Commissioner Pat Keon has drawn first blood in the mayoral race with a dark money attack mailer against Vice Mayor Vince Lago that calls him “a rubber stamp for big developers.”

It’s almost laughable, because Keon is the development darling in the race. Lago has consistently been the lone no vote on several controversial developments — he voted against the Agave project and Gables Station — as well as the sole voice of reason on the Miracle Mile rezoning.

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Please forgive me if you were at the Coral Gables Chamber’s candidate forum on Thursday and you heard Ladra snoring in the back row. Thank you, Chamber president Mark Trowbridge for the invite, but it was not worth risking COVID to be there live. I should have watched it on Zoom.

Even Mayra Joli, the nodding lady from the Trump town hall, was kind of toned down. ¿Que le pasó?

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Coral Gables Vice Mayor Vince Lago raised more money for his campaign in January than any other month since he began fundraising a year ago.

With a reported additional $69,440, that brings his total to more than $228,000. His only opponent so far — qualification is at the end of the month — is Commissioner Pat Keon, who began in December and has raised a total of $48,325, including $31,325 in January, according to the latest campaign finance reports, which were filed last week.

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Coral Gables taxpayers pay sweet property bills for sweet services like trash pick-up and crack code enforcement. For the last eight months at least, they’ve also been paying for the city manager’s political consultant.
Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark has old timey Gables political consultant Stan Adkins — who also runs Commissioner Pat Keon‘s campaigns — officially helping her with the long delayed annexation process in the High Pines and Ponce Davis neighborhoods. But he also seems to be unofficially helping her manipulate the commission, do damage control on bad news and even script what the mayor and employees are supposed to say at commission meetings, according to emails and text messages between them.
According to city records, Adkins has been making $4,000 a month since November, mostly it seems for PR projects for some of the most controversial or touchy city issues. That would amount to $48,000 a year, which is under the $50,000 that would require the city manager to get approval from the city commission. There is also an invoice that indicates Adkins and Associates did some flyers and door hangers for several city programs and a brochure on legislative priorities — for a total of $11,834.
Emails between Adkins and several city officials indicate that he is helping the city sell the annexation of High Pines and Ponce Davis to somebody — either the commission or the residents. He was also consulted on the selection of the logo for the city’s hurricane preparedness public outreach, a media buy of radio ads, messaging on the police vacancies and recruitment and PR for other city programs or issues — most notably the poop scoop campaign.
But it looks like he does poop scooping of another kind.
The City Beautiful’s own public information officer, Maria Higgins Fallon, keeps Adkins up with social media posts about the Gables and also sent him links to stories about Hudak’s pool party as well media inquiries.
Some emails and text messages make him out as the city manager’s personal fixer, ala Olivia Pope on Scandal, only not as pretty and no white hat.
Read related: Coral Gables manager spanked for interfering with background check
When the Sun-Sentinel published a series of stories and editorials last month about how Cathy had left Hollywood taxpayers o the hook for a $28 million giveaway grant to the Margaritaville developer, Adkins got a series of emails from Higgins Fallon, with links from the paper. No words. No instructions on what to do, because he knew what to do. Damage control with commissioners is Ladra’s guess.
Neither Adkins nor Swanson-Rivenbark returned repeated calls to their cellphones. Swanson-Rivenbark did not return text messages either.
There is no doubt that the Gables city manager needs political mentoring or advice. In fact, given her recent behavior, Ladra is surprised she has any. Maybe Adkins is losing his touch. Let’s reprise, shall we?
Swanson-Rivenbark has been hurdling one catastrophe after another since she was hired back from the city of Hollywood, where she was under investigation for mismanaging $1 million in city funds:

Almost immediately she started hiring lackeys and cronies.
She tried to appoint two police chiefs and was told she could not by her own city attorney.
She covered up the spying on citizens and commissioners by a police major.
She took it upon herself to cancel a study ordered by the commission to look at the impact of development along the U.S. 1 corridor, paying a $50,000 fee anyway.
She seemingly intentionally planned and designed a new public safety building without talking to or involving the public safety leaders.
She got into a pissing match with the beloved police chief, issuing an opportunistic and unwarranted reprimand from a bogus and politically-motivated anonymous complaint she later had to rescind.
Then it was learned that she interfered with the 2015 background check of one of her lackeys.
And now we find out that she’s been using a taxpayer paid political fixer or spin doctor.

Part of the scope of Adkins’ job description, it appears, was reviewing the script that Swanson wrote for herself, Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli and Chief Ed Hudak for the meeting in April when she was to rescind the unwarranted reprimand that she never should have issued in the first place.
“I accept the manager’s resolution and want to thank her. I respect the manager’s authority,” Hudak was supposed to say. “We both share a desire to have a government with the highest integrity. We have agreed to work together in the best interest of the city going forward.”
Adkins asked: “Has this been agreed to?”
Read related: Coral Gables manager’s petty reprimand on chief backfires on her
No, it had not. Hudak never ended up saying those words. Which apparently surprised some people. After Hudak accepted the rescinding of the reprimand, Commissioner Keon asked if that was it? Didn’t he have something else to say? Hmmm?
Now we know why she asked. She must have known about the script! What else has she and Cathy been conspiring because now we know why Keon seems to always defend the manager no matter what: They share a consultant.
Ladra doesn’t know how Keon is going to be able to look anybody else in the eye at the commission meeting on Tuesday, which should get pretty interesting now.
Commissioner Vince Lago was already going to discuss her inappropriate interference with the background check into her lackey, Assistant City Manager Frank Fernandez, who may have been hired without the safety net of a full and independent vetting.
Ladra is certain that the discussion will be expanded now to include this. How could it not?

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The showdown that some people thought was gonna happen two weeks ago in Coral Gables City Hall over the city manager’s handling of the police chief may come Tuesday when commissioners finally talk about the strange structure that has an assistant city manager act as the de facto head of the police department.
Well, wait a minute. Nevermind. It might not happen at all.
Seems that the original item to discuss the administrative structure — which has been fueling if not directly responsible for serious issues from vacancies to morale — has been changed at the last minute. Now the mayor wants to discuss “constructive talks underway between the city Manager’s Office and Police Chief.”
Oh, really? You don’t say.
Maybe Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli is satisfied that the Fraternal Order of Police is now going to choose the investigative agency or investigator who looks into the “anonymous complaint” (read: trash job) against Chief Ed Hudak for dropping by, after being invited, to a pool party thrown for female officers. But this consolation prize is not enough.
The Coral Gables FOP is only getting this opportunity to find a truly independent investigator — and they’re going to suggest three options they are okay with — only after it was revealed right here on Political Cortadito that City Manager Cathy Swanson Rivenbark had tried to manipulate an investigation by the same agency once before. Emails obtained by Ladra show that Swanson tried to whitewash a background investigation that was done before the hiring of Assistant City Manager Frank Fernandez, who s also the “director of public safety.” She asked the investigator to ignore and not seek any information from the Broward PBA because it would shed some negative light on Fernandez, who she apparently had already decided she was going to hire no matter what. What it means is that she wanted the information that she already knew existed off the reports that commissioners would get.
Wait a minute. Again? Isn’t this the kind of thing that did former City Manager Pat Salerno in? And how can anyone know when the city manager is telling the truth? Ladra would suggest you can’t. Swanson cannot be trusted. This is not the only reason why.
She already orchestrated a massive cover up when she put Maj. Teresa Molina on paid leave until she retired after the police officer was caught spying on citizens and electeds during a commission meeting, taking cellphone pics of text messages over Maria Cruz‘s shoulder. Everybody knows that Molina was doing this for someone, not for her own health and pleasure, but there was never an investigation into that and, instead, the major was given what amounts to a paid vacation for her silence.
She then paid a $50,000 penalty fee to suspend a study in progress that the city commission had requested on the impact of recent and proposed development on the U.S.1 corridor, She did this on her own without seeking the commission’s approval.
She’s hired a number of cronies, some with six figure salaries for positions that didn’t exist before she got to the City Beautiful (more on that later).
And Ladra will bet that she knows more than she lets on about the “anonymous complaint,” which was really a planted precursor meant to trigger an unnecessary investigation meant to provide the city manager with fodder to fire the chief. When that didn’t pan out, after her independent inquiry cleared Hudak of any wrongdoing, the city manager stretched and misconstrued the investigator’s words to issue an obviously gratuitous and retaliatory reprimand — more than 10 years in the making — which she was forced to rescind two weeks later.
If not then why go to such extents to keep the investigation into the “anonymous complaint” from happening?
Swanson is a good actress and she is also a good producer. At the last meeting, a citizen who spoke seemingly spontaneously and of his own accord about not needing an independent investigation into the “anonymous complaint” — and, indeed, trying to discourage the city from pursuing it — seems to have done so at her request.
Emails obtained by Cruz show that attorney Terence Connor — who also, by the way, gave Commissioner Pat Keon $100 in her last election — may have gotten a call from someone in the city administration inviting him to come to the meeting.
The attorney had previously written an email to Keon in November saying that it would be inappropriate to end the investigation that was started by the “anonymous complaint” midstream. That email was apparently forwarded to Swanson, who then forwarded it to Raquel Elejabarrieta with one line from her. “You should drop him a note.” The email was sent at 10:18 p.m. the night of April 24 — after residents showed up at City Hall to support Hudak and, in many cases, trash her.
Hmmm. You should drop him a note.
Valdes-Fauli and other commissioners — and Ladra mean Vince Lago, because we know Mike Mena is a useless empty suit who won’t do anything — should ask Swanson what did she mean by that?
They should also instruct her to go back to the administrative structure that existed before she came to the city, where the police chief is the police chief and reports to the city manager and police officers don’t feel like they have two different bosses. Hudak needs to be able to be chief and control the department and be listed as the head of the agency at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, especially Internal Affairs, where Fernandez hired someone against the chief’s will.
And Fernandez should go with Swanson — they seem to be a package deal — and the city should look for a new city manager they can trust.
And maybe they need to add the Terence Connor emails to the scope of the investigation of the “anonymous complaint.” Ladra would seek his phone records.

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Former Coral Gables Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers lost his bid to come back to office by unseating an incumbent Tuesday.

But did he really try? That’s questionable (read: not so much).

Commissioner Pat Keon, who had five times as much more money as he did, won handily, 57 to 43 percent in one of the two commission seats on the ballot. The other will head into a runoff April 25 between longtime grandma activist Marlin Ebbert and land use attorney Mike Mena.

Keon’s campaign was almost laughable. While she had raised at least $222,000 as of March 28 to spend on print, radio and even TV ads, she also basically took credit for the Gables tree canopy in an email blast and for a resolution that forces the city to program inclusive recreational activities for special needs kids. Really? Naturally both are good things, and I applaud the inclusion legislation. But was it necessary? And, even if we live in a world and county where it is, isn’t that, like the protection of trees, a no-brainer? Isn’t it far more difficult to make the right decision when developers are pressuring you to approve an oversized project despite the overwhelming objection of a huge majority of adjacent residents?

Read related story: ‘Chip’ Withers vs Pat Keon because of the Paseo project

In fact, Keon’s Achilles heel was just that: She doesn’t listen to the people. She’s oblivious to their fears about the lack of police presence or their disgust with some metal flower sculptures that 1,600 people signed a petition to have relocated from the Segovia Biltmore circle. She is arrogant and has this “I know better than you” tone in everything.

But Withers never used that against her. He thought he could run a shoestring grassroots campaign that banked on his name recognition instead of any real fundraising to get the anti-development, arrogant incumbent message out.

This is also proof that you can’t get elected by just los cuatro gatos impressed by Modesto “Mitch” Maidique and your immediate neighbors, no matter how many of them you have. It was pretty obvious, and several sources confirmed to Ladra, that Withers had been recruited by the Riviera Homeowners Association to run against Keon because of her vote to approve the Paseo project on U.S. 1.

They never put their money where their mouth is and were, basically, outmessaged. That’s the only reason she got more than 1,200 votes ahead. It should have at least been closer.