There’s not a lot of surprise in the Miami election that ended Tuesday. Everybody knew we would have Mayor Francis “The Future”  Suarez in charge with some ridiculous support against two nobodies (86%) and that there would be a runoff in the race for District 3 to replace him between former Mayor Joe Carollo and someone else.
That someone else may turn out to be surprise dark horse Alfie Leon, the former policy advisor for termed out Commissioner Frank Carollo. He may be the one who will now face his former boss’s estranged brother in round 2 on Nov. 21.
Zoraida Barreiro, who flew sorta under the radar in an ugly race that focused on Carollo and Tommy Regalado, the namesake son of the current Mayor Tomas Regalado, came crazy close to going head to head with Crazy Joe. But in the end, Leon edged her out with 17 votes between them at nearly 20% each.
Provisional ballots counted in the next couple of days may change that. Barreiro may ask for a recount. It’s that close.
Read related story: Denise Galvez (Turros) fights for her full name — except when she’s DUI
But in the other race, we finally have Commissioner Manolo Reyes, who has waited almost 30 years to hear those words.
Reyes solidly Ralph Rosado, who was hoping for a runoff, and won outright with 57% percent of the vote to Rosado’s 36%. Latinas for Trump co-founder Denise Galvez (Turros) can now officially be called Denise “Single Digits” Galvez, with less than 8%, but you just know she is going to blame Ladra for exposing her old theft and DUI arrests.
Commissioner Reyes, let’s say it often, is a sweet win. He’s like everybody’s abuelo and won votes with his common sense and longtime activism in the city. People know him. They have to. He has walked the district six times already.
“This is fantastic. It’s a dream come true,” Reyes told Ladra as he walked into his victory party at Renaissance Banquet Hall on 32nd Avenue, where he was quickly surrounded by friends and supporters with hugs. “At last, I have the opportunity to serve my people.”
He said he was especially happy that voters so soundly rejected the negative campaigning by his main opponent. “It’s about time these campaigns stop and candidates respect the intelligence of the people,” Reyes said.
Rosado went so negative that he had hit piece palm cards at the polls — something Ladra has never seen before. They didn’t say to vote for Rosado. They didn’t have his punch number. They just said to reject Reyes based on a mailer that a non-profit sent on Reyes’ behalf with a bad photo of Ralph Rosado.
Read related story: Finally! Manolo Reyes looks real good in Miami commission race
That’s a hoot. Because Rosado is the one whose campaign went negative months ago, first with TV ads and mailers calling Reyes a career beaurocrat — though he has worked in both the public and private sector — and then suggesing that he was falling asleep at a debate with a photo of the candidate with his eyes closed.
Rosado’s campaign got so personal that Reyes got help from outgoing Mayor Regalado, who went on the radio with ads and recorded a robocall urging voters in his old commission district to support Reyes. He accused Rosado of waging “attacks and lies.”
But that was not the race with the most attacks and lies. No, that would belong to the District 3 race and the crown belongs to Carollo’s campaign, or the part of it designed by former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla. The attacks calling the Regalados communists and putting a caricature of Tommy Regalado in diapers, the allegations they took Chavista money — all of that may have backfired because Carollo was positioned to take more than 35%, according to all the polls.
Read related story: Crazy Joe Carollo adds twist to crazy Miami race
Instead, he got 30% and is now headed into a runoff against Alfie Leon, commissioner Frank Carollo‘s former policy advisor, who came in number two with just over 20% (unless Barreiro turns it around in provisionals).
But Tommy may have been hurt by some of the negative campaigning — there was a lot of it. One reason why it would have been better to have Barreiro in the second round is it would have been harder for Carollo (read: ADLP) to attack a woman. That could double backfire. But Ladra expects to hear pestes about Leon now.
Popular political theory says all the support behind Tommy and Barreiro and the other candidates for the other candidates, will now go Leon’s way. Will it be enough to keep Crazy Joe out of office?
That’s the question everyone is going to be asking themselves on Wednesday.

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Now that the mayoral election next month is all but a technicality, the real question is who Commissioner Francis Suarez, our next city of Miami mayor, wants to have serve on the dais with him. He’s been non-commmital because he wanted to focus on his own race. But now that he’s got no opposition, not really, he can put his considerable weight behind the right candidate.
Too bad he still won’t tell us. Now, we can only guess.
“I’m not supporting anyone right now. I get along pretty much with everybody,” Suarez told Ladra this week, adding that no mayor or elected supported him when he first ran in 2009 even though he started out 25 points behind Manolo Reyes, who is leading all the polls for the seat now.
“And I liked it that way. I didn’t even use my middle name, which is the same as my father’s,” said Suarez, a chip off the old block that is Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, who was also the first Cuban mayor of Miami. “I wanted to rise on my own merits, my own ideas.”
The flip side of the coin is that he doesn’t want to piss anybody off.
“As mayor, you have a responsibility to create a coalition on the commission and set the tone and get things done. If you pick the wrong side, you may end up offending somebody and shooting yourself in the foot,” he said. “I want to hit the ground running. My responsibility isn’t to the candidates, it’s to the residents.”
But just who does Baby X think he’s fooling? Some political observers say he’s being a passive aggressive pussy who is secretly helping candidates but doesn’t have the cojones to publicly endorse them. “Like always, el tira le piedra y esconda la mano,” said one Miami voter and political junkie. It’s a Cuban saying that literally means he throws a stone and hides his hand but actually means he starts some kind of trouble and avoids the blame.
Read related story: Francis Suarez says definite maye to Miami mayoral race
Ladra, too, thinks that he does, indeed, have a great deal of interest in the two commission races (especially in one). Why else would he spend money polling the commission races along with his own race and issues every time? And it is very difficult for Ladra to believe that he and his dad and his political allies in Coral Gables and beyond would just pass on this opportunity to silently grow allies and build their machinery, especially trying to help the candidates that Suarez knows will be friendlier and happier to work with him instead of on their own agenda.
Yeah, Joe Carollo, I’m talking about you. The former Miami mayor and Doral city manager likes to be a star and the protagonist and could battle Suarez for attention and control of the commission.
Despite the fact that the two candidates are apparently sharing Steve Marin as campaign consultant, the two families sorta hate each other. Ladra can’t beieve that’
Suarez wants to sit on the dais with the guy who basically unseated his father from office in 1997 for absentee voter fraud that may not have been X’s doing (it was former City Commissioner Humberto Hernandez and former State Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who las malas lenguas say is helping Carollo now). The election was thrown out and a second vote put Carollo in office. So, no, Ladra does not believe that Suarez isn’t actively working against Crazy Joe. You can’t trusth him because he could turn on you at any minute, like he has on almost everybody, even calling a press conference to stab you in the back. Just ask former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre. We have to believe that Baby X is ABC — Anyone But Carollo.
Read related story: Crazy Joe Carollo adds twist to crazy Miami Commission race
Athough maybe not Tommy Regalado, son and namesake of the current mayor, tampoco. There’s no real love loss between these families either. Maybe also because Suarez had the nerve to try to run against Mayor Tomas Regalado four years ago before he had to abandon the campaign after several missteps. Suarez just got rid of one Regalado, you think he wants to be saddled with another? And compete for media darling status with another block chip?
That leaves us in District 3 with Zoraida Barreiro, the wife of Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, or one of the other three guys who don’t seem to stand a chance next to the legacy candidates. Zory, as she is known, makes sense because her husband is a colleague of the new mayor’s father. This allegiance has legs. Also, Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro has not lost one election. Not for State Rep. Not for county commissioner.
There’s also a small possibility that Suarez likes Alfie Leon, the former chief policy advisor, for Commissioner Frank Carollo. But Ladra is making that hypothesis only because someone in his camp has defended Leon in private and Coral Gables Commissioner Vince Lago, a top Suarez ally, is backing Leon openly.
Still, it’s practically a toss up between the other two.
One might think Baby X is helping Reyes, who he beat by 260 votes when first elected in 2009, since he is leading all the polls, after all. Suarez has reportedly shared the polls with people to help Reyes raise campaign cash. And also allegedly lent Reyes his professional fundraiser — Brian Goldmeier reportedly made some calls on Reyes’ behalf.
But, on the other hand, Manolo is tight with the Regalados so there’s that little snag. And Baby X has been seen with Ralph Rosado at some events and neighborhood homeowner association meetings. Rosado has also shown that he can raise more money, which could be important to Suarez– or both Suarezes — in the future.
Maybe he’s hedging his bets. Does that still count as passive aggressive?

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Actor Sean Penn just made a cameo appearance in the Miami city elections.

A campaign mailer arrived at the home of voters in District 3 Saturday with a photo of the two-time Academy Award winner — and celebrated socialist sympathizer and apologist — at a Miami Heat game in 2011 with Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, whose son is running for city commission.

“Sean Penn, the known defendor of the Castro and Chavez regimes, with his favorite dictators, Tomas Regalado and his son,” the piece says, adorned with pictures of the much older Jeff Spicoli with his BFFs of death: Raul Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro and Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Then there is the picture of Penn with the Regalados.

Except the son in the photo is Jose Regalado, who is not running for office. That would be the older brother, Tommy Regalado. Which doesn’t really matter to former Mayor and professional provocateur Joe Carollo, whose political action committee, Miami First, paid for the piece.

“The two faces of the Regalados,” it says, insinuating that the first family of Miami gets together for fun with those who defend the Castro and Chavez regimes, “without giving any importance to the pain of our people.”

Read related story: Ex Doral Manager Joe Carollo keeps talking post firing

It also says, without offering any evidence, that Tommy Regalado (son) has collected thousands of dollars for his political committee from Chavistas, which seems to be a theme with the increasingly paranoid Carollo. Remember, he called a Doral businessman a chavista and then, when he knew he would be fired as city manager, called a press conference to claim that Doral Mayor Luigi Boria — who he had helped get re-elected only months earlier — was being investigated for bribery. When that didn’t stick, he had multiple press conferences trying to convince the local media that the Venezuelan-born Boria was a Chavez sympathizer who still had ties to the regime and did business with Chavista interests. He promised evidence, but it was a rabbit’s hole expedition and nothing materialized.

It was all conjecture then. He doesn’t even have conjecture now. But that doesn’t stop Carollo from throwing more shit around to see what sticks. This is what he’s good at.

“Dios los cria y el diablo los junta,” the mailer said, which literally translates to “God grows them and the devil joins them,” but actually means more like bad people find each other. The piece looks like it was designed by former Sen. and campaign bad boy Alex Diaz de la Portilla, not Steve Marin, as campaign reports indicate. It just feels Alex.

Of course, it’s pure bullshit. To the point that it’s laughable and makes Ladra think that Carollo must be desperate. No way voters are going to buy that the Regalados are commies.

Candidate Tommy Regalado works for none other than TV Marti, which Carollo calls a botella or gifted job in another piece but which, you gotta admit, is no friend of the Cuban government. His grandfather, the mayor’s father and a journalist, spent 22 years as a political prisoner in Castro’s jails. And his dad is a Pedro Pan kid — sent into U.S. exile as a child without his parents through the Catholic Church. The mayor has been a staunch anti-Castro advocate for decades, first on Cuban radio and later as an elected official, giving many a key to the city to activists and exile groups.

Read related story: Crazy Joe Carollo adds twist to crazy Miami commission race

Then Commissioner Regalado was a constant fixture at the home of rafter boy wonder Elian Gonzalez, who was snatched from his Little Havana exile family in the middle of the night by federal agents so he could be returned to his father in Cuba. He was also the first elected to reject the idea of a Cuban consulate in Miami in 2014, even before former President Barack Obama announced normalized relations. After that announcement in December of 2014, Mayor Regalado criticized the president repeatedly on local and national media for giving the Cuban government everything for nada and abandoning the Cuban people.

“Free elections, the freeing of all the political prisoners in Cuba, are not part of the deal. I’m sad that Mr Obama has brokered a deal that doesn’t help the people of Cuba. At the end of the day Cuba is still not free. This is a sad day,” he was quoted as saying.

Last year, when the talks about the consulate picked up again, Regalado said he would sue to block a consulate from opening here. Conversely, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who is raising money for Carollo and who Carollo worked for during his 2016 re-election campaign, was more welcoming, saying he would “work with” the feds if they chose Miami. Gimenez  also welcomed the idea of cruises to Cuba from PortMiami, saying the county did “business with carriers” and not “with countries.” Coward.

“They are trying to rewrite history,” Regalado told Ladra Saturday evening. “They are hoping that voters forget my record of 50 years here.

“You can say I’m inept and some people might believe you. You can say I’m corrupt and some people might believe you. You can say I’m a thief and some people might believe you. But you can’t say I’m a communist. Nobody is going to believe you,” the mayor added.

In fact, the family is known for being so ardently anti-Castro that the piece could backfire. Voters could decide to reject Carollo because he is trying to play them, to take them for fools. ¿Que se ha creido? ¿Nos toma por idiotas?

Regalado said he was at the game that day with 20 or so inner city at-risk youths, all guests of Office Depot. While on the floor before the game, there were a bunch of VIPs milling about, and someone from the Heat organization introduced the mayor to Penn (we don’t know why he was there).

“I was a little distracted and wasn’t sure who he was, so when someone said smile for the camera, I just did it automatically,” Mayor Regalado said. That was it. There was no conversation. There was no other contact.

Suffice it to say they did not go to Versailles later for a snack of croquetas and a cortadito.

This is classic Carollo, creating a bogus boogieman so that he can come and save the day. When the real boogieman is Crazy Joe.

Both Zoraida Barreiro and Joe Carollo filed their first campaign finance report in their race for the same city of Miami commission seat and they must be a tad disappointed. 

Sure, $14,000 (Barreiro) and $10,000 (Carollo) is respectable — for any novice, first-time no-name. But Barreiro is wife of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, who must not have tapped his donor pool yet (he raised $140,000 last year before he ended up with no opposition). Maybe he’s not 100% on board? And Joe Carollo is the former mayor of Miami, a former city manager of Doral and a buddy of Carlos Gimenez — or at least a member of his 2016 campaign team, at $6,000 a month for a total of $144,000 billed to the mayor’s PAC.

You think he could loan himself more than the $100 he reported earlier this month.

Read related story: Crazy Joe Carollo adds twist to crazy Miami commission race

But both of them did have significant bundling in their reports, as measly as they were. Half of Barreiro’s contributions come from companies owned by former School Board Member Demetrio Perez and $3,000 came from Lanzo Construction. Carollo got $3,000 from Robert Patino, $2,500 from the guy who owns Dade Outdoor Advertising and $2,000 from Norman Braman and his wife, which is kind of weird since Braman supported Raquel Regalado against Gimenez.

But these two aren’t the lowest scoring candidates in what is already a clusterbunch race with seven candidates so far, and qualifying isn’t even ’til September. This is the open seat in District 3, being vacated by Commissioner Frank Carollo, Joe’s baby bro, who is termed out and, reportedly, running for mayor, though he hasn’t filed any paperwork yet. The other candidates and their paultry little piggy banks are:

• Alex Dominguez, with $4,650, has been fundraising for almost two years.
• Olidia “Lee” Hernandez loaned herself $1,000, but she only just filed on Jan. 27.
• Alfonso M. Leon has raised $36,978 — a lot of it in $27 and $40 and $100 and $200 checks.
• Miguel C. Soliman has raised $27,530 — all of it but $1,000 in the first month reported, May.
• Daniel Suarez, who filed in December, hasn’t raised a dime but just loaned himself $55.

Soliman is the only one with any evidence of bundling, which are multiple donations from the same person — using relatives or different corporations — to maximize impact (and access or investment). He got $6,000 from Luis Garcia, who owns Adonel Concrete and several real estate holding companies.

Read related story: Mr. and Mrs. Sarnoff give up seat to Ken Russell, sans runoff

As has been pointed out before, money is not necessarily a sign of who is going to win the election. Commissioner Ken Russell beat a far better financed Teresa Sarnoff in 2015. But it does tell you who has more ability to get their message out. And if the donations come from residents rather than corporations, it could also indicate voter support.

Of course, it’s early yet. And we still don’t know if there are any PACs involved. Only one is listed on the city’s website. But A Stronger Miami, which filed documents in October, has not raised a dime.

So its doing worse than even any candidate.

So I guess Pedro Diaz is going to have to do another online poll.

No sooner had Ladra hit publish on the screen to post the story about the growing possibilities in the District 3 Miami Commission race — and the new threat of Alex Diaz de la Portilla spoiling it for everybody else — El Nuevo Herald breaks the news that there is yet another family dynasty member looking at the seat.

No, not Tommy Regalado, son of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado. We had him. No, not Zoraida Barreiro, wife of Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro. We had her.

Add to this bowl of fruit loops one Crazy Joe Carollo, former city manager in Doral under former Mayor Luigi Boria, who fired him publicly and loudly during a city council meeting. Joe Carollo was also once the mayor and a commissioner in the city and, in fact, in the very seat his brother, Commissioner Frank Carollo, is vacating due to term limits.

Read related story: Joe Carollo goes off the reservation, naming names in Doral

“After so much time out of office, I have decided that I will aspire as commissioner of Miami, in the seat where I started, which includes Little Havana, and that was where the community initially elected me,” Carollo was quoted as saying in Spanish, speaking to El Nuevo Herald. “I would like to be able to return to that seat to return to Miami the opportunity it gave me to serve the community and make sure it continues on the path to adequate growth and protect its neighborhoods.”

Carollo said he was not using the commission seat as a stepping stone to the mayor’s office and said he has more experience by far of any other declared candidate. His key issue will be public safety, referencing the many youth gun fatalities that have plagued Miami’s neighborhoods for the last few years.

Does this mean Frank is not gonna run for mayor? After all, people are not going to elect two Carollo brothers to the same body of government? Or would they?

Or is this Crazy Joe’s way of trying to derail his brother’s dreams? Dicen las malas lenguas that there’s bad blood there.

In either case, it is an interesting twist in an already fascinating race that promises to get even more exciting. I mean, if Dean DLP was only flirting with the idea before, he’s going to be downright giddy with the challenge now. This would be an epic battle more worth his time. Also, he feels a responsibility to the people of Little Havana, his core constituents (those that got his Christmas card over the holiday). He has to run to protect them from Crazy Joe.

But Ladra thinks Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro will urge his wife to withdraw from the race in order to avoid the attacks that would no doubt come.

Read related story: Doral update — Councilwoman calls cops on Joe Carollo

Because Crazy Joe has no boundaries.

This is a guy who got into a fistfight with a fellow elected — at the dais. This is a guy who fired his police chief after the latter neglected to tell him that federal agents were swooping in on Elian Gonzalez’s family. This is a guy who threw a tea cup at his wife and hit her in the head — and got arrested for it.

During his time in Doral, then Councilwoman Sandra Ruiz called the police on him after, she said, he harassed her and her intern. After he was fired in a meeting where he shot insults back at the mayor, Carollo wouldn’t shut up about alleged bribery and other conspiracies and corruption going on in Doral — but he offered little proof.

At times his drive and advocacy are admirable: Ladra loved it when he came out against maquinitas and absentee ballot fraud. Other times, he is kinda creepy: Always speaking in that low, booming monotone, without much inflection ever, he seldom smiles (this photo, left, is a rarity), probably because he is constantly worried about communist and Chavista conspiracies against him and our community.

Read related story: Why is Joe Carollo on Mayor Gimenez camp’s payroll?

Most recently, Carollo got paid $144,000 by the Common Sense Now PAC to work on the re-election campaign for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. It’s an obscene amount by any standards. He was paid $6,000 a month for 166 months starting in March of 2015, then $8,000 a month in July and August and then $36,000 in the month of October — in four payments in 17 days. The only reason ever stated is “consulting.”

Please notice that the months that payments exceeded $6,000 is the time when the absentee ballots went out.

But nobody has any idea what Carollo did for Gimenez. And Carollo, apparently, ain’t keen on answering the question.

Let’s see how that plays now in his own campaign. And Ladra can’t help but wonder who his other clients are.

Stay tuned, folks. This is going to be an interesting race.