Even before 7 a.m. Tuesday, 4,287 voters had cast absentee ballots in the Coral Gables election. That’s almost 55% of the 7,835 ABs that were sent out.
That’s the highest number of mail-in ballots returned in the City Beautiful in at least 10 years, maybe all of history. And more may arrive Tuesday.
But while the city generally has a higher turnout on Election Day, a 90 percent chance of rain with thunderstorms predicted for Tuesday threatens to keep voters away from the polls this year, making those mail-in votes even more important than ever.
Read related: Mayoral race in Coral Gables is a do-over on over-development
Especially in the mayor’s race, which is a rematch of a contest lost by 187 votes two years ago and may be close again.
Incumbent Raul Valdes-Fauli, who only treats people well the two months he campaigns, beat former Commissioner Jeannett Slesnick in both mail-in and Election Day votes, but the day-of margin was smaller (15).
“We are really working on the absentees this time as that is where I fell short last time,” Slesnick said Monday evening. She said the rain is likely to fall between noon and 4 p.m., which are not peak voting times.
Still, both mayoral campaigns are offering voters rides to the polls. Slesnick put her personal cellphone number (305-975-8158) on all her emails and materials and says people can call her if they need help getting to vote.
Valdes-Fauli’s latest campaign finance report shows a $5,500 expense for “Election Day operations” to Bridge 305, which could be for transportation.
Read related: Development interests fund campaign for Raul Valdes-Fauli
A total of 8,416 people voted in the 2017 election, the highest turnout in the past decade. In 2015, it was 7,084 (3,770 absentee), in 2013 it was 7,047 (2,807 and in 2011, it was 7,922.
Back in 2001, when Valdes-Fauli was voted out of office the first time, 10,271 people voted. But Ladra bets it was a sunny day.
Four candidates are competing for the commission seat vacated by Commissioner Frank Quesada, who is not seeking a second term. They are former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, attorney and homestead exemption cheat Jorge Fors, interim city manager and compulsive liar Carmen Olazabal and Jackson “Rip” Holmes.
“I’m absolutely concerned with tomorrow’s weather,” Cabrera said late Monday night. “Don’t know the impact it will have on turnout. However, traditionally, it has reduced turnout by as much as half.”
Read related: Ralph Cabrera set to enter runoff with campaign cash advantage
Cabrera has reason to be concerned. He has traditionally done much better on Election Day than he has with mail-in ballots.
But, rain or shine, none of the four commission candidates are likely to take 50% plus one so there will likely be a runoff on April 23 between the two  highest vote-getters (read: Cabrera and someone else).
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

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The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office is looking into three mystery mailers attacking former Coral Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera in Coral Gables and attributed to a political action committee that has said it isn’t involved.
Attorney and activist Jack Thompson sent the SAO an email with a link to an earlier Political Cortadito post about the first mailer, which said it was paid for and sent by Leadership for Florida’s Future. But a woman at the Jensen Beach PAC said it wasn’t them.
“Please review this news story and then open a criminal investigation,” wrote Thompson in a March 26 email with the subject “illegal campaign activity.”
Read related: PAC says it did not send hit piece on Ralph Cabrera — so who did?
Since then, two more mailers have come out with the same dark colors and bold letters warning voters about Cabrera’s ethics and ties to developers. Ladra sent the images to the SAO’s office on Friday and was told it would be forwarded to the right unit.
In the meantime, it’s hard to tell if it’s had any impact. Coral Gables voters don’t respond well to hit pieces and they’ve known Cabrera for decades. He was their commissioner for 12 years and has run for office almost since then. Those who support him are likely not swayed. And those who don’t might not fall for these mailers, which are awfully vague and short on attribution. In other words, they stink of smear.
The piece about the ethics quotes the actual complaint from former Mayor Jim Cason, an empty suit rubber stamper who Cabrera challenged twice, and not the findings from the close-out memo, which found he did nothing wrong. Shoot! You can say anything in a complaint. In fact, many campaigns now file complaints on purpose so they can quote them without having any basis.
A third piece landed last week insinuating that because Cabrera has taken developer money, he is in their pocket. Cabrera’s campaign has accepted some development money, notably $7,000 from Armando Codina, who is developing a 16-story luxury residential building on Salzedo, and Agave LLC, which is developing The Plaza, what used to be Old Spanish Village.
But what is Ralph supposed to do? Decline the money he needs to fight off the negative attacks that we knew were coming anyway?  He said these people came unsolicited to him. And it’s only a tiny fraction of Cabrera’s campaign funds that are tied to development.
He also has lots of residents, doctors, lawyers, plumbers. He has $1,000 from Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, $500 from former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and $300 from Gonzalo Sanabria, a Gables rabblerouser who was originally supporting another candidate.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera set to enter runoff with campaign cash advantage
Cabrera is not gonna be beholden to any of them anyway. Anybody who knows him knows he doesn’t owe favors. Even with his friends. Which is one of the things voters should like about him.
“Let’s stop Cabrera and his say one thing, do another agenda,” one piece says. But if there’s one thing that people know about Ralph is that he says what he means and means what he says, which is why some people don’t like him. There is no hidden agenda with Cabrera. His agenda is right there on his sleeve. He will talk ad nauseam about it and it usually has to do with improving city services or public safety. His sometimes self-depricating, brutal honesty is off putting because he won’t go along to get along. That’s another reason some people don’t like him.
In fact, the only thing these mailers prove is that someone is really worried about Cabrera. Perhaps he can win outright on Tuesday and avoid a runoff.
And even though they won’t have the answer before the election, the State Attorney should still find out is who is paying for these mystery mailers. If it’s not Leadership for Florida’s Future, it could be anybody.
It could be illegal foreign money, like in the Miami Beach case that derailed State Rep. Michael Grieco‘s mayoral race. If the Kathy Fernandez-Rundle investigates that and not this, then it looks like it was a personal grudge against a former prosecutor.
It could be the Eighth Street hotels that rent by the hour, including one in the Little Gables annexation area.
It could be the Russians.
Except the only ones who benefit from hurting Cabrera are the other candidates in the commission race. So, that means one of them is attacking Ralph with lies and innuendo using soft money from who knows where.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera’s commission race advantage: Others are unelectable
Only candidate Jorge L. Fors has ties to the PAC through his campaign manager, Steve Marin (right), who was paid at least $63,000 last year by Leadership for what he said was work on some state races. Political observers have also noted that the size of the mailers, the fonts used and the design seem similar to Marin’s. Campaign consultants often have signature looks to their materials.
But Marin told Ladra they were not his and that he would not hide behind a PAC to send mailers from his camp.
And his history with the Jensen Beach PAC could be the very reason that former interim city manager and current candidate Carmen Olazabal and her people may have chosen Leadership for Florida’s Future, to throw the scent off themselves. She has proven to be sneaky before.
Jackson “Rip” Holmes doesn’t have the money, political experience, guidance or, frankly, attention span to pull this off.
So it has to be either Olazabal or Fors, or someone in their circles, which is another reason to vote for Ralph Cabrera, who hasn’t used any of his campaign money — development or otherwise — to pay for a single negative hit piece.

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The Florida Bar has opened an investigation into the homestead exemption fraud by Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors, an attorney and former president of the Coral Gables Bar Association.
After receiving a complaint from activist resident Jack Thompson, Bar Counsel Richard Coombs responded that they would look into the illegal homestead exemptions Fors claimed for years on a Little Havana condo he did not live in.
“Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention,” Coombs wrote Thompson on April 3. “The Florida Bar has opened up a case as the complainant and will investigate this matter.”
Thompson’s complaint is closed, Coombs said, because The Florida Bar filed its very own complaint. That seems interesting.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal homestead exemption
Fors owns a 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo at 1039 SW 5th Street in Miami and said he lived there for a few months before he left to college in Gainesville. He never lived there again and, in fact, voted in the city of Coral Gables — his voter’s registration was at his parents’ house — in 2013, 2015 and 2017. Those same years, however, he still had the homestead exemption on 5th Street.
His illegal homestead exemptions were first discovered by Ladra and exposed earlier this year.
But in January, after he filed to run for office and after Ladra started sniffing around — las malas lenguas say he was tipped off — Fors paid the county a total of $13,178.37 all at once for back taxes he got out of on the condo as well as interest and penalties for the years 2010 through 2017. Why not 2018?
But all of a sudden, it seems, he had an urgent need to pay that? Or is it because he is running for office and he knew it would come up that he tried to cheat taxpayers out of his fair share?
In fact, Fors decided not to tell me about the one-time lump sum payment he made back to the taxpayers he cheated when he and Ladra spoke on the phone about it a month later. Rather than say he had taken care of it, he stuck to the defense that he was allowed to have the homestead exemption even if he didn’t live there because he didn’t have one someplace else.
If he believed that, why did he pay the penalty? And if he paid the penalty, why didn’t he just say so? Was it because that would be admitting to being a scoundrel who tried to get away with stealing thousands of dollars from taxpayers?
Would he still be doing it if he hadn’t run for office?
Questions that hopefully the Bar investigation will ask Fors. But we won’t know the outcome before Tuesday’s election.

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There is likely to be a runoff in the Coral Gables commission race after Tuesday, where none of the four candidates are likely to pull away with more than 50% of the vote.
And when former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera is headed for round 2, as expected, he may be better prepared than whoever the other candidate is: Cabrera would head into Tuesday’s election with more cash on hand than any of the other three hopefuls.
The latest campaign finance reports filed Friday show that Cabrera and attorney Jorge L. Fors are practically neck and neck on the bankroll, with $129,470 for the former commissioner and $122,250 for the Jorgie-Come-Lately with the illegal homestead exemptions.
Read related: Development interests fund campaign for Raul Valdes-Fauli
Both have some development money in their latest reports. Cabrera got $7,000 from Armando Codina, who is building a 16-story luxury condo on Salzedo Street and $5,000 from Agave, developers of The Plaza on Ponce de Leon Boulevard (the old Spanish Village). Earlier, he reported $3,000 from a group of developers on South Bayshore Drive.
There is a huge difference between the fraction of development dollars in Cabrera’s bank and mayoral incumbent Raul Valdes-Fauli, who has tens of thousands in sneaky bundles from developers and development interests. Only a small percentage of Cabrera’s campaign funds are tied to development.
The developers came to him, Cabrera said, because they respect his position and vision for the city. “It’s about the fact that I’m accessible. I may not always agree with them, but I’m always going to tell them the truth,” he told Ladra.
And the former commissioner has far more contributions from non developers, including, notably, $1,000 from the political action committee of Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, $500 from former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and $300 from Gonzalo Sanabria, a Gables rabblerouser (and failed commission candidate) who was originally supporting another Carmen Olazabal in this race.
Fors has some development money, too, but fewer bundles. He has several maximum $1,000 gifts from seemingly separate real estate development and construction interests, including $2,000 from Allen Morris. He also got $1,000 check from former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers, who lost his own commission race two years ago and is still licking his wounds.
But Fors also has more money from outside of Coral Gables, including contributions from Miami Lakes Councilman Josh Dieguez and former Miami Lakes Councilman Nelson Hernandez, who lost his bid for mayor. Most of Fors’ outside money is from lawyers in Miami, which might be expected of the past president of the Coral Gables Bar Association.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera’s commission race advantage — others are unelectable
Former interim city manager and compulsive liar Carmen Olazabal doesn’t have much development or attorney money because, well, she doesn’t have much financial support at all. Olazabal is a distant third with a total of $42,098 collected, much of it from relatives in Puerto Rico.
But both Olazabal and Fors are burning through their cash faster — spending $111,330 and $40,222, respectively — than Cabrera, who has spent less than $70K as of April 4.
That means that Olazabal has about $2,000 to spend between now and Tuesday. Fors has $11,000 or so and Cabrera has about $60,000.
If he keeps the trend, Ralph might have a nice nut to hit the ground running on April 10.

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Looks like the third time is the charm for former Coral Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera. Even if it’s just through the process of elimination.
Cabrera, an insurance consultant, has tried to get back on the dais twice since he left office in 2013. But both times he ran for mayor against Jim Cason. This time he is running for commissioner because, after all, it’s a city manager run government where all votes are equal. And because it was an open seat.
But because it was an open seat, it also attracted some people who would never even think of running against a sitting commissioner. And Cabrera — who is running on his experience and has the endorsement from the police union, the firefighters union, Gables Commissioner Vince Lago and SAVE — has the clear advantage in this election, which ends Tuesday.
Because the other three candidates are basically unelectable.
Read related: Ralph Cabrera outraises opponents in 4-way Gables commission race
The first to write off is Jackson “Rip” Holmes, an, um, colorful downtown property owner who has run unsuccessfully a bunch of times and whose single mission is to bring a department store to Miracle Mile.
But he has baggage galore: Holmes, who can barely finish a thought let alone a sentence, has a 2008 domestic violence charge, later dismissed, from one of his two mail order-type brides and a conviction in 1988 of threatening Jeb Bush, whose father was president at the time, that landed him in federal prison for three years. He has since said the whole thing was a misunderstanding and lavishes Bush with praise on his website, www.ripholmes.com.
Also, Holmes believes the Boston Marathon bombing, the Sandy Hook tragedy and other horrible attacks were inside jobs done by or with the assistance of extraterrestrials. And he has uploaded more than 500 videos to YouTube, the most recent of which are campaign related. Check them out. Cheaper than going to the movies.
Next we can lose former interim city manager and Cason crony Carmen Olazabal, who carried Pat Salerno‘s water and helped him lie to the commission about public safety. Olazabal learned everything she knows from Salerno. She doctored a document from the police department to indicate that there wasn’t an increase in accidents on Ponce de Leon Boulevard due to some palms planted on corners.
Read related: Commission candidate Carmen Olazabal can’t rewrite ugly past
Turns out there was. The cover-up ended with Salerno’s forced, on-the-spot resignation and the uprooting of several palm trees. Olazabal’s exit, not by choice, came months later. But not before she gave herself a 10% raise. Employees dislike her and distrust her so much, most of them are supporting Cabrera.
Today, Olazabal, who is basically running on her gender, has her own government consulting business, working on specific projects (read: no-show jobs) for municipalities, which could present a conflict of interest if she is elected. She was hired by Miami Lakes, for example, to manage the FDOT funded completion of a 1.5 mile route between an elementary and a middle school.
Olazabal is really looking for a job. The four-year commission term pays $31,585 a year.
The last to cross off is attorney Jorge Fors, who has never been involved in any Gables civic life and suddenly wants to be a commissioner because, he says, he had a baby. In truth, Jorgie Come Lately was recruited by the outgoing Frank Quesada, who endorsed his friend despite the fact that Fors has actually claimed an illegal Homestead exemption on a Little Havana condo he didn’t live in for almost a decade each and every year.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal homestead exemption
“I’ve known Jorge a long time and we’ve had cases together, he’s a great guy,” Quesada said in a text message last month after he declined to accept or return my calls. “When he discovered the homestead issue he resolved it.”
Except he didn’t just “discover” the homestead issue. He paid the back taxes, interests and penalties in January because he was running for office and after Ladra started sniffing around and pulling public records.
It’s not like he claimed a false homestead exemption once by mistake and forgot about it. Every year, before March 1, property owners have to claim their exemptions. For eight or nine years, every year, Fors checked the box to claim an exemption on a 5th Street condominium he admits he never lived in. The whole time, he voted in Coral Gables, not the city of Miami.
For a lawyer, he seems to have a disdain for the law. Because that’s not the only one he broke. He has a traffic history a mile long and was arrested for open containers and underage drinking in college. And he’s been caught parking in the handicap space — twice. He is trying to make annexation a campaign issue, using fear tactics to get votes, even though it was supported by a majority of the commission as well as the police chief.
So, we got a nut job, an opportunist liar and a scofflaw cheat fearmonger on the ballot with Cabrera, who may rub some people the wrong way with his brutal honesty but has definitely proven himself as a public servant. He didn’t go along to get along but why would any interested voter want that?
Read related: PAC says it did NOT send hit piece on Ralph Cabrera — so who did?
During his 12 years on the dais, Cabrera lowered taxes twice, brought free wifi and Giralda Under the Stars to the downtown, created the citywide traffic advisory committee, sponsored new residential zoning to fight against McMansions, strengthened the valet parking ordinance, spearheaded an insurance RFP process that saved the city 30% on renewals,  created a local vendor preference program and did a lot more you can find on his website. He actually has a good track record.
Next to the others, he’s a poster boy candidate. So strong are his chances that he is the only candidate being attacked by negative mailers that have no factual base and paid by unknown campaign operatives and donors, which becomes another reason to vote for him.
This should be Cabrera’s year. Not before a runoff with either the liar or the cheat. But he should win that, too.

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Coral Gables voters got a mailer this week that attacks Ralph Cabrera on development, calling him a “career politician” and saying he approved 40% of the tallest buildings in the city.
But nobody is taking the credit.
Not only is the figure pulled out of the sky, with no reference to any research or parameters — are we talking about the five “tallest buildings,” for example? — the piece says it is paid for by a Jensen Beach political action committee that told Ladra Friday it had nothing to do with it.
So that means we do not know and may never know who really paid for the mail piece. Unless we can get the State Attorney’s Office to investigate. Because someone did break the law here.
Read related: Coral Gables candidate Jorge Fors had illegal Homestead exemption
Ladra’s first guess was that the piece came from Jorge Fors‘ camp. Neither Carmen Olazabal, the onetime interim city manager, nor downtown property owner Jackson “Rip” Holmes have the funds you would need to do this kind of mailer. And, besides, the Leadership for Florida’s Future PAC has ties to Fors’ campaign manager Steve Marin, who got $63,000 from them last year.
But Marin, who said he was paid for work on state races, told Ladra he had nothing to do with the hit piece, either. “I don’t have a PAC for this reason, said Marin, adding that Fors’ mailers will come directly from the campaign.
Ladra specifically asked a PAC administrator if they had maybe sent it on behalf of Steve Marin. Debbie Millner, wife of PAC Chairman Michael Millner, vehemently denied sending it on behalf of anybody.
“We know nothing about it. We didn’t send it out,” Millner told Ladra Friday morning. “No one asked us if they could use our political committee at all.”
Leadership for Florida’s Future doesn’t have any contributions or expenses reported since October, except for $1,300 paid last month in accounting fees. The report for March won’t be filed and public until after the election April 9.

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