For all his exaggerated experience as a manager and fiscal expert, it’s ironic (and somewhat funny) that Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez would pay his re-election qualifying fee with a bad check.

That’s right. His original check was no good; it was back dated more than a year. The mayor was allowed to correct this with a “replacement check” — and yet nobody asks if this doesn’t render him unqualified to run our county’s $7 billion budget. Imagine that!

Gimenez, or whoever writes and/or signs his campaign checks for him, intended to qualify for the race on June 17. That’s when he presented his qualifying documents — a sworn oath, his financial disclosure with a net worth of $1.5 million — along with a check for the $1,800 fee. Only it was dated June 10, 2015 — more than a whole year earlier. Is he living in the past, or what? Someone at Elections must have noticed this before it went to the bank because they called and notified his campaign that the check would likely not be honored — you know, banks have a thing about checks that are older than 90 or 180 or 365 days — and that they needed a new check with a more recent date if the incumbent wanted to qualify.

It was like a “Head’s up!”

The deadline to qualify was at noon the next day. But, apparently, Gimenez couldn’t wait. Who knows? Maybe he was playing golf that morning. Because someone delivered the check right after 10:20 p.m. the night of the 20th, according to a stamp on a copy of the replacement check at the Elections Department.

That’s right, again! His second check was time stamped at 10:20-something p.m. You can’t really see all of the last digit on the time stamp, but it looks like a 1, like 10:21 p.m.

Deputy Elections Supervisor Carolina Lopez told Ladra that the same head’s up would have been given to anyone who writes a year-old check, even though nobody did. She also said that nobody had to come in on overtime just for the mayor. The office was already open and employees were already working to file qualifying documents online late into the night, Lopez explained. She said they would accept a check or missing qualifying documents from anyone, not just their boss, if someone came in the middle of the night.

That’s the time they are doing their quality control, Lopez said. Any and all candidates are notified when a deficiency is found. Usually, it’s a notarization issue. The document isn’t notarized or the notary commission is expired. Other times they forget to sign the oath or they sign the wrong oath for the wrong office.

“I dealt with many a candidate after 5 o’clock,” said Lopez, who is, indeed, extremely responsive after business hours and who reminded me that there were about 600 candidates on the ballot when you include all the party committee people.

Okay, I didn’t check 600 of them. But a cursory review of time stamps on dozens of other candidate qualifying checks — from judicial races to community council wannabes — shows that they all presented payment during business hours. Only Gimenez got a time stamp on his check after 5 p.m. Waaaaay after 5 p.m. What does that say about his ability to manage a $7 billion budget? What if he mistakenly backdates a grant application or something? Or doesn’t complete the paperwork on time?

Ladra is being sarcastic. Because obviously the competent Miami-Dade employees will take care of it. Proven by the eagle-eyed staffer at the elections department who noticed the backdated check and took care of the mayor’s mistake. So, at best it’s a sign that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. At worst, it could be an abuse of power. Because Ladra can’t understand why Lopez wouldn’t tell anybody who might be given a head’s up to please come in the next day. After all, we are busy working late into the night with the paperwork we already have! Even if there were a dozen employees there in some back room filing paperwork, the front door to the Doral Elections office wasn’t unlocked, was it? Someone had to call to get inside. The intake window wasn’t manned. Someone had to stop what they were doing to get the mayor’s new check right before 10:30 p.m.

“We do not provide any preferential treatment to anybody,” Lopez told Ladra, and I can understand why she might be upset at my doubts but it’s not about her. “Most of my calls are after 5 p.m. because that is when I have a chance to review the files,” she said. “In order to give our candidates the proper level of service, I give them every opportunity and entertain many calls after 5 p.m. I’m on 24 hours a day.”

Well, if this is a privilege allowed to everyone, I urge candidates in the next election cycle to beat the rush and go in the middle of the night on the eve before the deadline. Call Carolina. She’ll open the door for you.

The issue has become more relevant now because, even if there was no abuse of power, there is certainly a double standard being applied here when the mayor refuses to instruct the elections supervisor to start counting 127,000-plus petitions from voters who want campaign finance reform. A delay in verifying the signatures could mean the measure is not on the November ballot and the activists have sued the county to make it happen.

So maybe Gimenez is simply selfish. He moved hell and high water to make sure he was on the ballot to keep his gravy train seat but he won’t lift a finger to get the campaign reform measure requested by more than 127,000 voters on the ballot. Because he doesn’t represent them. He only represents himself.

By the way, that is more votes than he got for mayor in 2012.

But Gimenez is not known for sticking to process, is he? Look at what happened with the Liberty Square Rising redevelopment bid and the water and sewer infrastructure bid and a number of other business contracts in which he has impacted (read: meddled in) the process. Why wouldn’t he violate the process to keep his job? He has a history of thinking the rules don’t apply to him.

This should be investigated. The State Attorney’s Office and the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust should ask for video tape from the cameras in the lobby and sworn statements from everybody involved in procuring or receiving the replacement check, including whoever wrote the receipt for the second check and corrected the date from the 21st to the 20th. Because the first date hand-written on the receipt for the check was June 21 and the 1 was changed to a 0.

So did the mayor even qualify on time? When was that exactly? Did he get the replacement check in at 10:21 p.m. on the 20th, as indicated by the time stamp, or on the 21st, as indicated in the hand-written receipt? An investigation would end any speculation about what happened.

Because, at worst, Carlos Gimenez used his position to get an unfair advantage in the electoral process. And, at best, he doesn’t know how to write a check.

Voters deserve to know which it is.

As the election gets closer, Carlos Gimenez and those friends and family who benefit from his elected office have gotten more desperate in their attempt to hang on to power and the goose that lays the golden egg.

First, they say that she was against police body cameras. False. Regalado simply said that there needed to be a policy and standard operating procedures in place first. She testified to this in Tallahassee, as a leader should, urging for a uniform policy to guide departments. This month, she was vindicated when a study by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights raised concerns about departments that rush to use body cameras without any policies or standard operating procedures.

Then, they say that she has been late or missed a bunch of school board meetings. Wrong again. She doesn’t always go to the proclamations and awards given out for the first hour or so, but Raquel Regalado has probably introduced more legislation than any other school board member in the history of the school board. You don’t do that by missing meetings. And anybody who knows her knows that she is an absolute workaholic.

The next allegation is an even bolder lie, just as absentee ballots began to arrive: They say she committed fraud, claiming a Homestead Exemption on a home she did not reside in.

Last week, a blogger with malicious intent wrote about this false allegation that the Gimenez campaign had fed him. How do I know they fed him? Because three different reporters have admitted to me that they were provided with the same information. That’s standard for campaigns and not a surprise. We, too, have provided reporters with information given to us. Or did you think the Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks found out about Ralph Garcia Toledo and his $200-an-hour job at Water and Sewer all by himself?

Read related story: Raising money for the mayor; making money from his administration

The difference is, the information we provide to the media is true. I say “we” because I am officially on Team Raquel in a media and communications role. That means that when I get information or tips that I normally would write about on this blog, I instead try to get others to write about it in the mainstream media. Because I know the TV stations and the daily paper have a bigger audience. And that is part of my job on the campaign. Not writing about the campaign here, like some of the Gimenez apologists will charge. Recently, I have been forced to publish the information here because the election is getting closer and voters deserve to know. But everything I write and everything I forward to other reporters is true.

The mayor and Dotty Vazquez at his Hialeah campaign office in 2012. She now works in his office at County Hall as a county employee.

Like the fact that a well known boletera who helped Gimenez in 2012 — an election in which his campaign was tainted with absentee ballot fraud — is now working in the mayor’s office as a $36,000-a-year aide doing public outreach in the senior centers,no less. Or that the mayor — who gave millions away in federal housing grants to the wrong people (wink, wink) — has proposed to pay the demanded refund to the U.S. Housing department by promising portions of future federal grants for several years. You know, after he’s no longer mayor we’ll get less federal housing money. And the concern that his cuts of domestic violence funding and police units could be rooted in a personal attitude toward women and relationships because of his own 2004 charge and his son’s charges of domestic violence.

Meanwhile, the information provided by the Gimenez campaign is false. Raquel Regalado is at every meeting or almost every meeting (maybe she missed one or two of them in six years, I don’t want to overstate). She is all for body cameras — done the right way. And she never committed any fraud. And that’s why none of the mainstream or legitimate media jumped on the story when they first got the property information, which was public.

In fact, it took the blogger several visits to the property appraiser to make this story happen. That’s right. It wasn’t a story, there was nothing there, until the blogger took comments made by Regalado out of context, cobbled together a story ignoring any facts that didn’t support his theory, and then got the appraiser to go after her three weeks before the election. When he was told that she didn’t have a property for them to lien, this blogger took it upon himself to inform the appraiser about a family home she got 10 percent of after her mother died, so they had something to move on. Maybe the media should start reporting on how this blogger set this whole thing in motion. What motivated him to cobble together this story out of comments taken out of context and bent to his hypothesis?

Once Raquel provides the complete documents, this will all be over.

Because it is ludicrous to believe that, as a sitting Miami-Dade School Board member, Raquel Regalado would intentionally cheat her own constituency for what? For a measly $2,000 or $2,500? Because the rest of it is interest and penalties. It is even more ridiculous to imagine that even if she had been evil enough to take advantage of the situation, she wouldn’t have taken care of it when she decided to run for mayor. What’s $2,500 to millionaire Norman Braman, her main donor?

It wasn’t taken care of because she didn’t even know about it. Fraud, ladies and gentlemen, needs intent. It is defined as the “intentional use of deceit, a trick or some dishonest means to deprive.” Key word: Intentional.

Yes, she moved out of her house and into a rented home. She was in the midst of a contentious divorce and her ex-husband had a claim on the house they had once shared. Meanwhile, the bank was foreclosing because she could not afford, as a newly-single mother, both the mortgage payments and her daughter’s autism therapy. It was not a difficult decision for her to make and any parent can understand. She abandoned the house so that her ex-husband would take up residence and possession of the home he had some rights to, as per the divorce settlement. He had every intention of moving into the home. When he didn’t, the foreclosure moved forward.

She never rented the house to anybody, as is the case with real Homestead exemption fraud cases. Nor did she claim another Homestead exemption on the new home, as other people committing fraud do. She didn’t stay and live in the house for free during the foreclosure. And, in fact, since she wasn’t paying the mortgage, she didn’t continue to pay the taxes on it. Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia said the property taxes for both years that Regalado didn’t live in the house were paid for by the mortgage company that took possession of the home. Foreclosure proceedings take time. Her name was still listed on the property but the home was no longer Raquel’s. The bills were paid by the bank.

So the oversight isn’t even hers! The mortgage company got the tax bill and paid it, failing to make the changes to indicate there was nobody living in the home anymore and that it was in the process of foreclosure.

See? There’s no there there. But you can’t fit all that on a robo call.

Curiously, before Raquel could clear things up, the Gimenez campaign already had their own robo call out to voters using the word fraud three times. It went out immediately after the story — like it had already been written and edited and approved and produced. Paid for by some Committee for Integrity — yeah, right — that is unlisted as a PAC or ECO, probably a non-profit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors. Astute political observers might surmise that the robo call — and the whole story and complaint to begin with — are part of the long planned political strategy mapped out by the Gimenez team against the only real challenge they’ve had in five years.

There’s more. Please press this “continue reading” button to “turn the page.”

Did you hear the one about the mayor’s campaign consultant working a side gig for a casino giant? No, there’s no punchline. Because it’s no joke.

Up until just a few months ago, Jesse Manzano-Plaza – Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s political strategist, campaign spokesman and chief apologist — had been working for Resorts World and Genting, the Mayalasian New York partnership that wants to build a massive slot house in downtown Miami, for at least a year.

That’s right. That means he had both jobs at the same time.

Wouldn’t that be a classic example of a conflict of interests? The mayor is supposed to represent our best interests. So are his people, by extension. But one of his operatives represents the best interests of a casino giant that wants variances and land use changes so they can bring slots to Biscayne Bay. Or, well, he did until just the other day.

Original plans for the Genting massive casino on Biscayne Bay. Now they just want a big slot house.

In fact, we wouldn’t even have known about Jesse’s side job — and he would still be working for Genting today — if he hadn’t been forced to quit after his client sued the county (read: us taxpayers) to force the casino a few months ago. And how much you wanna bet his departure is just a leave of absence. There could be his job waiting for him after the election — if he wins.

And how many other clients does Manzano have that could take advantage of his connection to the mayor and the mayor’s leverage with commissioners? We just don’t know. He won’t say. He comes from the Carlos Curbelo school of secret lobbying clients because they used to work together.

Read related story: New purple spindoctor duo: Jesse Manzano & Ben Pollara

But he is also still a junior partner at LSN Partners with Marcelo Llorente and Alex Heckler. They lobbied for CH2M Hill, the engineering firm that won a $139-million contract and which put Ralph Garcia Toledo, the mayor’s BFF and former campaign driver, in a $200-an-hour job at the Water and Sewer Department — $672,000 billed to the county so far since December 2014 — for going to meetings and tracking the progress of certain projects.

Yes, I know. Time to break out the flowcharts. The conflicts of interests that stem from the mayor’s office are hard to track without flowcharts.

Manzano went on live Spanish-language radio in May after the Miami Herald exposed his lobbying job with Genting to defend himself. “Unfortunately, I have to make a living,” he said, trying to turn the tables by calling any attention to this obvious conflict a political attack. Because any criticism of him or Gimenez is a political attack, didn’t you know?

But Jesse admitted to having been a registered lobbyist for Genting from 2011 to 2015, when he last registered — which was nine days before getting his first paycheck from the mayor’s political committee. Since joining the mayor’s team, he said he’s only worked as a “communications consultant” for Genting. Yeah, that’s lobbying with a different name. He was communicating with Gimenez in an advocacy role and consulting Genting on how to get the mayor on their side.

Like with $60,000 in campaign donations from Genting and the Capo Group, which owns the Genting resort in Bimini. That’s a good start.

“I am not registered as a lobbyist for the company,” Manzano said in the interview with Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera. “I haven’t been since last year. Precisely to avoid whatever perception that could create.”

Read related story: Jesse Manzano and Carlos Gimenez, together again for 2016

Perception? Perception, bruh? The reality still is that someone close to the mayor and working to re-elect him to office is also and simultaneously working to seek concessions — whether as a lobbyist or as a consultant or as a publicist — for his client, a casino giant that needs access and favors from politicians.

How is this a conflict? Well, are we to believe that Jesse didn’t know about the lawsuit coming against the county?  Because that seems far-fetched. More likely is a scenario in which Genting sought Manzano’s advice on handling public opinion and what in the business is called “crisis management.” It is also likely that Manzano’s very insight into and access to Carlos Gimenez was pivotal to his role. Or is somebody going to tell us that Jesse, knowing Gimenez and having daily contact, didn’t give Genting the best possible work product he could? Or did he warn the mayor about the lawsuit?

But the problem really isn’t Manzano. The problem is Gimenez. Because this is a pattern with Carlos Gimenez. The people closest to him have ties to county vendors and developers with big plans to take advantage of us. It is so commonplace and expected now that people regularly refer to these inside deals as the mayor’s friends and family plan.

• His lobbyist son works for Donald Trump at the same time as Gimenez wants to give the millionaire presidential candidate a public golf course.
• The company that employs his other son gets a $4 million no-bid contract to re-roof the Adrienne Arsht Center after a leak
• His daughter-in-law Barby lands a job (wink, wink, nod) with another subcontractor for “public outreach” on the same multi-million water and sewer project mandated by federal and state courts.
• His in-laws get multiple no-bid contracts for multi-million dollar construction projects at the airport and elsewhere
• His best friend and campaign finance chair gets a juicy $200-an-hour post for mostly “clerical work,” by his own admission, and has billed the county more than $672,000 in 18 months.
• And now we know his campaign consultant is paid by the casino giant that wants to bulldoze its way onto Biscayne Boulevard. Or was paid until the other day. And will be paid again.

Why do I feel like Ladra’s forgetting someone? This is one of the reasons why the public has lost faith in local government. Because of insider deals and conflicts of interests that erode our trust.

And if Carlos Gimenez is the king of the sweet insider deal, and he is, Jesse Manzano is the court jester. He’s the clever entertainer, or “licensed fool,” used by the king to distract the commonfolk (read: us voters) with magic, storytelling and sleight of hand. That’s what he does when he serves as the mayor’s mouthpiece, which is a lot lately.

Jesse is the one who represents the mayor in public forums (county spokesman Mike Hernandez can only work on campaign stuff in secret, not out in the open). Gimenez nunca da la cara. He is afraid to debate or even face Raquel Regalado, his only real and viable challenger, even on air at separate times. So he always sends Jesse or Mike (who has also consulted for private companies and now wants to be head of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, God save us), to respond and speak for him. This week, Manzano has gone on the radio and Spanish-language TV to attack Regalado and defend his boss. After all, Genting is not going to get anything out of Raquel! So Manzano is using a poorly researched and possibly libelous blog post that he planted the seeds of to malign the only real challenge to his ace in the hole for Genting and CH2M Hill and whatever other clients he may have that we don’t know about because they haven’t sued the county yet. He is really only doing his job.

The only question is, which job and for whom?

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez continues to dodge debates with any of his challengers and is expected to be a no-show to the debate Wednesday hosted by a coalition of women’s groups — the first real public debate in such an important election.

A member and former vice president of the League of Women Voters of Miami Dade — which is hosting the debate with the YWCA of Miami-Dade, the Women’s Chamber of Commerce and The Women’s Fund of Miami-Dade —  tweeted last week that the mayor had not responded to their first request. In fact, he is the only candidate not to respond.

So his campaign was sent a letter.

“As the incumbent candidate, we invite you to participate and join your fellow candidates at this debate,” it starts. “We hope you accept the invitation so that you may share your platform and vision for Miami-Dade with our members and community. Through this debate, it is our collective intent to encourage informed and active participation in government.”

Herald county reporter Doug Hanks retweeted her tweet and said “four weeks to go and no debate to cover yet.”

To which the woman replied: “I hope you’ll be there Wed, despite no Gimenez. The people should know all the candidates’ platforms.”

But c’mon, people! Do you really expect Carlos Gimenez to go anywhere in public where he might be asked uncomfortable questions about his pal Ralph Garcia Toledo‘s $200-an-hour job at Water and Sewer? Of course not. Or about his son’s threatening phone calls to candidates who dared run for the same school board seat as his aunt? Nah.

Even before recent news stories got Gimenez hiding his head in the sand, he was not looking forward to debates. He may have told El Nuevo Herald’s Enrique Flor that he would debate all the candidates as he did in 2011, but his campaign has repeatedly declined requests. He was a no-show to the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Association forum last week. And a longtime Spanish-language TV show producer told Ladra that the mayor’s campaign manager, Jesse Manzano, had specifically said they did not want to debate his strongest rival, Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado — the only one “within striking distance” according to polls — on a live show.

It’s not just because he’s an even worse speaker in Spanish than he already is in English.

It’s because he knows he can’t deny documented facts about his lack of vision and his mismanagement with special taxing districts and the People’s Transportation Plan half penny sales tax fund, which he has been misdirecting to balance the general budget. It’s because he knows he can’t defend his miserable track record with public safety, where he puts the optics of body cameras before the reality of a 500 officer shortage. It’s because he can’t deflect from the broken promises he has made in terms of transit solutions and transparency.

And it’s because he really doesn’t want to talk about his friend Ralph. Especially since Gimenez — photographed here with Garcia Toledo and former county aviation director Jose Abreu at Greenstreets in Coconut Grove around the same time Ralph started billing the county — might be subpoenaed about this and whatever other deals he and his BFF may have cooked up.

In fact, the only debate that Ladra believes Gimenez has accepted is the one on WPLG’s This Week in South Florida on Aug. 14 — which will be almost two weeks after absentee ballots are mailed out on Tuesday.

Happy coincidence? I think not.

But maybe by then we will know more into a criminal investigation into Garcia Toledo’s fraud. Ladra has been told that the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office is looking into that lucrative inside deal. Because that’s what it is, ladies and gentlemen. Fraud. The wonderfully detailed Miami Herald story about how this totally unqualified insider — the mayor’s BFF, driver and campaign finance chair — got a lucrative contract where he has billed $672,000 in 18 months for having meetings and filing papers kinda glossed over one thing: That bill is intentionally and fraudulently bloated.

It appears that Garcia Toledo’s hourly rate benefits from a multiplier used in many municipal contracts. They pay vendors more when they have overhead — like office space, staff, equipment. All things that Garcia Toledo, whose address is a P. O. Box, does not have.

Going by past performance by our SAO public corruption unit, this investigation will not be completed before the Aug. 30 election and will probably end at Ralph. But if anyone thinks that Gimenez didn’t know about the inflated invoicing, well then they are not paying attention.

Remember how convoluted this whole process was when a $1.6 billion contract — part of federally- and state-mandated compliance projects we have to undertake in Water and Sewer — was awarded to AECOM after first being awarded to a competing company, CH2M Hill. Don’t feel bad for either of them. They both have a piece of this multi-billion infrastructure overhaul.

But you can be certain that Garcia Toledo’s subcontract as a contract manager — especially when there are probably dozens of county employees who are incredibly more qualified than he is — was part of the required criteria on the hush hush. It was part of the deal made. “You get this chunk of the billion dollar pie but you have to hire my buddy to do, well, really nothing.”

And Ladra will also bet that Ralph is not the only one who was made part of the deal. Las malas lenguas say his is not the only subcontract being investigated because of ties to Mayor Gimenez (more on that later).

An unofficial report in 2014 from the director of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust said that “the decision making process as a whole, on a project of great significance to Miami-Dade County, has raised substantial issues regarding the integrity of the process and the fairness of the outcome, which could have a negative impact upon the public trust in County government.”

Ya think?

And that, again, is why Gimenez won’t debate. He knows he can’t regain the public trust so why bother having to try?

Especially if there’s going to be uncomfortable questions about his buddy’s sweet deal.

You could cut the tension in the room with a knife Tuesday night, when the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations had their first candidate’s forum and former friends Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo faced off for what could be the first time in this election cycle — or ever.

They are so used to working together, not against each other, and you could tell both were uncomfortable with the new dynamic. Pained, even. Certainly extremely awkward.

The other candidate sessions were lackluster in comparison.

Blame Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who was a no-show and gave Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado (and, yes, Ladra’s horse) a captive audience of about two dozen people to present her platform and ideas to. She did a great job because she can fill a room by herself. The audience was full of bobbing heads in what Ladra now calls the “aha moment,” which is when people realize she is the real deal and can be the mayor we deserve to have.

Next to her, KFHA President Michael Rosenberg, who is also founder of the Pets’ Trust and has a rocky relationship with Gimenez, had placed an empty chair to represent the mayor — not just his personality but his MIA status. Rosenberg first noted that he had invited Gimenez no fewer than a dozen times. Ladra is not surprised he’d be afraid to try to defend his record of broken promises, sweetheart deals and no-bid contracts to his friends and family.

The opening acts were even more — yawn, stretch — uneventful. Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez and former Commission Chairman Joe Martinez, ran circles around their challengers, the unfortunately named Michael Castro and Felix Lorenzo, respectively. These certainly seem like slam dunk races, so it’s hard to even pay attention. Ladra got her ears pulled for talking in whispers during Martinez’s closing statements. Ay, he is such an unforgiving guy. And he’s trying too hard. Both incumbents — because Martinez once represented District 11 and is the defacto incumbent now that Commissioner Juan Zapata withdrew — should landslide in. Unfortunately. Because nothing makes for a bad elected like a big head that feels no pressure.

Read related story: Chased out: Juan Zapata leaves hostile work environment

But the Taddeo/Garcia face-off was weird enough to make up for the rest of it. And it offers just a taste of what we might see in future debates and/or mailers.

You wouldn’t think that a debate or forum featuring these two carbon copy candidates and former BFFs could be entertaining. They both support the same things. They both love Obamacare and the U.S. reaching out to Cuba. They are both concerned about sea level rise and immigration. They both took jabs at Republicans. Garcia said Everglades restoration was being purposefully mismanaged by Gov. Rick Scott. Taddeo mocked Congress members Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (who beat her 58 to 42% in 2008) and Carlos Curbelo (who they are fighting to face in November) for their efforts to keep studying sea level rise ad nauseaum.

Blah. Blah. Blah. Taddeo even said “Ditto” one time because it was getting repetitive.

But underneath all the outwardly polite agreement, seethed a palpable bitter resentment that surged with a little jab here and there. Him on her total lack of experience in public service. This is Taddeo’s fourth try to get elected. Her on the election fraud issues in his 2014 campaign. Garcia’s campaign consultant and his former congressional chief of staff, Jeffrey “No Relation” Garcia, was sentenced to 90 days in jail for absentee ballot fraud after he was found to have rigged a computer to request ballots without the voters’ permission.

Read related story: Joe Garcia releases first web ad in congressional contest

When asked if negative campaigning had a place, Taddeo was quick to make her position clear. And it’s a yes. But she said it was a “very tough thing” to “let people know about your opponent,” especially when it was someone you once supported.

Once upon a time, Joe and Annette were BFFs

“My level of disappointment to find out that the person I supported to get rid of David Rivera had done exactly what David Rivera had done was very high,” Taddeo said. “I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. It is not right.

“And I know the disappointment I feel is felt by the community because they tell me.”

Garcia did not take the bait.

“Clearly, they’re going to attack. You’ve known me for a better part of two decades,” Garcia told the room, because it basically took him that long — and four tries himself — to get elected. He said that he was going to campaign on his track record, fighting FPL, fighting for children — we guess between his ear wax snacks.

“I’ve worked here. I lived here. I grew up here. I know this community,” he said, which could be a dig at Taddeo’s carpetbagging for a seat, any seat.

Taddeo shot back. She told the audience that Garcia was backed by Big Sugar. “Let’s make sure to follow the money… I;m so tired of the influence of special interests,” she said. To which Ladra would say, yeah, but he had Big Sugar money when you supported him, too.

Still, Obamacare seems to be the go-to for Democrats as much as it is for Republicans (the repeal anyway). Taddeo also took Garcia to task for voting against Obamacare eight times.

Garcia giggled and glimpsed down at his shoes a lot while he waited his turn with his arms crossed. Then he said he had voted against some of the convoluted registration requirements and actually made it easier to sign up. He said he voted for Obamacare more than 50 other times and hit her on her lack of experience. “I was on the floor. Unlike her, I have a record.”

Ouch. That is hitting her where it hurts. Taddeo wants nothing more than a vote record. Anywhere.

But as pained as it might have been for them to be in this position, it was even more so for many in the audience. Said Esther Garvett, a Democrat who has volunteered for both candidates in different races: “It’s breaking my heart.”