Newly elected Commissioner Joe Martinez is sort of on a war path. And there is no bigger casualty than former Commissioner Juan Zapata. Martinez has several items on Tuesday’s agenda to start to undo some of the things that Zapata is most proud of from the last four years.

Martinez will ask his colleauges to strip the “West End” name from county facilities — basically erase it from the map. He also wants to stop the North end Municipal Advisory Committee, which has been meeting to move forward on the incorporation process.

“It was my platform. It’s why I ran,” Martinez said though we know that he ran because he can’t stand not being in office. After all, he ran for mayor in 2012 and for Congress in 2014 but couldn’t get elected outside his district.

Read related story: ‘West End’ Kendall city would operate with $40 million

He says that the West End name was thrust upon the public without their consent or input. “People didn’t have a say. A lot of people didn’t like the way the name was just given to them.”

If approved, the West End Regional Library will go back to being the West Kendall Regional Library, the Miami-Dade Police Department’s West District Station will go back to being the Hammocks District Station and the West jEnd District Park will go back to being the West Kendall District Park.

“That’s fine,” Zapata told Ladra on Sunday, explaining that the West End moniker was intended to be a regional brand to bring together the communities of West Kendall, Bird Road, Country Walk, Kendale Lakes, Calusa and Hammocks, among others.

“You can self identify whatever you want, but you need a regional brand,” Zapata said, adding that he had sought the advice of marketing experts and had three town hall meetings about it. “They couldn’t market West Kendall. Everyone just thinks of it being ‘so far’ and ‘the traffic.’ I wanted to change that narrative. I couldn’t change the narrative without that name. I wanted people to look at this area differently. I wanted to change the vibe.”

Counters Martinez: “I’m not doing it to undo what he did. In the 12 years that I was commissioner, not once did anybody say let’s change the name.”

Read related story: Juan Zapata’s ‘West End’ is criticized — with poetry

But while he says Martinez is doing the same thing that he accuses Zapata of — making the name change arbitrarily without input from the community, the former commissioner and state rep is more concerned with the rescinding of the MAC, which has met for about two years to put together its incorporation application.

“All I did was allow a process, start a conversation,” Zapata said. “I can’t understand why anybody would be against neighbors getting together to discuss the future of this community.”

Zapata and incorporation supporters say that the district provides $16 million in revenue to the county through property taxes but does not get it’s fair share of unicorporated municipal services.

“We’ve actually been waiting fo the county to do a public hearing” said Joe Rodriguez, a member of the North side MAC. “It’s very feasible to do a city out here. The county’s own consultant told us we’re getting raped out here by the county. We give millions in taxes but you never see a cop out here, or very rarely.

“We’re almost at the end of the process. We’re not finished because the county has been dragging their feet,” Rodriguez said, adding that Martinez never even went to the group to tell them what he was doing.

Read related story: ‘West End’ has fewer cops per capita, needs more

“We’re at the end of the process,” he told Ladra last week. “All we’re asking is to let this go to a vote of the people If it passes, it’s the will of the people. If it fails, it fails.”

Martinez counters that very few people attend the MAC meetings. “If there were 200 people who show up, or 150. But I don’t remember many people being in favor of it.” He says he campaigned against the incorporation because voters told him they were against it.

“They do not want another layer of government,” he told Ladra, “and the people who show up to vote are just the eople in favor.”

He says he’s open to getting it started again — “if that’s what the people want.”

Asked how he would pay for the changing of the signs — which Zapata paid for out of his office funds — Martinez said he had not thought about that yet. He wanted to see if the old signs were still around somewhere. But he might seek private sponsors to make donations.

But won’t he owe someone a favor then?

The Coradito Calendar is getting fatter already, just in its third week. And it is thanks to many of you readers who emailed me and messaged me with events that you think should be included. So they are.

Please keep ’em coming. Government meetings are easier to find and politicians promoting themselves at holiday basket giveaways are a dime a dozen but not what I had in mind.

However, if you have a homeowners association meeting and invited your county district commissioner to address traffic and infrastructure issues, I want to know. If your school board member is visiting your PTA, please tell me. If even your neighbors are getting together for coffee to talk about government inaction, like Palm Springs North residents discussing quarry blasting and the effects on their homes and quality of life (more on that later), please tell Ladra.

Because other people should know about these happenings. There is more strength in numbers.

So, again, the email to send any events you think should be featured here is edevalle@gmail.com.

And thank you for the great response.

MONDAY — Dec. 19

9:30 a.m. — A talk about the haves and have-nots: Miami-Dade Commission Chairman Jean Monestime‘s Council for Prosperity Initiatives will meet to discuss “racial wealth divide in Miami” and  the “summary review of the Council for Prosperity Initiatives.”

TUESDAY — Dec. 20

8:30 a.m. — The $600 million renovation of the convention center will be the topic at this week’s Miami Beach Breakfast Club meeting. The city Project Manager Maria Hernandez, on behalf of City Manager Jimmy Morales, will bring the audience up to speed on the progress of improvements. The helical parking ramp and grand ballroom are well underway on the north end of the property. And Hernandez is expected to announce an end soon to any bookings for a period of several months. This image to the right is a rendering of what it should look like when it’s done. There is no charge for the meeting, but you’re buying if you want breakfast at Manolo’s Restaurant, 685 Washington Ave.

9:30 a.m. — Miami-Dade Commissioners have their last meeting of the year. New Chairman Steve Bovo is expected to lay out his committees and committee members — or, at the very least, will get recommendations from the old chairman, Commissioner Jean Monestime. Mayor Carlos Gimenez will present his final report on the “assessment of available tools to create a resilient transit system” — which could mean that they found expanding MetroRail and MetroMover is going to be less expensive than starting several new independent light rail lines. Among the other topics of discussion: criteria for appointments to the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, a $1.65 million renovation of the Dade County Auditorium, the creation of a workforce housing program and a $9.7 million gift (financial incentive bond funds) to a company that wants to build a custom boat manufacturer on the Miami River. Also: Commissioner Joe Martinez begins to undo everything that former Commissioner Juan Zapata had done in the last couple of years.

6 p.m. — Newly-elected Doral Mayor J.C. Bermudez and Councilwomen Christy Fraga and Claudia Mariaca will be sworn in at Doral City Hall, 8401 NW 53rd Terrace. Fraga, the only incumbent, was re-elected Nov. 8. Bermudez and Mariaca won their races in runoffs on Tuesday.

7:30 p.m. — Local Democrats will meet for some convoluted meeting in which they will choose the next chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. The race is between developer and mega fundraiser Stephen Bittel and former Sen. Dwight Bullard. It should be kind of interesting since there has been major lobbying going on both sides — but mostly for Bittel. More on that later.

WEDNESDAY — Dec. 21

9 a.m. — The first Doral Council meeting for founding and back again Mayor J.C. Bermudez and newby Councilwoman Claudia Mariaca begins at City Hall, 8401 NW 53rd Terrace.

While it is four months away, the Coral Gables mayoral contest is going to be a rematch of sorts now that former Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli filed to run against newby Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick, whose husband beat Valdes-Fauli in 2001

Qualifying isn’t until february for the April 11 election, but no matter who else may jump into the fray, the race will really be between these two.

Las malas lenguas say that Commissioner Pat Keon — who is up for re-election but, unlike Commissioner Vince Lago (also up for re-election), has not yet filed any paperwork — was also interested in the mayor’s seat. The word is that after she polled, Keon was scared away from that by Slesnick’s numbers. Several sources told Ladra that the Jeannett’s favorables were way higher than anybody’s.

Read related story: Raul Valdes-Fauli plans comeback as mayor

Valdes Fauli announced his candidacy on Bernadette Pardo‘s radio show Tuesday morning and made it official by filing the first paperwork Wednesday, but he’d been talking about it for 15 months, when Political Cortadito first broke the news.

Slesnick, wife of former Mayor Don Slesnick, filed her bank account info in November and already has a campaign finance report — with a $100,000 loan to herself to let people know she’s serious.

This is the second time Valdes-Fauli comes up against a Slesnick. Mayor from 1993 to 2001, Raul lost that year to Don Slesnick — 53 to 38 percent (a third candidate got 9%) in what became a complete overhaul of the commission; two new commissioners were also elected for a new majority.

Elected in 2015, Jeannett Slesnick is only in the second year of her first term, but she has an institutional knowledge like nobody else up on that dais. She has come out swinging against big developments and she has been the most communicative of all the commissioners, with regular newsletters, surveys, email blasts and town hall meetings.

But she must be frustrated with having to correct everybody.

“The mayor sets the agenda and steers the vote and also has the last vote,” Slesnick said about why she jumped at what is an open seat, since Mayor Jim Cason has repeatedly said he won’t run again (of course, he’s gone back on his word before). Cason will likely back Valdes-Fauli since the former mayor endorsed him two years ago.

Read related story: Jim Cason runs again ’cause nobody else will

“I know the city better than a lot of people because I’ve been here, I’ve been involved,” Slesnick told Ladra. “I could have been mayor 15 years ago, 20 years ago.”

But that’s when Valdes-Fauli was mayor.

Former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera also picked up an election packet at the city clerk’s office, but it’s doubtful that he would run for mayor again against Slesnick, now that they’re allies. He would likely not run against Keon, who ran his first campaign, or Lago, who is seen as very strong and popular and who has already raised $130,470.

But Slesnick’s run for mayor means she will have to resign and that seat may also be put on the same ballot. That seat might be what also attraced former FIU President Modesto Maidique and Gables Police Sgt. Randy Hoff, vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police. On Friday, Hoff said he was still considering if he could afford to retire six months early.

It’s early yet and others, like former candidates P.J. Mitchell and Tony Newell, could jump in. Ariel Fernandez, who has stayed very active after losing in 2015 to Slesnick (he came in third after Newell), told Ladra Friday that he could not run this year. He’s got a new baby and will be too busy to campaign early next year.

And time flies. Before you know it, the mailers will start to arrive.

Talk about kicking a man when he’s down.

First, former Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi loses his re-election just a couple of weeks ago, getting an abysmal 23% against newly elected Mayor Manny Cid. Then, boom, a Miami-Dade court tells him Wednesday that the town is not on the hook for $2.5 million in legal fees incurred during his 2013 federal bribery trial.

Pizzi had been arrested in a bogus grant sting set up by the FBI targetting local electeds. He and former Sweetwater Mayor Manny “Maraña” Maroño were charged after undercover agents caught them accepting bribes in cash and campaign contributions in exchange for getting bogus grant requests passed through their own and other cities.

While Pizzi was found not guilty, Maroño entered a plea deal and got a 37-month sentence. Guess he didn’t have the million dollar lawyers.

Read related story: Spies, lies and video tape: Manny Maroño’s ‘charisma’

After Pizzi got off, he had to sue the state to get his suspension by Gov. Rick Scott lifted and then had to sue the town of Miami Lakes to get his job back. But, in August of last year, he still sued his beloved town for the $2.5 million bill from his legal dream team.  He had up to eight attorneys at once — like he was O.J. Simpson or something. Guess you get what you pay for, because his acquittal is nothing short of miraculous, considering he had been recorded taking cash from a lobbyist/informant in an office closet.

Ladra always suspected that the price had been artificially inflated, jacked up so that Pizzi could have a piece of the pie.  

Maybe Judge Antonio Marin smelled something too and said nana-nina. He cited precedents that established that “for public officials to be entitled to representation at public expense, the litigation must (1) arise out of or in connection with the performance of their official duties and (2) serve a public purpose.”

The city’s legal argument focused on the public purpose part and the judge bought it.

Read related story: Michael Pizzi sues Miami Lakes for $3.2 million in legal fees

But wait just one minute. Because while Pizzi certainly wasn’t serving a public purpose — he was only looking out for himself — you can’t argue that the litigation wasn’t a public purpose, if by litigation they mean Pizzi’s prosecution.

Look, Ladra doesn’t want the town of Miami Lakes, or the taxpayers, to pay this bogus bill. But it’s pretty certain that Pizzi couldn’t have been indicted for bribery in a bogus federal grant scheme if he wasn’t acting in his official capacity as mayor and performing his public duties. Or pretending to. It was the very elected office that federal prosecutors said he used to get those $6,000 in bribes. He wouldn’t have been bribed if he wasn’t the mayor.

The court granted Pizzi — or his multiple attorneys, probably — 20 days to file an amendment to the complaint. And I suspect it will go a lot like that.

read more

Tuesday night’s loss in Doral was double whammy for political consultant Sasha Tirador, who worked for both incumbent Mayor Luigi Boria and council candidate Adriana Moyano, who both lost their runoff elections.

The victories by their opponents — JC Bermudez and Claudia Mariaca, respectively — was pretty solid, and that includes very comfy leads in absentee ballots.

Is the Absentee Ballot Queen losing her touch? Might she be dethroned? Or does her magic only work in Hialeah?

No, wait. There’s always Sweetwater, where she helped elect Mayor Orlando Lopez in 2015 after she left or was fired from the campaign of immediate past Mayor Jose M. Diaz.

Read related story: Voters replace Luigi Boria with first mayor, JC Bermudez

Boria was forced into a runoff Tuesday after he failed to get 50 percent plus one in the Nov. 8 election. He lost in every category — ABs, early voting and election day. In both rounds Nov. 8 and Tuesday. Although Boria was within 200 votes on Election Day this go-around, he was almost 1,000 short in early voting and exactly 1,100 under founding mayor J.C. Bermudez in absentees. 

Bermudez won Tuesday with a whopping 67% after he got 1,181 more ABs than Boria. Moyano lost in ABs by a smaller margin of 343 votes, smaller even than the margin of 529 she lost in the ABs on Nov. 8.

But these are just the latest two in a string of losses for Tirador.

Let’s remember that Tirador also worked on the Raquel Regalado campaign. And, much to Ladra’s dismay, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez got way more ABs in their runoff last month than the former Miami-Dade School Board Member who could have and should have been our first female county mayor —  — 147,885 to 118,754.

Even earlier this year, it looks like la reina lost every judicial race she worked on except one.

• Rosy Aponte lost in all three races — absentee, early voting and Election Day. But it’s worth noting that even after paying Tirador $16,000, according to campaign finance reports, for “consulting” and “community outreach,” she had fewer absentee ballot votes than the other two candidates in the first round. Her total ABs were 27,667. The guy who came in No. 2, Oscar Rodriguez-Fonts had almost 10,000 more and went on to win the runoff.
• Yoly Roberson, la enfermera, also lost all three races, but the margin was much closer in early voting and Election Day. Roberson, who paid Tirador more than $15,000 for consulting and “communication,” had 46,399 mail-in votes but was beaten by Robert Luck, whose AB count came in at 56,903.
• But her worse performance this year must be with Renee Gordon, who actually won early voting and Election Day tallies but lost so big in absentee ballots that she came in third and didn’t even make the runoff. We usually see this happen the other way around. Gordon got 19,863 absentee votes while the candidate with the next lowest got 25,842 and the eventually, Mark Blumstein, got 32,173 in round one. But maybe that’s because she only paid Sasha $6,400 for consulting and “grassroots.”

To be fair, each of these judicial race winners — Rodriguez-Fonts, Luck and Blumstein — hired election royalty of their own: Al Lorenzo, who was caught in the 2012 absentee ballot fraud investigation into the Carlos Gimenez campaign and has been working quietly behind the scenes since.

Maybe we should call him Al “Absentee Ballot King” Lorenzo?

Curiously, and notably, other members of the Gimenez 2012 team, Jesse Manzano and Dario Moreno, were spotted early Tuesday evening celebrating “the best team’s” win (pictured, left, in the bottom left corner of this picture posted on twitter). Could Lorenzo be part of that best team? After all, Lorenzo consulted for Frank Bolanos, who ran against Boria in 2012 and was endorsed by Bermudez. He’s not on Bermudez’s campaign reports. But that may not mean anything, because neither is Manzano, who was wearing a yellow Bermudez campaign t-shirt on Tuesday. Of course, as of this early Wednesday, Ladra does not know if Bermudez had a political action committee (but if Jesse is involved, he probably did).

And, hey, maybe they volunteered, ok?

Doral’s founding mayor, who served from 2003 until he was termed out in 2012, was sent back to City Hall Tuesday by voters who connected to his getting Doral “back on track” message — and who tossed out an incumbent that had waged a particularly nasty campaign.

J.C. Bermudez won with a whopping 67 percent, a total of 4,680 votes — almost twice as many as incumbent Mayor Luigi Boria, with 2,347. That amounted to only 33 percent, despite several last minute attempts to sway voters, including a false and frivolous complaint filed with the Florida Elections Commission and a ridiculous request for an investigation by the State Attorney’s Office that will be good for a laugh.

Read related story: Ladra responds to Luigi Boria and his silly press conference

It’s the same percentage he got in the first round when there were three candidates, with former Councilwoman Sandra Ruiz coming in third. That means Boria reached his ceiling Nov. 8.

And this despite the fact that Boria outspent Bermudez by more than 2 to 1, judging by the documented campaign reports. Between them, the two men spent almost $1.2 million to become mayor of Doral — which Ladra is sure will be a record for the young city. Boria spent the bulk of that, with almost $800,000 between his campaign and his Doral United political action committee. But what he raised was little more than half a million — because he loaned $265,000 to himself.

While he waged a nasty campaign, the incumbent was (sorta) gracious in his concession speech.

“I never considered myself a politician… For me, the people were always first, before the politics,” Boria said to a group of supporters before he addressed the links his brother-in-law has to an office where eight voters were registered illegally (the subject of a Political Cortadito post that he claims was paid, el pobre).

“I never deviated from the laws. I never did anything inappropriate. They painted this whole picture, but I consider myself an honest person, a tolerant person, a person with integrity and a person with values,” he said.

Read related story: Possible voter fraud in Doral may have ties to Luigi Boria

“I know my vision is different from that of J.C. Bermudez, but I know he has a vision for the city. I congratulate him and recognize that he worked hard… God knows what he is doing. If I win God, has someting good for me. If I lose, God has something good for us.”

In a television interview, Boria even said that Bermudez had been a hard worker and “great servant to this city.”

Former Councilwoman Sandra Ruiz, right, threw her support behind JC Bermudez after the first round.

What a difference a day makes, huh?

But Bermudez might not be in the same collegial mood. He can’t be. Sandra Ruiz will not let him be. Bermudez was elected by people unhappy with Boria and the scandals marked by his tenure and the instability he brought to the administration and the lack of transparency in Doral government. Bermudez is going to have to go into City Hall and start opening drawers and looking behind the shelves to see shat kind of mess Boria left that we don’t know about.

“The people clearly sent a message that they wanted change,” Bermudez said in a TV interview Tuesday night. Ladra was unable to reach him and he did not return calls.

“They want to bring Doral back to the values it once had,” he was quoted as saying in the Miami Herald. “It’s a great message from the community that it’s about decency not money, honesty and not dirty campaigning.”

Read related story: Nasty Doral mayoral race tops $1 million approaching runoff

His message throughout the campaign was to get Doral “back on track” as far as the master plan for development and the transparency and accountability in government that the city was founded for in the first place.

In the council race that also was forced into a runoff Tuesday, longtime activist Claudia Mariaca, a council meeting regular who celebrated with the Bermudez campaign Tuesday night and spoke at his podium (pictured, right) — and who might be the first Argentine elected in Miami-Dade (or the U.S.?) — beat Adriana Moyano, who had the same consultant as Boria, 56 to 44 percent.

Ladra is not sure when the swearing in is. But the next council meeting, according to the city website, is the next day.

Good thing both Bermudez and Mariaca can hit the ground running.