s elections as speakers. After having gotten every candidate declared so far for the Group 2 commission seat, the attention has turned to the mayoral race. This Tuesday morning the cafe con leche bunch can hear from former State Sen. Dan Gelber, who filed to run for this seat earlier this year. Commissioner Michael Grieco, who filed last year, is going to speak next week. Former Mayor Matti Bower serves as moderator at the morning meetings, which are at Pueto Sagua Restaurant, 700 Collins Ave.

9:30 a.m. — Our Miami-Dade County Commission meets to consider several things, including $12.2 million in more water and sewer consent decree improvements,  a $37.5 million contract to Munilla Construction, pals of Mayor Carlos Gimenez, for upgrades to Councorse F at Miami International Airport. That’s $37.5 million in upgrades. They will also talk about funding two new park and ride lots for busways, as they continue to stall the inevitable light rail, and the creation of new committees to advise the commission on new municipal incorporation efforts. It also looks like there’s an amendment to the land use code to allow for a new “employment center planned area development” and a “retail entertainment district planned area development” which seem custom made for the American Dream megamall in Northwest Miami-Dade.

6:30 p.m. — There’s a new mayor in Coral Gables, but who is going to be the mayor in North Miami? Voters can meet the candidates Tuesday evening as each of them present their vision for the future of the city. Mayor Smith Joseph has three challengers. Danielle Beauvais, an alternative medical consultant who ran for mayor before, middle school teacher Tyrone Hill, who ran for a council seat in 2001 and lost in the runoff, and retired doctor Hector Medina, who is well known in the community. District 2 Councilwoman Carol Keys is challenged by Ilyana Albarrán, founder of a research and consulting company. District 3 Councilman Philippe Bien-Aime has two challengers: former Councilman Jean Marcellus and security company owner Wancito Francius. The meeting at the Griffing Community Center, 12220 Griffing Blvd., should be over by 8 p.m. The election is May 9.

THURSDAY — May 4

6:30 p.m. — If you want to meet the man behind so many presidents, including Donald Trump, and maybe buy one of his books, then this is the event for you. A Roger Stone book signing at The Club At Renaissance Gables, (the old Victor’s Cafe), at 2340 Sw 32 Ave. The event is supposedly hosted by Trump volunteers but you know Stone is a master at promoting himself, not just candidates. Hurry up. Before he is detained for his part in Russiagate.

7 p.m. — Help plan the future of Palmetto Bay’s park system. A public meeting on the city’s master plan for parks and open spaces begins at 7 p.m. Thursday at Village Hall, 9705 E Hibiscus St.

In their first run-off ever, Coral Gables voters on last week picked Mike Mena, a land use attorney who has never served on any city board or committee, over longtime activist Marlin Ebbert, a retired schoolteacher who was backed by the a group of residents irate about recent development decisions. It was 54 to 46 percent.

Everyone saw it coming after the first round two weeks ago, where Mena captured a whopping 44 percent in the four-way race. Ebbert, in second place, got 32 percent. He would have won outright if voters hadn’t changed the charter to require runoffs. And even if Ebbert had gotten every single voter that cast for her on April 11 to go out again two weeks later, and she didn’t, she would not have won.

Read related story: Ebbert, Mena head for runoff in Gables commission race

Sadly, the commission seat was decided by just over, 5,100 voters and neither candidate got the numbers they got in the first round. Funny enough, Ebbert got the closest, with 2,392 votes (296 fewer than on April 11) while Mena got 2,794 — 849 votes fewer than his 3,643 earlier showing. It only proves runoffs are not the perfect pill some thought.

Mena was sworn in Friday with the two winners from the earlier election: Commissioner Patricia Keon — who won a challenge from former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers — and returning Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli, who beat Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick in a close race to win his seat back after 15 years out of office and out of sight.

Developers must be drooling. If the City Beautiful was attractive to them in the last few years, people with the right connections can now get their properties upzoned and secure variances for everything from height restrictions to setbacks. That Jeannett woman is out of the way. Her heir apparent was summarily dismissed. Ladra can see them now, licking their chops.

Read related story: Hoff, Mena stand out in four-way commission race

Mena spent more than five times what Ebbert spent to get this seat. His total as of the last campaign report filed, which was at the end of March before even the first round, was $136,540. Hers was $21,595.

Someone want to tell me again how you can’t buy an election?

It’s going to be up to Gable residents to keep these people honest. Ladra hopes they stay involved outside the election as they were during the race. Mena’s first meeting with the new Mayor Valdes-Fauli is next Tuesday, May 9.

Could El Zorro come to the rescue again?

One of the names being batted around for a special election to replace disgraced former Sen. Frank Artiles — who resigned Friday after making inappropriate and racist comments earlier in the week when speaking to a few colleagues — is his all-time rival and nemesis, former Miami-Dade Commissioner and former State Rep. Juan Zapata.

Zapata abruptly withdrew his candidacy from his re-election to the county commisison last year. He had grown sick and tired of the retaliatory tactics of the mayor and his allies and the hat trick maze that is the county budget. But he had been one of the good guys, asking the right questions, not playing politics or favorites with the other electeds and watching, more closely than anyone else, the taxpayer’s money.

Now, maybe we can have him in the Senate.

Read related story: Frank Artiles resigns, but still needs to apologize to Hialeah

Zapata was out of the country Friday on business but returned a text message from Ladra about it.

 “Yes, I am seriously considering it,” he wrote, and followed it with a smiling emoji. The big smiley one, not the little smile.

“I wasnt going to be able to contribute much in the county commission. The state senate would obviously allow for way more,” Zapata told Ladra. “This is my area. I have always fought and worked for it. Nobody knows it better than I and my experience has prepared me well.”

It would only be gravy if he gets to replace his longtime nemesis (my words, not his).

Zapata and Artiles have been rivals. Artiles ran for state rep against Zapata twice and lost. He then basically recruited and ran police officer Manny Machado against Zap in the 2012 county commission race (lost then, too).

Other Republicans being considered for the job would be State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz — but he is being groomed for Attorney General — and State Rep. Jeannette Nunez, but she has filed to run for Sen. Anitere Flores‘ termed-out seat in 2018 in what is a slightly safer district for her and probably with Flores’ blessing.

The GOP can’t just pick anybody off the street. They are going to want someone with name recognition who can win on a shorter campaign cycle and thwart the efforts of state Democrats, who want to get their seat back in a district that slightly favors the blue. Artiles, who was a state rep for six years — only winning the House seat once Zap left office to run in the — had beaten former State Sen. Dwight Bullard by 10 percentage points, mostly by calling him a terrorist.

Naturally, Bullard is one of the Democrats being considered. But seeing how he moved out of the district to try to get the chairmanship of the Florida Democratic Party, it would be easy to attack him if he just moved back in to run for his old seat again. I can see the mailers now. Instead of Arab headwear, he’d be carrying luggage. Besides, Bullard might win a primary but he won’t win the general in a district that is about 60% Hispanic. He already tried that once and failed.

Read related story: Chased out: Juan Zapata leaves hostile work environment

The others are perennial candidate Annette Taddeo (who would also win a primary but not the general) and former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan, who is the person that should have won that seat from the get go, but the Democrats decided to back Bullard and she didn’t even campaign.

Rivas Logan told me she had gotten several phone calls already by lunchtime Friday. Of course, she’s the female flip version of Zapata — a moderate Democrat (she used to be Republican) who has bocoup name recognition.

“It depends on the timeline,” said Rivas Logan, a high school administrator who retires in October. “This is how I make my bread and butter. Politics is a hobby.”

A date has not been set yet for a special election, but it could come as early as this summer, with a 60 day campaign. 

We are already envisioning a showdown between Zapata and Rivas Logan, which will be clean and on the issues, and we can’t wait for these two longtime public servants to show the rest of the puppies how it’s done.

“He would be a formidable opponent,” Rivas Logan said. “That would be a good race.”

Yeah boy, it would!

State Sen. Frank Artiles resigned Friday for having a racist rant earlier in the week, but only after it became increasingly clear that he had no other choice.

Nothing was getting done in the final weeks of session was the capitol turned on Artiles’ words to his colleagues, including calling Senate President Joe Negron a “pussy,” Sen. Audrey Gibson a “bitch” and “girl,” and using a slang version of the n-word to describe another group of senators. In fact, things were only getting worse. A new group or person called for his resignation every day, including people from his own party. Protesters went to his Miami office, delivering signed petitions and threatening a recall and Artiles reacted by threatening several of his colleagues with depositions that would try to show this kind of language is used all the time in the Florida Senate.

It certainly didn’t help matters that he was reluctant to apologize and then was forced to do it on the Senate floor — either that or Negron would bring it up — in what was the most half-assed, sorry-not-sorry apology ever, where he not only pooh-poohed his words.

His resignation letter Friday — under threat of being expulsed by the body — wasn’t a ton better.

“I apologize to my family and friends and I apologize to all of my fellow Senators and lawmakers. To the people of my district and all of Miami-Dade, I am sorry I have let you down and ask for your forgiveness.

“My actions and my presence in government is now a distraction to my colleagues, the legislative process, and the citizens of our great State.

I am responsible and I am accountable and effective immediately, I am resigning from the Florida State Senate.”

So, he is resigning because he is a distraction, not because someone who talks like he did doesn’t belong in the hallowed halls of the Florida Senate. Okay, we’ll take it.

At least he didn’t blame Hialeah again.

Artiles may have resigned from the Senate, but he still owes Hialeah an apology. Sen. Rene Garcia, a Republican who represents Hialeah, said as much this week after Artiles said his use of offensive language was instilled in him growing up in the diverse environment (not!) of Hialeah where, apparently, he wants us to think that kind of talk would be honky dory.

“My constituents and I would agree that this language is simply unacceptable. Senator Artiles owes the residents of Hialeah an apology for unfairly associating them with this kind of behavior,” Garcia said in a written statement.

It didn’t take long for newly-minted Sen. Frank Artiles to misbehave now, did it?

It shouldn’t take this long for him to resign.

A known bully and hothead who punched a college kid in the face at a bar and who wants to kill a Florida black bear, Artiles was in the news again Tuesday after a group of African-American colleagues said he had used the n-word with them and had insulted one of them in multiple other ways, calling her “bitch,” “girl,” and referring to himself as “a fucking assohole.”

At least he got one thing right.

Ladra is not surprised that this happened. She’s only surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Artiles is not only a little more aggressive than some people, he’s a magnet for bad news — from the time he was caught by Ladra living outside of his district as a state represenative to last year, when he proposed some hateful anti LGBT bathroom policing bill.

This item, however, might do him in. At least for now.

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

It happened at the members-only Governors Club near the Capitol building, just after 10 p.m. and “over drinks,” as first reported in the Miami Herald. So maybe he was under the influence. Sometimes, one’s true colors are revealed when one’s inhibitions are removed. Artiles approahced Sens. Audrey Gibson (D-Jacksonville) and Perry Thurston (D- Fort Lauderdale) and told them that Senate President Joe Negron (D-Stuart) had only gotten to his powerful position because of “six niggers” who voted for him.

“Say what,” one of them sorta said, recoiling at the n-word, and confused because he must have been talking about white Republicans. “Niggas,” Artiles clarified, because the slang version is supposed to make it okay. He said in his half-assed apology Wednesday that he comes from a diverse area where, one would suppose, that is common. He’s my senator, in my district, and I don’t think so.

And you didn’t say it like “my niggas,” Frankie boy. You said it like “those niggas.” Not the same. And you’re not a 17-year-old who wants to sound like Kanye West. You’re a senator, now. Or were.

Because he also called a fellow senator a “girl” and a “bitch” in what was, by all accounts, a political tirade, it is no surprise that Democrats statewide immediately called for his resignation, as they should, and not only because it would cause a special election and a chance for them to win back a seat in the post Donald Trump America that has become a blue promise. SAVE demanded his resignation on Wednesday, seizing on the momentum to get rid of one of their biggest enemies in Tallahasee.

But that’s just gravy. Artiles should resign because former State Rep. Ralph Arza was forced to resign after he left several threatening voice mail messages with racial slurs on the phone of former State Rep. Gus Barreiro. Artiles should resign because the Florida Senate is no place for that kind of language, no matter how sorry you are about getting caught. Artiles should resign because Gibson and Thurston — indeed, any black legislator — should not be forced to work with someone who made such remarks.

It seems an affront to Gibson, in particular, to force her to confront her bully every day.

Former state rep and current Miami-Dade School Board Member Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall said “it would be impossible for me to sit in a room to create laws that impact our community with someone that has neither regard or respect for those who make those laws with him. 

“As lawmakers, we make laws for men, women, children, Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and others who come from all corners of the world,” Bendross-Mindingall said in a statement. “A person who is not respectful to all is not fit to make laws for them, neither should anyone be subjected to sit on a dais with such an individual.”

Lastly and perhaps the least, Artiles should also resign because staying in office will only hurt the Republican Party, serving as a constant reminder of how racist the GOP has become that it would tolerate this talk from one of their own.

Where are the Republicans calling for his resignation? Negron stripped Artiles of his chairmanship of the Senate’s Committee on Communications, Energy, and Public Utilities. But he didn’t call for his resignation. Negron said that he apologized and that should be the end of it. And Artiles — who waged a supremely negative campaign against a black Democrat last year — scoffed, saying that he was soon running for re-election.

Are you kidding me? I don’t think so. Artiles sorry-not-sorry apology — reading off remarks most likely prepared by someone else — was hardly as heartfelt as his insults. Ladra is surprised that some ambitious Republican with county or state or federal hopes hasn’t come out to lead the GOP rejection. Sen. Anitere Flores? Are you watching this? Do you want people to remember your silence?

Read related story: Artiles lives outside district

Artiles would be smart to resign and quietly work to make amends. He’s a young guy and Miami is a city with acute political amnesia. Arza is now a successful campaign consultant and lobbyist. And former State Sen. Al Gutman, who pleaded guilty to fraudulently billing Medicare and resigned from the legisulature in 1999, owns the quite awesome and successful Cuban Crafters the cigar shop and bar on Northwest 7th Street.

Hey, maybe they can start a club there.

Former Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Góngora is getting a good head start on his bid to get his seat back, raising $70,000 (including a $20,000 loan to himself) for the Group 3 race in his first month.

By comparison, the two others bidding for the open seat — because Commissioner Joy Malakoff doesn’t want to be there if Mayor Philip Levine ain’t — combined haven’t raised half of that, according to the latest campaign finance reports filed last week: Adrian Gonzalez , owner of the well-known Cuban eatery David’s Cafe, has raised $23,738 in three months, and Cindy Mattson, a consultant who is a former compliance officer with the U.S. Department of Labor, has raised $7,000, including a $5,000 loan to herself and a $1,000 contribution from. Mattson has also spent the most, with consultant Miriam Almer getting $3,000 and $625 for event supplies. The two boys haven’t spent $1,000 yet, neither one of them, but for some reason it seems like it’s going to e a showdown between them two.

Almost a third of Góngora’s money comes from addresses outside of Miami Beach and it also includes some bundling, most notably $5,000 from businesses owned by James Cavanaugh, who owns and manages and may want to redevelop several properties in South Beach. He also has $2,000 each from the owner of Mango’s and from lobbyist Manny Prieguez. But Góngora also has a ton of smaller checks from a personal trainer and a speech therapist and quite a few activists like Frank and Marian Del Vecchio and Ray Breslin, who is president of the Collins Park Residents Association. These are people who not only vote, but drum up votes from others.

Read related story: Michael Gongora wants back on Miami Beach commission

About a third of Gonzalez’s $24K treasure chest is also from outside the city — from as far away as New York and Philadelphia and Scarborough, Maine. There’s no obvious bundling but there is some development and construction money, as well as sympatico restaurants like Sliderz and Munchies Cafe and bars with names like Foxhole and Drunken Dragon. Gonzalez has been president of the Lincoln Road merchants association and instrumental in bringing some new events to South Beach, but he is running as a family man, only having photographs of himself with his wife and two daughters on his website.

One of the most interesting contributions, so far, is a $1,000 maximum gift from Gayety Theaters, also known as Club Madonna on Washington Avenue, which has been at odds with the city for years and is now in litigation with it.

The strip club was already at fighting with city officials in 2014 over the owner’s request for a liquor license (denied) when authorities found a 13-year-old runaway girl stripping there by force of three other people who were ultimately charged by police. City Manager Jimmy Morales revoked Club Madonna’s business license. But two weeks later, he reinstated it after the club promised to put in measures that would prevent underage girls from dancing there. A year later, city commissioners passed a human trafficking ordinance requiring stricter records and that strip venues — of which there really only is one — hire a manager to guarantee legal requirements for the nude dancers are met.

So a few months ago, Club Madonna owner Leroy Griffith sued the city of Miami Beach. He says that the new rules have little to do with stopping human trafficking and more to do with shutting down the only strip club on the beach.

Góngora said Griffith offered him a check last month, but he declined.

“He only gives contributions in exchange for a promise to support alcohol and nudity,” Góngora told Ladra.

Okay, sure, but then what do James Cavanaugh and Manny Prieguez give contributions in exchange for?