All four candidates in the race to replace termed out Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber are expected to participate in a forum Monday sponsored by Miami Beach United, an influential activists organization.

Leading the pack are the two Michaels — former city commissioner Michael Góngora and former State Rep. Michael Grieco, also once a city commissioner, both of whom have been eyeing this seat for a while. Barring any October surprise, this should be the make-up of the run-off.

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Former Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Góngora has waited. And waited. And waited.

Góngora has skipped several elections, waiting to run for mayor when he felt he had a better chance. Not against Philip Levine. Not against Dan Gelber, who is finally termed-out. But certainly now in the open seat.

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The campaigning for state seats in this year’s election has begun in earnest. Looks like the first meet and greet of the season is in Coral Gables Tuesday.

Four Democrat candidates for state office will be there for a Q&A at the Coral Gables Democratic Club’s monthly meeting. Among them, only State Rep. Michael Grieco — now running for state senate — has already been elected. He is challenging Republican incumbent Ileana Garcia in Florida Senate District 36.

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Business owners, politicians, community leaders, hospitality workers, waitresses, bartenders, drag queens, seniors and the families of hundreds of service workers have come out against a Miami Beach ballot question that could rollback the last call for alcohol sales from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m.

Opponents say there is no indication crime is worse in those three wee hours. In fact, crime rose during the pandemic when the city imposed a midnight curfew because customers moved from the venues at Ocean Drive and Lincoln Road to private parties at AirBnB rentals in residential neighborhoods. And that tragic murder of a young father at a South Beach sidewalk caf´é happened in broad daylight at 6:30 p.m.

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There seems to be another funky, mysterious political action committee working in Miami Beach for the state elections — but this one is against Michael Grieco, not for him.
Grieco, the popular populist former city commissioner, was forced to resign and drop out of the mayor’s race last year after he got into trouble with another PAC. He is running for state House now and is arguably the front runner. Because South Florida, yeah, but also because the other two Democrats in the primary are no angels themselves.
Former fellow commissioner Deede Weithorn — who lied about having a master’s degree in engineering from MIT — has cozied up to the private prison industry, taking thousands from the evil GEO Group and claiming “personal relationships” made her do it. Meanwhile attorney Kubs Lalchandani represents sketchy plastic surgery factories that have killed and maimed people (ouch) and hasn’t voted in 15 elections (double ouch).
Nobody likes Deede and nobody knows or trusts Kubs so this is Grieco’s race to lose.
Everybody likes Mike. And, despite the PAC thing, they trust him. Go figure. Grieco already has all the major endorsements: The Miami-Dade Firefighters IAFF Local 1403, the Dade County Police Benevolent Association, AFSCME of South Florida — the trifecta of union nods — and also, most recently, the Florida Medical Association (FMA), a physicians’ PAC that raised more than $2.3 million during the 2016 election cycle.
You don’t need a poll to know Grieco’s got the edge here in a three-man race. And the stakes are high for the Aug. 28 primary because whoever wins that will almost certainly win the seat in November because of the demographics.
And that’s why the PAC attacks have started from a new campaign committee called Now Gen. The campaign is predictable: They tell you not to trust Grieco because of the PAC thing. Because that’s all they got. So let’s review what happened, shall we?
Grieco said friends and supporters had formed a PAC that got a $25,000 donation from overseas documented in a different person’s name. That’s called a third party contribution and is highly illegal, although the State Attorney’s Office has sure turned the other cheek multiple times, even once when Ladra brought her proof that the Miami Voice PAC had done exactly the same thing.
Anyway, when Grieco denied any connection and said something like “look into my soul,” — hey, he’s a former prosecutor so the dramatic flair is still there — a reporter with the Miami Herald took it as a personal challenge to prove him otherwise. It got the attention of Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez Rundle, who already had a beef with the former prosecutor, and handwriting experts and the accounts of said friends — who were providing testimony in a hostile environment, afraid for their own reputations, likely — and we have a case? Eh. Maybe.
But maybe not. Because there are so many ways that what he said and did could be misunderstood — or, worse, misinterpreted. Ladra simply is going to do what the rest of the engaged voters in that district are choosing to do and give Grieco the benefit of the doubt. It is hard to imagine he ever intended to do anything so tawdry for a mere $25K when he didn’t need it to win that race.
Read related: Miami Beach: Levine and Wolfson on defense for shady PAC
And how come you don’t see the SAO or any PAC for that matter go after gubernatorial candidate Philip Levine, whose own PAC — the appropriately named Relentless for Progress (aka Request for Proposals) was shut down after it was disclosed (first by this very blog) that Levine and his No. 1 Henchman, former Commissioner Jonah Wolfson solicited $1.5 million in campaign contributions from vendors and contractors at the city. Oh, Ladra knows why! Because Levine and Lalchandani share the same campaign consultant: Christian Ulvert.
So Grieco’s shady PAC was bad but Levine’s shady PAC is forgiven and forgotten and Ulvert can have his own PAC attack Grieco for Kubs, who poses like this for his twitter photo? Sounds like a triple standard.
And, while Miami Beach folks hate outside influence in their hometown politics, the argument against Grieco is falling on deaf ears because he has a core base of supporters who have never left him.
One reason is that Grieco never left them. Sure, he withdrew from the mayoral campaign, but he did not withdraw from their lives or from public service. He has continued to serve his constituency as a Facebook commissioner if not an elected one, warning of flooded streets or traffic jams and keeping citizens informed about important issues and controversial commission items.
Another reason is that Grieco led the charge against Levine’s idea to invite the Communist and totalitarian government of Cuba to open a consulate in Miami Beach. Y’all remember that, right? Levine and Ulvert both took disgusting tourist jaunts to Havana and were so enthralled with the people they were allowed audience with, and the regime thugs they met with, that they thought it would be a good idea to have a Cuban consulate office right here in our face. Although the idea was shot down with a 4-3 vote by the commission to not allow a consulate until there were free elections and a respect for human rights, Grieco was the one who got that ball rolling. Then Levine accused Grieco of being a political opportunist because Grieco was not Cuban (even though he was speaking for his constituents).
“If that was true, I’d need to be gay to support my LGBT brothers and sisters. It would also be saying that only Jews can stand up for our Jewish community, or I would have to be female to fight for our women,” Grieco told the Miami Herald. “I find this logic offensive.”
There’s that dramatic flair. That’s at least as good a quote as the soul one.
In a way, these PAC attacks are still coming from Levine, via his consultant Ulvert, who is chair of the Now Gen PAC. Makes one wonder if Lalchandi — who has a $1.2 million house in Boulder, Colorado, so no wonder nobody knows who he is — is really a plantidate. How hard did Ulvert have to bend his ear?
This time, Grieco doesn’t seem to have his own PAC to worry about.
Of course, he doesn’t really need one either.

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Someone is at it again in Miami Beach — and everyone thinks it’s Michael Grieco.
A campaign mailer arrived in mailboxes last week telling voters about the sweet deal $50,000 job that former Commissioner Joy Malakoff had gotten offered to her by Mayor Dan Gelber. Except that there was no disclaimer on the anonymous piece. And Malakoff isn’t up for election.
But she isn’t the only one targeted in the piece, which quotes Political Cortadito and also has photos of Gelber and Micky Steinberg, who Malakoff gave campaign contributions to. The mayor seems to be the main target, repeatedly calling him unethical. “Did you actually think it would be different with Gelber? Ask Mayor Gelber to explain this unethical payoff attempt,” it reads on the front.
The back of the mailer takes a stab at a general bond referendum the city wants to put on the November ballot.
“…and Mayor Gelber wants us to approve more of our money for a general obligation bond with no specific information on projects and his political friends like Malakoff lurking in the shadows?”
Reated: Ex Miami Beach elected Joy Malakoff got, then dropped juicy $50K job
It also thanks Commissioners Michael Gongora and Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who not only voted against the palanca position but asked the questions that caused the whole community to raise a collective eyebrow and Malakoff to, eventually, back off and decline the offer. The piece doesn’t have any reference to Commissioners Ricky Arriola and John Elizabeth Aleman, photographed right, who also voted in favor of the Malakoff botella.
“I had absolutely nothing to do with it,” Grieco told Ladra over the weekend from Colorado where he’d been skiing. “I’m not in the business of spending my money in the off season. Why Malakoff? Why leave Ricky out of it if I think Ricky is a piece of shit?”
He has a point.
Grieco is an easy suspect because of the secret campaign cash scandal that saw him fall from the front runner position in the Miami Beach mayoral race to a defendant in an elections law case, accused of funneling money from a foreign citizen into a political action committee — that he said he had nothing to do with — through a third party. He resigned his commission seat and agreed to plead no contest — while simultaneously saying he knew nothing about it — and accepted a sentence of one year probation during which he can’t run for office. He also had to pay $6,000 restitution for the costs of the SAO and Miami Dade Ethics Commission investigations.
He was barred from running for office during his probation period, but that could be up in April (it often gets cut in half for first time offenders with “good behavior”). So might he run again? Hmmmm… there would be motivation if he wanted to ensure that Malakoff doesn’t get appointed, as widely rumored, to the seat that may be vacated by Rosen Gonzalez, who is running for Congress, because he has intentions to run again.
But (1) Malakoff’s chances at an appointment got blown when she went for that $50K post. Miami Beach doesn’t put up with that kind of shit. This ain’t Hialeah. And (2) Grieco, who has continued to be politically active on Facebook and posted a video of the Malakoff offer that got a lot of engagement, might be having too much fun as an outside agitator to go back into the fire.
“I’ve kind of enjoyed not being public property,” said Grieco, “I’ve enjoyed waking up in the morning without having 85 targets on my back.
“It’s been nice.”
You mean it was nice. Because he knows that everybody thinks he’s behind this. One of his former colleagues told him that 99% of the people on the street think it was him. Maybe just pure unadulterated revenge aided by his longtime political consultant David Custin? It really does look like Custin’s handiwork.
But the same people who think it could be Grieco wonder if it might be Rosen Gonzalez or Gongora — as if they were interchangeable. I am on Team Kristen all the way, even as a paid communications consultant, so I know for a fact it wasn’t her. She is an underdog with less money than every other candidate and all her funds are for communicating with CD 27 voters, okay? She also doesn’t need to pick any fights on the dais, where she is already alone most of the time.
Gongora said it wasn’t him either. “I got it in the mail,” he told Ladra on Sunday, adding that the thank yous were a “red herring” to make it look like they were involved.
“I certainly wouldn’t want my colleagues to think I spent time and money on this.”
Are there any other suspects?

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