Commissioner should at least be removed from Bayfront Board Trust

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Looks like Miami Mayor Francis Suarez won’t have any real challenge in this year’s election. So, fueled by his hashtag-friendly banter and bend on technology and the national media spotlight, he can daydream about higher office.

Everybody’s been buzzing about it for months, speculating mostly that Suarez was setting himself up as a potential VP. That’s why, las malas lenguas say, the celebrity mayor met with United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in April.

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And it floats a new half-penny tax to save Biscayne Bay

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Don’t think that former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla is not a true threat in the Miami District 1 race this year. While some think this three-time loser is unelectable, it’s best not to underestimate The Dean.
Especially when he is raising more campaign money than anybody else.
Read related: After loss in Senate, Miami-Dade races, Alex DLP may try Miami
Diaz de la Portilla tapped into his list of lobbyist buddies so they could bundle for him and he could come out with $40,400 in the first month. That’s just a couple K over the next highest amount, $38,000 by neighborhood fave Horacio Aguirre, who has been raising money since October.
Sure, it shows that Mike Gabela has raised $112,000 but he loaned himself $100K of that so he’s only raised $12K in a whole year. That’s worst than Yanny Hidalgo‘s $10,337, raised since October.
Eleazar Melendez, who also announced in January, raised $17,723, which wouldn’t be bad for someone without a rolodex full of lobbyists who owe him. Except he loaned himself $12K of that.
Read related: Neighbor vs neighbor in Miami District 1 as Eleazar Melendez files
Which means that a week before the second campaign report is due, just looking at January’s reports, Diaz de la Portilla is winning the money race thanks to his lobby pals.
He got at least $9,000 from former State Rep. and lobsterman Manny Prieguez, Jr., and his business and family interests as well as at least $5,000 each from Ron Book and his companies and Miami Beach parking czar Rafael Andrade and his companies. Add $1,000 each from Hugo Arza, Juan Mayol and Felix LaSarte and more than half the cash is lobby money.
There’s another $4,000 from Anibal Duarte-Viera, an attorney who is also a real estate developer and deal maker — and possibly a slumlord. Google him.
Read related: Bank foreclosed on ADLP, who ‘moves’ to run for Willy Gort seat in Miami
We don’t have long to wait to see if DLP — whose house is being foreclosed on and who “moved” in September into the district that is being vacated by termed-out Commissioner Willy Gort — was able to keep the pace in February, because those campaign reports are due next week. Ladra, for one, can’t wait to see who he taps into next.
Aguirre has some bundling of his own, with at least $10,000 from Terry Zerby and his family and partners in the marine terminal business and address in Oklahoma City and North River Drive. There’s another $8,000 coming from Sara Babun and her related companies and $6,000 from Emmanuel Pacin, a real estate and marine guy. All $24,000 of it is Miami River money.
Much of District 1 is along the Miami River, a newly booming area of development in the city.
Aguirre’s best month might be March, with his official campaign kick-off fundraiser Thursday hosted by former Mayor Tomas Regalado, Rev. Guillermo Revuelta and ten others at the new Miami Police Benevolent Association Hall.
There are two other candidates, Michael Hepburn, who just lost in the Democrat congressional primary, and Francisco Pichel, but neither have raised any money yet.

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Now that the mayoral election next month is all but a technicality, the real question is who Commissioner Francis Suarez, our next city of Miami mayor, wants to have serve on the dais with him. He’s been non-commmital because he wanted to focus on his own race. But now that he’s got no opposition, not really, he can put his considerable weight behind the right candidate.
Too bad he still won’t tell us. Now, we can only guess.
“I’m not supporting anyone right now. I get along pretty much with everybody,” Suarez told Ladra this week, adding that no mayor or elected supported him when he first ran in 2009 even though he started out 25 points behind Manolo Reyes, who is leading all the polls for the seat now.
“And I liked it that way. I didn’t even use my middle name, which is the same as my father’s,” said Suarez, a chip off the old block that is Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, who was also the first Cuban mayor of Miami. “I wanted to rise on my own merits, my own ideas.”
The flip side of the coin is that he doesn’t want to piss anybody off.
“As mayor, you have a responsibility to create a coalition on the commission and set the tone and get things done. If you pick the wrong side, you may end up offending somebody and shooting yourself in the foot,” he said. “I want to hit the ground running. My responsibility isn’t to the candidates, it’s to the residents.”
But just who does Baby X think he’s fooling? Some political observers say he’s being a passive aggressive pussy who is secretly helping candidates but doesn’t have the cojones to publicly endorse them. “Like always, el tira le piedra y esconda la mano,” said one Miami voter and political junkie. It’s a Cuban saying that literally means he throws a stone and hides his hand but actually means he starts some kind of trouble and avoids the blame.
Read related story: Francis Suarez says definite maye to Miami mayoral race
Ladra, too, thinks that he does, indeed, have a great deal of interest in the two commission races (especially in one). Why else would he spend money polling the commission races along with his own race and issues every time? And it is very difficult for Ladra to believe that he and his dad and his political allies in Coral Gables and beyond would just pass on this opportunity to silently grow allies and build their machinery, especially trying to help the candidates that Suarez knows will be friendlier and happier to work with him instead of on their own agenda.
Yeah, Joe Carollo, I’m talking about you. The former Miami mayor and Doral city manager likes to be a star and the protagonist and could battle Suarez for attention and control of the commission.
Despite the fact that the two candidates are apparently sharing Steve Marin as campaign consultant, the two families sorta hate each other. Ladra can’t beieve that’
Suarez wants to sit on the dais with the guy who basically unseated his father from office in 1997 for absentee voter fraud that may not have been X’s doing (it was former City Commissioner Humberto Hernandez and former State Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who las malas lenguas say is helping Carollo now). The election was thrown out and a second vote put Carollo in office. So, no, Ladra does not believe that Suarez isn’t actively working against Crazy Joe. You can’t trusth him because he could turn on you at any minute, like he has on almost everybody, even calling a press conference to stab you in the back. Just ask former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre. We have to believe that Baby X is ABC — Anyone But Carollo.
Read related story: Crazy Joe Carollo adds twist to crazy Miami Commission race
Athough maybe not Tommy Regalado, son and namesake of the current mayor, tampoco. There’s no real love loss between these families either. Maybe also because Suarez had the nerve to try to run against Mayor Tomas Regalado four years ago before he had to abandon the campaign after several missteps. Suarez just got rid of one Regalado, you think he wants to be saddled with another? And compete for media darling status with another block chip?
That leaves us in District 3 with Zoraida Barreiro, the wife of Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, or one of the other three guys who don’t seem to stand a chance next to the legacy candidates. Zory, as she is known, makes sense because her husband is a colleague of the new mayor’s father. This allegiance has legs. Also, Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro has not lost one election. Not for State Rep. Not for county commissioner.
There’s also a small possibility that Suarez likes Alfie Leon, the former chief policy advisor, for Commissioner Frank Carollo. But Ladra is making that hypothesis only because someone in his camp has defended Leon in private and Coral Gables Commissioner Vince Lago, a top Suarez ally, is backing Leon openly.
Still, it’s practically a toss up between the other two.
One might think Baby X is helping Reyes, who he beat by 260 votes when first elected in 2009, since he is leading all the polls, after all. Suarez has reportedly shared the polls with people to help Reyes raise campaign cash. And also allegedly lent Reyes his professional fundraiser — Brian Goldmeier reportedly made some calls on Reyes’ behalf.
But, on the other hand, Manolo is tight with the Regalados so there’s that little snag. And Baby X has been seen with Ralph Rosado at some events and neighborhood homeowner association meetings. Rosado has also shown that he can raise more money, which could be important to Suarez– or both Suarezes — in the future.
Maybe he’s hedging his bets. Does that still count as passive aggressive?

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Actor Sean Penn just made a cameo appearance in the Miami city elections.

A campaign mailer arrived at the home of voters in District 3 Saturday with a photo of the two-time Academy Award winner — and celebrated socialist sympathizer and apologist — at a Miami Heat game in 2011 with Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, whose son is running for city commission.

“Sean Penn, the known defendor of the Castro and Chavez regimes, with his favorite dictators, Tomas Regalado and his son,” the piece says, adorned with pictures of the much older Jeff Spicoli with his BFFs of death: Raul Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro and Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Then there is the picture of Penn with the Regalados.

Except the son in the photo is Jose Regalado, who is not running for office. That would be the older brother, Tommy Regalado. Which doesn’t really matter to former Mayor and professional provocateur Joe Carollo, whose political action committee, Miami First, paid for the piece.

“The two faces of the Regalados,” it says, insinuating that the first family of Miami gets together for fun with those who defend the Castro and Chavez regimes, “without giving any importance to the pain of our people.”

Read related story: Ex Doral Manager Joe Carollo keeps talking post firing

It also says, without offering any evidence, that Tommy Regalado (son) has collected thousands of dollars for his political committee from Chavistas, which seems to be a theme with the increasingly paranoid Carollo. Remember, he called a Doral businessman a chavista and then, when he knew he would be fired as city manager, called a press conference to claim that Doral Mayor Luigi Boria — who he had helped get re-elected only months earlier — was being investigated for bribery. When that didn’t stick, he had multiple press conferences trying to convince the local media that the Venezuelan-born Boria was a Chavez sympathizer who still had ties to the regime and did business with Chavista interests. He promised evidence, but it was a rabbit’s hole expedition and nothing materialized.

It was all conjecture then. He doesn’t even have conjecture now. But that doesn’t stop Carollo from throwing more shit around to see what sticks. This is what he’s good at.

“Dios los cria y el diablo los junta,” the mailer said, which literally translates to “God grows them and the devil joins them,” but actually means more like bad people find each other. The piece looks like it was designed by former Sen. and campaign bad boy Alex Diaz de la Portilla, not Steve Marin, as campaign reports indicate. It just feels Alex.

Of course, it’s pure bullshit. To the point that it’s laughable and makes Ladra think that Carollo must be desperate. No way voters are going to buy that the Regalados are commies.

Candidate Tommy Regalado works for none other than TV Marti, which Carollo calls a botella or gifted job in another piece but which, you gotta admit, is no friend of the Cuban government. His grandfather, the mayor’s father and a journalist, spent 22 years as a political prisoner in Castro’s jails. And his dad is a Pedro Pan kid — sent into U.S. exile as a child without his parents through the Catholic Church. The mayor has been a staunch anti-Castro advocate for decades, first on Cuban radio and later as an elected official, giving many a key to the city to activists and exile groups.

Read related story: Crazy Joe Carollo adds twist to crazy Miami commission race

Then Commissioner Regalado was a constant fixture at the home of rafter boy wonder Elian Gonzalez, who was snatched from his Little Havana exile family in the middle of the night by federal agents so he could be returned to his father in Cuba. He was also the first elected to reject the idea of a Cuban consulate in Miami in 2014, even before former President Barack Obama announced normalized relations. After that announcement in December of 2014, Mayor Regalado criticized the president repeatedly on local and national media for giving the Cuban government everything for nada and abandoning the Cuban people.

“Free elections, the freeing of all the political prisoners in Cuba, are not part of the deal. I’m sad that Mr Obama has brokered a deal that doesn’t help the people of Cuba. At the end of the day Cuba is still not free. This is a sad day,” he was quoted as saying.

Last year, when the talks about the consulate picked up again, Regalado said he would sue to block a consulate from opening here. Conversely, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who is raising money for Carollo and who Carollo worked for during his 2016 re-election campaign, was more welcoming, saying he would “work with” the feds if they chose Miami. Gimenez  also welcomed the idea of cruises to Cuba from PortMiami, saying the county did “business with carriers” and not “with countries.” Coward.

“They are trying to rewrite history,” Regalado told Ladra Saturday evening. “They are hoping that voters forget my record of 50 years here.

“You can say I’m inept and some people might believe you. You can say I’m corrupt and some people might believe you. You can say I’m a thief and some people might believe you. But you can’t say I’m a communist. Nobody is going to believe you,” the mayor added.

In fact, the family is known for being so ardently anti-Castro that the piece could backfire. Voters could decide to reject Carollo because he is trying to play them, to take them for fools. ¿Que se ha creido? ¿Nos toma por idiotas?

Regalado said he was at the game that day with 20 or so inner city at-risk youths, all guests of Office Depot. While on the floor before the game, there were a bunch of VIPs milling about, and someone from the Heat organization introduced the mayor to Penn (we don’t know why he was there).

“I was a little distracted and wasn’t sure who he was, so when someone said smile for the camera, I just did it automatically,” Mayor Regalado said. That was it. There was no conversation. There was no other contact.

Suffice it to say they did not go to Versailles later for a snack of croquetas and a cortadito.

This is classic Carollo, creating a bogus boogieman so that he can come and save the day. When the real boogieman is Crazy Joe.