The endorsements are multiplying in the Coral Gables election, which ends next Tuesday. And just in time, too — as the vote-by-mail or absentee ballots are mailed to voters.

Three Group 2 candidates who didn’t make the runoff in the April 13 vote, Tania Cruz-Gimenez, Alexander Luis Haq and Claudia Miro, each endorsed Rhonda Anderson at a press conference in front of City Hall Tuesday. She already had the endorsement of the Miami Herald.

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Coral Gables voters will be able to cast early voting ballots this weekend for the first time in municipal elections. The election ends Tuesday. As of Friday, almost 4,800 have cast absentee or vote-by-mail ballots already.

Many people have asked Ladra to make recommendations in the commission races, even though we’re going to end up with runoffs in both contests. Everyone knows that Vice Mayor Vince Lago is the only real choice for the mayoral race, despite the one stupid letter he signed (more on that later). But the commission races are harder.

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All together, the 13 candidates in the April 13 Coral Gables election have raised more than $1 million — a milestone reached last month, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Leading the pack are the mayoral candidates, who between them, raised $121,240 just in February. Together, they account for half of the million dollar bounty.

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Two of the frontrunners in the Coral Gables Group 2 commission race were the subjects of a mobile poll last week that tested negative messages against one of them.

Voters were asked if they would be more likely or less likely to vote for a candidate if they had been “charged by Boston, Massachusetts police for disorderly conduct for refusing to stop smoking in a hotel room” or if they were “married to prominent lobbyist and son of former Miami Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez.”

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Now the party’s getting started.

There were no big surprises or sudden jumps from one group to another in Coral Gables as candidates qualified for April 13 election by the noon Friday deadline.

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There are seven candidates in the Group 2 race in the Coral Gables election. But, really, there’s only three. Everyone watching knows the fat votes will go to Rhonda Anderson, Tania Cruz-Gimenez and Jose Valdes-Fauli.

As the only gringa in the race, Anderson is almost a shoe in for the runoff. She might have the charisma of a cardboard box but this is Gables politics and it can still get ethnically divided.

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