Half a mil is from candidate’s asset management firm
Even before former City Manager Emilio Gonzalez won his lawsuit against the city of Miami for cancelling this year’s election, the retired Army colonel had raised a little more than $750,000 for his mayoral run between his campaign account and his political action committee, Mission Miami.
His campaign account has raised a modest $69,280, according to the campaign finance reports for the second quarter, through June 30. But his PAC, formed in March and chaired by Tallahassee operative Christian R. Camara, raked in a jaw-dropping $681,055 in just three months. And if you think that came in $20 checks from abuelitas, think again.
El pez gordo here is a Wall Street outfit called RIA R Squared — an investment management firm that primarily serves foreign institutional investors. It’s also where Gonzalez has worked for the last five years after leaving the city manager’s job in 2020 under pressure by the commission, primarily Commissioner Joe Carollo. Gonzalez is a partner at R Squared, which manages approximately $1 billion in assets on a “discretionary basis” — and dropped not one, but two $250,000 checks to Mission Miami in April. That’s half a million bucks right there, gente. Enough to buy two condos in Allapattah. Cash.
There’s also a $15,000 contribution from Timothy Patrick Torline, who is a financial advisor at an R Squared subsidiary. And $1,000 from David Kang, the CEO of that subsidiary.
Read related: Third DCA strikes down Miami election change; November ballot is on
“They believe in me,” Gonzalez told Political Cortadito, adding that he does no sales and his company does no business in the state of Florida. “They simply believe in what I stand for and my vision for the city.”
Gonzalez, who has never run for office or had a political action committee before, is starting from scratch and doesn’t have anybody to shake down like Carollo does. He doesn’t have the power of incumbency like Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, whose PAC raised $250,000 in the same period.
The other big donors to the Gonzalez Mission Miami PAC are:

$30,000 in two checks, for $18K and $12K, from Palmetto Bay’s Roger West, CEO of Pyramids Property Management.
$25,000 from SGD Offices, a Doral company with Max Alvarez as one of its principals.
$25,000 from Peninsula 2705 LLC, a North Miami Beach real estate holding.
$23,000 from the law offices of Miguel Inda-Romero.
$10,000 from the Carlos M. De La Cruz Revocable Trust in Key Biscayne.
$10,000 from Maybe Beach attorney Jay Eric Gould.
$10,000 from Juan “J.C.” Flores, a Tallahassee political operative who has worked for Marco Rubio and Carlos Giménez.
$10,000 from Black River Productions, an audio studio in Doral.

On paper, Gonzalez’s own campaign account looks modest by comparison: about $69,000 raised in Q2 from nearly 146 donors, most of them local. Notable names include:

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The Third District Court of Appeal hasn’t dropped its ruling yet on whether the City of Miami can just cancel its elections like a bad brunch reservation, but the smart money is on Emilio Gonzalez — the former city manager who sued to undo the shady ordinance that postponed this year’s mayoral race (and two commission contests) until 2026.
Gonzalez wants to run for mayor now, not next year. After all, he’s been campaigning for months. Last week, Miami-Dade Judge Valerie Manno Schurr agreed, ruling the city commission’s change of the election by ordinance without a voter referendum was unconstitutional because it violates both the city and county charters, which trump state law. So, super duper unconstitutional.
Read related: Miami-Dade Judge: Miami Commission can’t cancel election without public vote
In other words: Commissioners cannot just cancel the election because they feel like it. Not even if they say it really fast in legalese. Or hold up props, which is what the city’s hired gun, outside attorney Dwayne Robinson, did in moment of legal theater that would make Shakespeare cringe. Robinson stood there holding two printed copies of the city charter — one from before the election-postponing ordinance passed and one from after — and told the court: “There is no change. There is no amendment. Nothing is repealed.”
Nothing’s changed? Except the whole part where the city commission gave themselves another year in office, moved the election to 2026, and completely ignored the charter’s very clear instruction that elections be held in odd-numbered years. But yeah, nothing’s changed.
Robinson barely made it a minute in before Judge Monica Gordo interrupted with a polite but pointed, “The charter is the city’s constitution, is it not?”
“Why would the commission hang its hat on a permissive state statute when they have a constitution confronting them with a ‘shall,’” Gordo asked, rhetorically because you could tell she already knows the answer is they cannot.
You could almost feel the eye rolls from the bench. And Gordo wasn’t the only one wondering why she was there. Because the city’s legal logic would get laughed out of a mock trial at Jose Marti Middle School.
Judge Kevin Emas seemed frustrated with the city’s argument that, hey, moving an election without voter approval was totally legit and not at all a coup in slow motion. Judge Fleur Lobree seemed bored. She scooped up her documents and notes to leave before the city’s rebuttal was even finished.
Several times Emas made the point that Gonzalez and his attorneys were making: You can’t have a charter and a code that contradict each other and expect this not to end in chaos.
Read related: First lawsuit filed to stop city of Miami from cancelling November election
Attorney Alan Lawson, a former Florida Supreme Court Justice representing González, called the city’s argument “a semantic sleight of hand.” Well, that could describe a lot of discussions at city commission meetings. Basically, Lawson said, if the charter says elections are in odd years, and you pass something that says otherwise, then you’re changing the charter — and you need a referendum. Voters get a say. It’s really not that hard.
“They say, ‘We didn’t amend the charter. The words are still there in the charter,’” Lawson said about the city’s argument. “They say that this is just an alternative means of rule-making in an area historically limited to the referendum process. They say it’s an alternate path.”
And if the commission can take an “alternate path,” why bother with a charter at all?
“Lincoln famously said that you can call a tail a leg but it doesn’t make it so,” Lawson said. What if they call a tail the head?
In other words: saying “we didn’t change the charter, we just ignored part of it” is the legal equivalent of “it’s not cheating if I close one eye.”
Even Miami-Dade County showed up to remind the city that they’re not above the rules. And when the county feels the need to weigh in on how broken your logic is, you know you’ve lost the room. Assistant County Attorney Michael Valdes told the judges that under the Miami-Dade Home Rule Charter — aka our local constitution — changes like this must go to the voters. You’d think that would be obvious to a city with more lawyers than potholes.
The city’s rebuttal? That the charter isn’t a “magic document that cannot be altered unless there’s a referendum.” Oh really? So is it a suggestion box? A pirate map? A mood ring? A souvenir from when there was democracy in Miami?
If it’s not binding, then what is? The whims of three commissioners?
But, you know, a Miami courtroom drama isn’t complete if there’s not a Carollo cameo. And here, there were two.
Frank Carollo watches intently while county attorney Michael Valdes argues the home rule charter trumps state law
Commissioner Joe Carollo wasn’t there Tuesday — but he wanted to be. As if he didn’t have enough legal battles of his own, Carollo — who always wants to be el protagonista — wanted to insert himself into someone else’s courtroom drama. Crazy Joe loves the sound of his own voice. Y como un colado in a quinceañera he wasn’t invited to, Carollo asked the court to let him speak at oral arguments in a case he’s not even a party to.
The Gonzalez legal team told the judges that this was disruptive and that Carollo simply wanted to grandstand. Ya think? The DCA judges — who may have seen Carollo drone on and on and on at commission meetings — told him nananina. They saved themselves.
But his brother was there. Former Commissioner Frank Carollo, who has filed to run again in District 3, sat behind Gonzalez in the audience and looked glum. He later made a comment to the press outside because he doesn’t want Gonzalez to be the only one getting a ton of earned media for suing the city.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, was also in the courtroom, in the front row. Suarez is hoping the city prevails so he can have an extra year in office to increase his net worth even more.
Read related: Miami Commissioners pass election date change — and steal an extra year
Observers expect the judges to issue a ruling soon. Ladra is surprised it’s taken them this long because their skepticism was pretty evident at the hearing.
This isn’t about “clarifying” the charter or “modernizing” elections. This is about commissioners handing themselves an extra year in office and hoping no one would notice.
Well, guess what? People noticed.
So did Judge Manno Schurr, and now three appellate judges seem poised to deliver the same message: You want to change an election date? Ask the damn voters.
A ruling is expected soon. Ladra just hopes the city doesn’t try to drag this into extra innings with another appeal. Haven’t we wasted enough taxpayer money already?
The post Third DCA seems skeptical of Miami city election change, cancellation appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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Miami’s political telenovela just cast another familiar face: Former Miami Mayor and former District 7 Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez wants his old job back — and maybe a rematch with Commissioner Joe Carollo.
Just hours after a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge on Monday declared the Miami City Commission’s election year change by ordinance unconstitutional, effectively rescheduling the cancelled election, Suarez — who had been considering a run and was included in multiple polls — popped out of the shadows to announce its official.
Read related: Miami-Dade Judge: Miami Commission can’t cancel election without public vote
That’s right. The O.G. of Miami’s Cuban political club, the first island-born mayor of the Magic City, and papi to current Mayor Francis Suarez, is officially hitching a ride in the clown car that is the next Miami mayoral election — whenever that is. He said he would file paperwork Tuesday morning for what’s shaping up to be the most dramatic race for Miami mayor since… well, dare I say 1997?
That was the year of the first mano a mano mess between Suarez and Carollo, who’s been threatening to run for mayor for more than a year. Suarez technically won the race, until it was revealed by The Miami Herald that the election was tainted by absentee ballot fraud. Not only did a dead man vote, but people who lived in Westchester and Broward also voted in the city election. Eso no se puede hacer.
Ladra worked that election investigative story and remembers that Suarez was never officially tied to the AB shenanigans. Suarez just got swept up in the scandal when the court threw out all the ABs, effectively handing Carollo the seat.
And we all know how that turned out — with Carollo yelling at everybody and betraying his supposed allies. So, pretty much what he’s doing now, almost three decades later.
In addition to Carollo, Suarez and Diaz de la Portilla, none of whom have filed any paperwork as of Monday, there are 10 other candidates who have opened bank accounts and made their intentions official. They include Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, former Miami Commissioner Ken Russell, former City Manager Emilio Gonzalez — who sued to restore the November election, which commissioners tried to change without voter approval — onetime congressional candidate Michael Hepburn, former Miami-Dade Community Council Member Christian Cevallos, perennial candidates Max Martinez and June Savage and first timers Alyssa Crocker, Ijamyn Joseph Gray and Linda Anderson, who doesn’t stand a chance as an official member of the Socialist Workers Party.
Read related: Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins could join Miami Mayor’s race
But he is also sorta running against his son. Baby X is termed out in November and, by all indications, was counting on a bonus year in office to increase his net worth with side gigs and fundraise for his next influencer trip to Dubai. The city is appealing a ruling Monday from a Miami-Dade judge who cancelled the cancellation of the November election for mayor and commissioner because the vote last month to move elections from odd to even years was unconstitutional.
In his announcement Monday, Xavier Suarez congratulated Emilio Gonzalez for initiating the lawsuit to challenge the city commission’s change (read: cancellation) of election by ordinance — and took some credit. “I was directly involved in the selection of counsel and contributed significantly to the strategic approach, specifically advising that only indispensable parties be named as defendants,” reads his statement. Ladra thinks he means Carollo, whose attorneys filed an amicus brief.
The senior Suarez also said that his political action committee would campaign against the proposed ballot referendum on lifetime term limits, even though there is a carve out for him and Carollo because they did not serve two full, regular terms. He said the ballot question is misleading. “The city’s charter already provides for term limitations,” Xavier said in his statement. “This proposal seeks to implement retroactive lifetime restrictions and unfairly imposes constraints on individuals who previously served when such limitations did not exist.”
Instead, his PAC will support putting two other questions on the ballot, which are the petitions that have been collected by Stronger Miami, a coalition of community groups including the One Grove Alliance: One would move the elections to even-numbered years by a public vote and the other would expand the commission from five to nine members.
Hey! Isn’t that Russell’s issue?
Read related: Petition aims to add Miami commission districts, change election to even years
Suarez didn’t throw his son completely under the bus, saying that the “city has made commendable progress in maintaining public order, stimulating significant private-sector economic growth, and reducing the millage rate.” But, apparently, not enough progress on property tax relief. X said he supported measures proposed by state legislators and dropped the names of State Representative Vickie Lopez and Florida House Speaker Daniel “Danny” Perez.
Suarez, 76, hasn’t held elected office since he left the county commission in 2020.
Now, all eyes are on Carollo, who lives for this kind of political drama. Will he make it official and file paperwork to set up the rematch nobody asked for — but everybody will watch? Or will he just scream from the dais and call everyone a traitor until the November ballot goes to print?
The deadline to qualify is Sept. 20.
¡Aguántate, Miami! Because the ghosts of elections past are running again.

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First step victory for mayoral candidate is appealed
The wannabe dictators at Miami City Hall just got a hard slap of reality from the bench. And Ladra is here for it.
In a fiery ruling, hot enough to singe the mayor’s eyebrows, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Valerie Manno Schurr on Monday declared what most Miamians already knew in their gut: The Miami City Commission’s shady decision to cancel next year’s election and hand themselves an extra year in office without first taking it to voters was unconstitutional.
Basically, they tried to cancel your vote. And got caught and slapped on the ballot.
And thanks to former City Manager Emilio González, who is running for mayor, the election is back on.
Well, maybe. Fingers crossed. “While we respectfully disagree with the trial court’s decision,” City Attorney George Wysong said in a statement, “we are confident in the strength of our case and remain optimistic about the outcome on appeal.” That appeal was filed before the ruling came down based on Wednesday’s hearing. Because the city already knows the case is a stinker.
The issue is pressing, since the ballot for this year has to be ready for printing by September, so the judge has set a date of Aug. 8 to resolve it. Knock on wood.
Read related: First lawsuit filed to stop city of Miami from cancelling November election
González sued the city days after the commission voted last month to move municipal elections from odd to even years, effectively postponing the 2025 election until 2026 and extending their own terms without so much as a “¿te importa?” to the voters.
The ordinance — sponsored by “reformer” Commissioner Damian Pardo — is purportedly about increasing turnout a lot and reducing costs a little. The idea was to empower voters, Pardo said. But the change also just happened to keep voters out of the loop and ignored an earlier vote to limit terms to a max eight years by giving the bonus year to even term-limited commissioners.
“This is not just a victory for me,” González said in a statement, polishing his halo, “it is a triumph for all voters in the City of Miami and across Miami-Dade County who believe in upholding our charter and the rule of law.”
His legal team — including former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson (the big guns) — called the move what it was: a charter-busting, power-hungry hijack. They compared it to stunts pulled in places like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Cuba — countries where elections get postponed for “reform” and never really come back.
Sound familiar, Miami?
Lawson argued that the charter — Miami’s own governing rules — and the county’s Home Rule charter say you need a vote of the people to make election changes like this. And they trump any state law the city was relying on.
But city attorneys argued that, no, no, they were just tweaking the city code. Not the charter. As if voters can’t tell the difference.
The judge did not mince her words to say that the city was playing a magic trick with, um, words.
“The City’s contention that its Ordinance did not ‘amend’ its City Charter is nothing more than semantic sleight of hand. In one sense, of course, the City is correct, it did not effectuate a permissible amendment to its Charter because the Florida Constitution and Miami-Dade County Charter do not allow the City to amend or repeal its provisions by ordinance. That can only be accomplished with a vote of the electorate, as the Plaintiff correctly contends.”
Sounds like a Catch-22: “We didn’t change the charter because that would require a vote of the people. No, we don’t need a vote of the people because we’re not changing the charter.”
Read related: Miami Commissioners pass election date change — and steal an extra year
Even Assistant City Attorney Eric Eves had to admit, awkwardly, at a hearing last Wednesday that the city’s new ordinance puts the charter and code at odds. “Yes, it conflicts with our charter. But I haven’t heard anyone claim our charter supersedes the state.”
The city and Pardo kept using the example of North Miami — where they extended terms by 18 months in 2023, and later upheld by an appeals court — to say that, well, if that municipality can do it, why can’t we? Eves suggested that Manno Schurr read the opinion of Judge Reemberto Diaz in that case and copy/paste. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” he said.
But the González team argued that the North Miami case did not set a binding precedent. “There’s no procedural value whatsoever in that opinion. The issue you’re being asked to decide was not raised in that case,” Lawson said, calling it irrelevant.
Assistant City Attorney Eric Eves, Judge Valerie Manno Schurr and plaintiff’s attorney, Alan Lawson
Pero, por si las moscas, the hearing was also attended by a North Miami resident who wanted to tell the “horror story” about the change of election in that city. “We ended up with someone serving 25 years in office,” said Eileen Bicaba, president of the NoMi Neighbors Association, who last year filed a lawsuit against three council members for violating the state’s Government in the Sunshine Law.
“This was nothing short of a coup in North Miami,” Bicaba said, passionately.
In her ruling, the judge mostly relied on one aspect: She said the city’s reliance on state law was misplaced. Perhaps a better word would be “selective.” Because the city actually omitted a tiny little wee part of the law it relied on, which reads, “The Florida Election Code… shall govern the conduct of a municipality’s election in the absence of an applicable special act, charter, or ordinance provision.” The judge’s bold letters, not Ladra’s.
The second part of the law only exists, Manno Schurr repeated, apparently for emphasis, “in the absence of an applicable charter provision.” Again, Ladra has to compliment her on the use of bold font when appropriate. In other words, you can only apply that law when the county or the city don’t have laws that conflict.
“Here, there are two charters that together apply and control: the Miami-Dade Charter and the City Charter,” Judge Manno Schurr wrote in her 14-page decision. So the state law “cannot be construed to authorize the City’s passage of the Ordinance.”
The Miami-Dade charter “unambiguously prohibits the City from cancelling an election, moving an election, or extending the terms in office for city officials without the consent of the electorate given at a properly held election,” the judge wrote. Keyword: Without.
“Furthermore, the Court will not presume that the Legislature intended [state law] to be construed as permitting municipalities to extend existing terms or change the term limits in the absence of express text granting such authority,” she writes in the ruling. Boom! She gets it.
“This omission stands in stark contrast to section… which expressly allows a municipality to effectuate ‘changes in terms of offices necessitated by . . . changes in election dates,’ provided the issue is not ‘preempted to a county,” Manno Schurr writes.
Which, as established, it is.
Read related: Miami commissioners should shorten their terms for election year change
All of this was unnecessary. Pardo could have taken this concept to the people, you know, like in a democracy. He could have campaigned for it. He already put lifetime term limits on the November ballot. It would have been easy to add the change in election year and let the voters decide. But it’s way easier to just bulldoze ahead because he “had the votes” on the commission, and, as he says, he had to seize the moment.
Who cares if people had already spent time and money campaigning for this year’s election? Ladra bets Pardo would have felt differently, however, if they had pulled this in 2023, when he was running for commissioner. Perhaps, as some critics say, extending his own term is the only way he’ll serve more than four years.
On Wednesday, Pardo posted a statement on social media that was the exact statement provided to Political Cortadito by the city’s spokeswoman on behalf of the city attorney. So it’s an echo chamber over there at City Hall. They got nothin’ to say.
Commissioner Joe Carollo, who has also threatened to run for mayor and voted against the election year change, had attorneys attend Wednesday’s hearing after they filed an amicus brief in support of Gonzalez, which is a nice change of pace. Not that González needed it or welcomed it.
Denise Galvez-Turros, an activist in Little Havana who filed to run for commission in District 3, also filed a lawsuit last week that challenges the validity of the ordinance and asks the court to find it void and unenforceable.
“This unlawful act is not merely a procedural defect. It is a calculated effort by a narrow majority of the Commission to entrench themselves in power, override the will of the electorate, and circumvent the very Charter provisions they are sworn to uphold,” wrote attorney Reid Levin on behalf of Galvez Turros.
“The people of Miami are entitled to choose their representatives at the ballot box; not have them imposed by ordinance.”
There is a little more than two weeks left before the Aug. 8 deadline to hear the city’s appeal of Manno Schurr’s ruling. Expect another round of lawyerly acrobatics from the city attorney’s office.
Maybe more excuses about turnout, costs, traffic, climate change, Mercury in retrograde — anything to avoid putting this to a real vote.
Emilio T Gonzalez v City of Miami — Judge says ordinance to change election year without public vote uncon… by Political Cortadito on Scribd

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Well, that didn’t take long.
It took Joe Carollo less than a month to go from proud political padrino to spiteful ex in the case of newly-elected Commissioner Ralph Rosado, who Carollo helped usher into office with more than half a million from his political action committee and hours upon hours of his unique political strategy.
“He is such a huge disappointment,” Carollo said, on his morning radio show.
This was predictable. Pinky is only the latest name scrawled onto Joe’s ever-growing Burn Book of Betrayals. But it may be a record in the quickness. Even the bromance with former Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla lasted longer.
Just six weeks ago, Carollo was allegedly burning the midnight oil during the special election for District 4. He told The Miami Herald he stayed up until the wee hours writing and designing those negative campaign mailers. But
He also burned his own political capital. Literally. According to the most recent campaign finance report, he spent at least $547,000 from his Miami First PAC, mostly attacking Jose Francisco Regalado and his family, which includes former Miami mayor and current Miami-Dade Property Appraiser Tomas Regalado and Miami-Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado. He was spotted out in the sun at Douglas Park, directing the TV ad that Rosado filmed with his mother in law. Carollo’s wife Marjorie was there, too, with a clipboard in hand. Taking notes?
In other words, the Carollos poured their time, sweat and money into Rosado’s campaign. And while they were already sorta estranged, Carollo has made formidable enemies out of the Regalado clan. They’re not going to get over it any time soon.
“The worst political mistake of my life,” Carollo said last week on his radio show, about supporting Rosado.
Really, the worst? It wasn’t the weaponization of city departments to target political foes? Or losing a$63.5 million lawsuit for violating someone’s First Amendment rights because of who they supported in your election? Or using public tax dollars to raise your political profile? Or the misspending of monies while you were chair of the Bayfront Park Management Trust?
If political missteps were an Olympic sport, he’d be a gold medalist.
Read related: Joe Carollo wants to abolish Miami’s Bayfront Park Management Trust
Carollo also has a long list of former employees that have turned on him (and testified against him). This new and sudden breakup, which is a surprise to nobody, seems to stem from the swing vote that Rosado made to cancel this year’s mayoral and commission races in favor of moving the municipal election from odd to even years. Carollo has threatened to run for mayor and could benefit from the current clown car of candidates that will definitely drive a runoff.
Rosado was also the swing vote for the lifetime term limits, which would stop Carollo from returning to office, and pushed the dissolution of the Bayfront Park Management Trust to next year when Carollo wanted to do it immediately. Because, while the investigation and audit into the abuse of funds during his chairmanship would continue, the witnesses might scatter to the winds.
So, instead of Carollo getting a majority on the dais with Rosado’s election, he’s been losing all his important votes.
Carollo does not return calls or texts from Ladra. But he talked to The Miami Herald’s Tess Riski and took the credit for getting Rosado elected. “If Mr. Rosado had not had an angel like Joe or Marjorie Carollo, he never, never, never would have gotten elected,” he told the Herald.
Right. Because angels accuse candidates and their families of animal abuse and ties to drug trafficking.
Crazy Joe owned up to the negative campaign — and also said that Ralph “100%” knew what was up. So much for that positive, issue-focused campaign Rosado claims he ran. ¿Verdad, Ralph? He’s got gaslighting down to a science. Remember when he told Political Cortadito that Joe wasn’t even present during his campaign video shoot at Douglas Park? When told there was a video of Joe and Marjorie behind the camera, like Spielberg and Spielbergita, he stammered and said he’d get back to Ladra, which he never did. Then, to the Herald, he claimed Joe just happened to be “in the area.”
In the area? ¡Niño, por favor!
Read related: Miami’s District 4 candidate Ralph Rosado is backed, helped by Joe Carollo
Now Rosado is officially dead to Joe. “I didn’t expect him to come here to be a lap dog — another lap dog — for Mayor Suarez,” Carollo fumed in the Herald story.
Mayor Francis Suarez, meanwhile, says that Carollo’s breakup is the result of “the recent Commission votes that could impact his and his family’s ability to continue making a living out of the city taxpayer’s pockets.
“For the past two and a half years, our office has had a positive working relationship with Commissioner Carollo’s office,” Suarez was quoted as saying in the Herald, in what amounts to a declaration of war. “However, now Commissioner Carollo is throwing out baseless claims hoping something sticks.
“You have to ask: why now, and not a year ago or two years ago? These are the same political tactics we’ve seen for years, and they’re as transparent today as they have ever been.”
But that’s weird. Because everyone knows that Suarez — who dumped $1 million of his own PAC money into Rosado’s campaign — and Carollo worked together to get the urban consultant elected to replace the late Manolo Reyes. It was coordinated, even though Suarez denies it. Las malas lenguas say they are also both raising money for a new political committee that will fight the lifetime term limits on the ballot.
It’s not just for papi. Yes, former Miami Mayor and Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez is threatening to run for mayor. It’s also for the current mayor himself. Baby X is only 47. He might need a safety net in a decade or two.
Read related: Francis Suarez, Joe Carollo spend $1.6 million to elect Ralph Rosado in D4
As for why now? It’s very possible that Carollo is trying to change the conversation. He wants to distract people from the court appeal he and the city just lost to Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, who own Ball & Chain, and their $63.5 million jury award for violating their first amendment rights, as well as the investigation into the commissioner’s use of the Bayfront Trust funds as his own political piggy bank, kickbacks and all.
He could also be trying to throw Rosado under the bus for the absentee ballot fraud investigation that is allegedly happening or going to happen after several senior voters reported voting for Rosado because they were told they would lose housing, meals, day care or other services if they didn’t (more on that later).
Whatever the reason is, Thursday’s commission meeting promises to have at least one pelea: Carollo against Rosado or Gabela or Commissioner Damian Pardo — who Rosado was caught having lunch with at Pollo Tropical in what is now a sign of the coming breakup — or Mayor Suarez, if he decides to show up.
And if history tells us anything, it won’t be long before Carollo finds someone new, another gem in his flawless legacy of political backstabbing, to bankroll, micromanage, and eventually denounce.
The post Bromance break-up at Miami City Hall as Joe Carollo and Ralph Rosado split appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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Only in Miami can you snatch someone’s phone out of their hands in front of the city commission, city manager, the sergeant-at-arms, and a room full of witnesses — and still get your two minutes at the podium for public comment.
Maybe it’s only because the phone-snatcher was Maria “Beba” Sardiña Mann, who is protected as president of the Crazy Joe Pollo Carollo Fan Club. Or maybe it’s because her victim was Miami activist and award-winning filmmaker Billy Corben, who’s been documenting dysfunction at City Hall longer than four of the five commissioners have been up on the dais.
Because you know if it was reversed, this would be a different story. And it would end with someone in jail.
It’s all captured on video (posted below, courtesy of Corben).
And it was ugly enough for Miami Police to open an investigation to determine if Sardiña Mann committed a “robbery by snatching” when she grabbed Corben’s cellphone. Corben filed a complaint the very same day it happened and Ladra was able to confirm it has been transferred from the Det. Jeremy Kluman in the violent crimes unit to someone in robbery.
Should be an open and shut case.
The Silver Bluff resident confessed to taking his camera, depriving him of his property, later in the meeting. “No, that was not assault,” she said, responding to Corben or someone calling her out for her physical overreaction. “I took his camera. I took his camera. That’s not assault.”
Just robbery, then?
Read related: Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo loses appeal on $63.5 million jury award
The little scuffle took place on May 30 at a sunshine meeting called by Commissioner Miguel Gabela about the weaponizing of government departments after Commissioner Joe Carollo tried to get the city to investigate alleged code violations on his property. Corben noticed Mann as she yapped at activist Thomas Kennedy in line for the podium and started recording it. Corben knows when something is about to go down. It’s an instinct.

But so did Mann. At first, she smiles and waves hello. But then she reaches out — with surprising speed and strength — to intentionally grab the phone he is using to document the corruption and slam it on the dais nearby. She may or may not have struck City Clerk Todd Hannon with it by accident.
Mann was afraid, and rightfully so, that she’d be the next star of a Because Miami web video.
“He has a tendency, just as he has done here with the chicken, to mock people,” she said of Corben, when she was allowed to speak after the scuffle. “I will get an attorney and sue him for harassment.”
This was after she was escorted out and let back in to make public comments. That’s strange because people have been ejected from City Hall for the whole day for much less. Ask Kennedy.
Between crocodile tears and excuses, Sardiña Mann insulted Corben and Kennedy, using Carollo’s own language to try to belittle them, and praised her commissioner, which she is indebted to for getting illegal street closures in her neighborhood and trying to get them again (they were removed after the county took the city to court).
“What he has done for us is unbelievable,” Sardiña Mann said. And she is right about one thing. It is, indeed, unbelievable that Carollo would violate the county law to make her neighborhood a gated one.
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She also took aim at the other commissioners.
“I don’t see anyone here talking about the things that Mr. Carollo does. All I see is the same people speaking, same time, every time, at the commission before it becomes a circus. Beginning with our elected officials that act, appear like immature children. This is a professional post that you are elected to have, not to sit here and completely derail everything for little snaps at each other. Please, let’s all grow up.”
Yeah, because nothing screams “mature adult behavior” like a weepy defense of a wife-beating habitual violator of the first amendment who abuses political power and a scolding of the very people who just witnessed your possibly criminal tantrum.
Beba, the circus called. They want their clown back.
“Carollo has done more than anybody has done for my district, which is District 3, which has been totally neglected,” Mann said.
You know what else has been neglected? The law. Fairness. Because if that situation had been reversed, if Corben or Kennedy had snatched the phone out of Mann’s hand, they would have been arrested on the spot. Carollo would have insisted on them being cuffed in public and we would have had a perp walk and official statements on social media.
Instead, crickets. Nobody has come out to condemn Beba’s exaggerated outburst turned attempted robbery.
Corben did not want to answer too many questions because it is, or was, an “open and ongoing investigation.” Witnesses were still being interviewed. But he did say that however many times the two may disagree, “we can’t put our hands on each other.
“We have to draw a line somewhere,” he told Political Cortadito. “She crossed that line.”
A Miami New Times story published a comment from Corben: “I was there to engage our government as a citizen and cover the meeting as a documentarian and journalist. My phone is the tool I was using to exercise my First Amendment as a member of the press and keep our community informed. It was out of line and a possible crime for the suspect to violently deprive me of that tool.”
He was just doing his job, documenting shenanigans at City Hall, and particularly Carollo’s hypocrisy. And now he’s documenting potential robbery, courtesy of Carollo’s biggest fan.
Sardiña Mann did not return multiple calls for comment. But that police interview is going to be a fascinating read.
Ladra also can’t help but wonder if she will be at Thursday’s commission meeting. Keep a firm grip on your phones.

The post Scuffle at Miami City Hall turns into robbery case vs Joe Carollo superfan appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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