The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust has dismissed two frivolous complaints against longtime Coral Gables activist Maria Cruz that were filed by proxies for Mayor Vince Lago — and most likely at his behest.
The first complaint was filed by his fundraiser, Brian Goldmeier, and the second by lobbyist Jorge Arrizurieta, who was Lago’s appointment to the city’s board of adjustments — until someone notified the administration that he had moved out of Coral Gables. The commission found no probable cause for the first complaint and no legal sufficiency for the second.
But there is no way that either of them didn’t file the complaint at Lago’s request or, at the very least, with his permission. They seem to be retaliation for last year’s unsuccessful mayoral recall that Cruz spearheaded. Attorney Ben Kuehne, who has represented Lago in separate matters, even went to the commission to argue on the complaint’s behalf.
“It obvious that they are trying to intimidate me,” Cruz, Lago’s loudest critic, told Political Cortadito.
To which Ladra says “Good luck with that!”
In the first complaint, Goldmeier — who recently moved to a home on Aledo Avenue– said Cruz “exploited” her official volunteer position on the city’s code enforcement board to intervene in a case, which she reported, about an orchid that he nailed to a tree in front of the house. She did write a series of emails to follow up and asked why he was issued a warning instead of a ticket. Goldmeier said he felt targeted because of his ties to Lago.
“Because it is known that I am a consultant for many elected officials in Miami-Dade County, some of whom Ms. Cruz does not support, I was concerned about her involvement in the complaint,” Goldmeier wrote in his complaint.
Read related: Mayor Vince Lago’s consultant files complaint vs Coral Gables recall activist
Cruz says she didn’t know it was Goldmeier’s house. Fat chance of that. She knows everything. But Goldmeier did wait six months to make the complaint, which was right after she started a recall against Mayor Lago that fell short by just 117 signatures. And that seems more retaliatory than a legitimate reporting of his orchid mauling.

The Ethics Commission did provide Cruz with a “letter of instruction” as to how to properly recuse herself. While she did recuse herself from vote at the code enforcement board in November, 2023 — where the violation was dismissed — she first went into a long explanation of how she became involved.
“In any such circumstance where recusal is advisable, it is important that the delineated three (3) steps of the recusal process be followed. First, publicly disclose the recusal and the nature of the conflict of interest,” the letter of instruction said. ” Second, leave the meeting while the matter is being discussed and voted upon. Third, file a written disclosure regarding the nature of the conflict with the City of Coral Gables City Clerk.”
In the second complaint, Arrizurieta accused Cruz of being an unregistered lobbyist. It was legally insufficient because it was a lie. Cruz was not a lobbyist because she is not paid to represent any entity. She represents herself and the interest of certain Gables residents. She might be a pain in the, er, neck to some politicos (read: Lago), but she ain’t a lobbyist by any measure. And Ladra suspects that both Arrizurieta and Lago, whose permission he must have sought to file the complaint, know this.
Read related: Coral Gables activist forms PAC to recall former friend, Mayor Vince Lago
Both the Miami-Dade code of ethics and the and the Gables ethics code “provide as an exemption to the definition of lobbyist to allow any person that appears for the purpose of self-representation without compensation of reimbursement, whether direct,
indirect, or contingent, to express support or opposition to any item.”
Nobody is paying Cruz. She is driven, but unpaid.
“The complaint fails to allege that Ms. Cruz worked on behalf of a principal, as is required for her to be considered a lobbyist under both the City and County lobbyist requirements,” the final order reads. “Additionally, if Ms. Cruz was not working on behalf of a principal, then it appears that she would be ‘lobbying’ on behalf of herself, which is exempted by provisions in both the City and County Code. Thus, Ms. Cruz would not be required to register as a lobbyist to speak with a member of the Coral Gables Board of Adjustment to express her opposition to a variance application.”
Ladra can’t help but wonder what their next complaint against Cruz will be. She should sue to recover any legal costs she may have incurred.
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The first forum for Coral Gables candidates, presented by the PTAs of eight city schools, was centered on education and the issues at the schools in the City Beautiful, like safety, teachers’ wages, affordable housing for teachers, student anxiety, book banning, increasing the number of families who send their kids to public schools and food waste in cafeterias. I kid you not.
Questions were asked by students at local schools and then the PTA members chose some submitted by participants in the Q&A section of the Zoom forum. Voters who missed it can view a recording here. The password is ?E^XpP^9, which is unnecessarily impossible to remember.
Not that it’s really worth the two hours. There were no real zingers or surprises. And it wasn’t terribly enlightening.
Candidates were questioned in three groups for the three different races, with the first session focused on the mayoral hopefuls — incumbent Mayor Vince Lago, Commissioner Kirk Menendez and Michael Abbott, an accountant with a beef against Coral Gables Police, who stands no chance of winning but could force a runoff.

All of the candidates think Coral Gables has some of the best schools. Abbott sounded like a robot reading from a boring script, and kept talking about his “technology hub” and establishing “Silicon South,” which is apparently a part of his platform. Lago and Menendez each touted their respective scholarship fundraising and different programs they’ve created.
Lago said he was the first elected in Miami-Dade to put police officers at schools after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. Menendez spearheaded spending $50,000 in the city budget for a conceptual design of a public park working with the Miami-Dade County School Board and mentioned the compact between the city of Miami Beach and the school board as something the Gables could explore.
Read related: Candidates are set for Coral Gables election April 8 as voters request ABs
The best part was when the candidates were basically asked to defend their decision to send their kids to private schools, not in so many words, but that was the point. Like, gotcha. Abbott said he has no kids but Lago and Menendez, who were obviously the targets of this question, said they made the decision to send their kids to faith-based schools because they are Catholic.
Lago — who suddenly has a lisp (maybe he had come from the dentist’s office?) — wanted to be someplace else.
There were no big surprises in the two commission forums, either. But some interesting takeaways:
Both Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson and Felix Pardo, a longtime city activist and architect, are products of the public school system. Pardo’s wife is a teacher and his son is a public school teacher in Chicago’s South Side. Both his grandchildren attend Chicago public schools. Oh, and Pardo has was recently celebrated for perfect attendance at The Rotary Club.

Anderson, as usual, sounded like she was mansplaining everything to people who just aren’t as smart as her. She also said she started bike lanes in Coral Gables 18 years ago.
Attorney Laureano Cancio, who announced his run before Pardo jumped in, is a Pedro Pan kid, having come from Cuba on the Catholic Church’s Peter Pan flights as an unaccompanied minor. He said his number one issue is education and he has said in the past that the city could establish its own education system or compact with the Miami-Dade County Public School Board to keep Gables students, who now go to schools outside the city, at hometown schools. That makes a community, he said.
At 74, he also runs about three miles almost every day.
The best question was from the participants on the Zoom call and it was about density. Pardo, who is on the planning and zoning board and was also one it 20 years ago as the chair, is absolutely making overdevelopment an issue in his race, and rightly so. Anderson was elected in part because she was supposed to be a firewall against the developers’ interest and, many say, it hasn’t turned out that way.
“I have been the sole voice for responsible development in the city,” Pardo said on the Zoom call. “What has gone on is absolutely atrocious. This city 100 years ago was never designed for the incredibly large projects that are just destroying the fabric of our city.”
Read related: Fundraising for Coral Gables election slows, incumbents count on max gifts
It’s not just traffic that’s affected every time a zoning or land use variance gets approved, he said. Water and sewer, parks schools, freighters, police are all “overburdened,” Pardo explained. “We are pinning ourselves into a corner.”
In the third race, voters have to choose between attorney Richard Lara, Lago’s handpicked pocket-vote candidate, micro transit lobbyist Claudia Miro, who talked about lobbying in Tallahassee for more school guards, and attorney and activist Thomas “Tom” Wells, all of whom are public school products.
Lara seemed to pander and use a bunch of buzzwords. Miro and Wells both seemed more prepared, knowledgable and specific.

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The mayoral race in Coral Gables is going to be heated and already the temperature has been turned up.
Incumbent Mayor Vince Lago has, so far, wanted to make the campaign about three things: Raises that the majority on the commission passed, the changing of three city managers in less than two years, and the opposition that Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who is running against him, has to changing the city elections to November. Lago is taking it all out of context because, well, he has nothing else to campaign on and is growing increasingly desperate in a community that is growing increasingly tired of him and his pathetic public meltdowns.
Last week, after Menendez qualified for the April 8 election, he sent an email blast setting the record straight on the issues and adding a couple more. Ladra was working on a “Lyin’ Vince Lago” post, but the commissioner beat me to it.
And it is well done, so the whole thing is attached here to the bottom of this story.
About the raises, which sounds much worse than it is because Lago uses the term “104% increase” without any context or explanation — the amount is key. After all, 100% increase from $1,000 is $2,000. The actual salary increases for commissioners went from $36,488 to $65,000 a year, which doesn’t seem like a lot. The arguments that the salaries were too low and had not been raised for years and that a higher pay would attract better, less corruptible, candidates make sense.
But saying 104% makes it look like they get a six figure salary. Which they don’t get even with the fattened up expenses and car allowances (which add up to $18,000). Saying 104% is good for the campaign. But a lie.
Read related: Coral Gables commission pay raise is red herring for Lying Vince Lago
Furthermore, while Lago says it was done in secret, it wasn’t secret to him. It may have come as a surprise to the rest of us, butLago discussed it with the city manager before the first of several meetings where it came up.
The mayor’s salary would jump from $44,905 a year to $69,000 a year, although he said more than once that he would not take it. But lo and behold, Menendez says the city’s finance department confirmed that he is getting the increased bi weekly checks.
Maybe he’s donating the balance to charity?
And about the November election… Menendez has repeatedly said that he wants to see what the charter review committee, which is tasked with making recommendations for those kind of large-scale permanent changes to the city’s constitution, says about it. He is wary. After all, Lago only began this drive for November elections after his hand-picked candidates lost the election two years ago.
Proponents say the change would increase turnout. But critics say it will make the election more partisan and vulnerable to special interests.
Read related: Coral Gables City Manager Amos Rojas resigns, leaves next month after one year
And on the city manager’s revolving door: It’s hard to fathom that Lago would continue to defend former Manager Peter Iglesias after the longtime structural deficiencies at history City Hall were uncovered months ago and certain offices and functions have been moved out of the building for safety reasons. Iglesias was fired because he wasn’t doing his job, according to three of the commissioners who felt that the manager was retaliating on behalf of the mayor. The new city manager was hired in an atmosphere of the chaos that Lago created himself when he interfered behind the scenes in the potential hire of a county director.
And former manager Amos Rojas said it would just be for a year, so his exit was predetermined and prepared for.
Again, the mayor is stretching the truth because he has nothing else to campaign on.
In his email, Menendez also preempts a bunch of other attacks that are coming.
Read related: Town hall on tiny tax cut in Coral Gables shows residents don’t want it
About the zoning changes made to his neighborhood, for instance. The truth is that vote happened before Menendez was elected and he now lives across from a massive development project — a project that Lago approved.
And Menendez did not vote to increase taxes. He voted to keep the tax rate the same, because cutting it by 1% could lead to cutting services and would only mean less than $100 in savings for homeowners but tens of thousands of dollars for the owners of big projects, like Gables Station, which would get a $28,000 tax break. A bunch of homeowners said they didn’t want it.
On April 8, maybe they’ll say they don’t want a liar for a mayor anymore, either.

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Kirk Menendez already has important endorsements
Three is the magic number in Coral Gables as that is how many candidates officially qualified last week in each of the three elections in the city’s April 8 election.
Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson will face Felix Pardo and Laureano Cancio while three other candidates vie for the open seat left by Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who is running for mayor. They are Richard Lara, the hand-picked candidate by Mayor Vince Lago, Claudia Miro, a transportation lobbyist who lost a commission race in 2021, and attorney Thomas “Tom” Wells, an active speaker at commission meetings who sits on the charter review board.
Read related: Two more candidates say they will run for Coral Gables commission in April
But everybody is going to be looking at and taking about the mayor’s race between Lago and Menendez. A third candidate, Michael Abbott, doesn’t really count.
Speaking of count, turnout is going to be key in this race. There are just over 37,200 registered voters in Coral Gables, according to the city clerk. As of last week, there were 3,135 requests for absentee or vote-by-mail ballots, according to Miami-Dade Elections spokesperson Roberto Rodriguez.
That’s a huge increase from the 204 VBM requests on file as of Jan. 16. But not a huge surprise, Rodriguez said.
“Our office has been sending text messages and emails to voters who had a vote-by-mail request on file and provided contact information,” Rodriguez told Political Cortadito, adding that election specific messages would be sent to voters who have upcoming elections.

The deadline to request an absentee ballot for the April 8 election is March 27. The deadline to register to vote in the municipal election is March 10.
Most of the voters who participated in the 2023 election cast their ballots by mail. Of the 6,700 or 6,800 who voted in the two commission races, more than 4,100 were absentee. Turnout could have been low due to the lack of a mayoral race — Lago had no opponent two years ago — but the commission races were both high profile because the mayor was behind two candidates who ultimately lost.
That’s what makes this election so interesting. Lago is not only trying to win. He is trying to get his majority back. He has to not only win his own seat back, which is not a gimme, but also keep Anderson, which is the most certain of the three races, and get Lara into the open seat. It’s definitely a slate, and one can tell by the yard signs along San Amaro Drive, which is the mayor’s neighborhood.
Mayor Lago showed the biggest haul in his last campaign finance report with $$108,750 collected in just the first two weeks of February, almost exclusively in maximum $1,000 checks, according to the campaign documents filed with the city clerk. That’s the largest amount in a single report since the $166K collected last year in the second quarter — which is over three months not two weeks. He also has another $150,000 left sitting in his political action committee, which has its last report through Dec. 31 and we won’t know how much more it has raised until after the election. But Ladra suspects it will be a lot.
In comparison, Menendez has raised less than $18,000.
Read related: Kirk Menendez runs for Coral Gables mayor against city bully Vince Lago
But the last election showed that money does not equal votes in The City Beautiful when commissioners Melissa Castro and Ariel Fernandez beat better-funded candidates who had the mayor’s backing. It may not have officially happened, but Menendez will most certainly have their support. He already has the firefighters’ support and probably will get the police union.

Gables Neighbors United, which some argue helped elect Castro and Fernandez, were quick to come out with their endorsements over the weekend: Menendez and Pardo.
They are holding back, apparently, on the open seat race. But Ladra will bet real money it ain’t Lara.
“Make no mistake about it: Mayor Vince Lago and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson are tied at the hip,” reads an email from the homeowners group. “It’s a quid-pro-quo relationship. Lago: ‘You stand by me and vote the way I want you to vote and I’ll introduce you to the people who can make you ‘whole’ and keep you in power. Let’s start with naming you vice mayor!’ ”
Ouch.
“Rhonda: ‘You got it BOSS!’
“While the wording may not be exact, the meaning is. Both are power and money hungry and feeding from the hands of developers and special interests,” the email says.
Which is how the election is going to framed for voters, as usual: Development interests versus resident interests.
But that’s not all. There’s a new issue this year.
“Civility and Stabiliity is his motto,” says the email about Menendez. “We could use a lot of both.
“Divisive behavior and even threats of harm to colleagues and disrepect for residents by Lago have been the tipping points for us, well beyond the favoritism to developers and special interests, to seek a candidate who can once again lead with a calm hand and move the city forward.
“For the past almost-four years, we have witnessed Commissioner Menendez‘ thoughtful approach to oftentimes difficult issues and watched him render solutions that benefit residents and the good of the city,” the email states. “Kirk is a peacemaker and a leader and for these reasons, we join the Coral Gables Fire union in backing Kirk Menendez for Mayor.”
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Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres.
There’s not a Cuban American growing up in Greater Miami that didn’t hear those words from their parents or grandparents when these didn’t approve of your friends. Or their friends. Or your friends’ parents. It translates to, “tell me who you associate with and I will tell you who you are.”
But apparently Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago did not heed his elders. Because Lago, who keeps surrounding himself with shady characters, is moving next week to appoint another one of his iffy friends to the code enforcement board.
Lago wants to put none other than Benjamin “Ben” Alvarez — who is known as “the Tony Soprano of lawyers” by his own colleagues — on the board to replace someone who apparently hasn’t lived in the city for some time now and was removed.
This is the same Benjamin Alvarez who has been disciplined at least three times by the Florida Bar, including and admonishment in 2017 for threatening his wife — who he was in the middle of a divorce with — and grabbing her phone in a physical altercation. There is a police report that indicates that Alvarez’s gun was taken after his wife expressed fear.
Additionally, a Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust investigation found a serious appearance of impropriety after his firm received city work from his then girlfriend, Veronica Diaz, who was an assistant city attorney in Miami. And, in 2012, a judge ruled against his firm in a fraud case involving forged documents requiring more than $82,000 in restitution.
Read related: More on Ultra bad judicial candidate Veronica Diaz
Alvarez was also suspended for 30 days after he disparaged opposing counsel and publicly reprimanded for misrepresenting, under oath, obstruction of evidence, and for financial mismanagement of a matter involving a client, who just happens to be Manny Chamizo, another shady Lago pal who was charged with criminal stalking and who the mayor appointed to a board.
Doesn’t Lago know any decent people? Among his friends and allies, L’Ego counts former Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who was arrested on public corruption charges in 2023 that were dropped last year, and lobbyist Bill Riley, who was arrested alongside ADLP and was in on the real estate deal Lago got in the $640,000 commission from the sale of a Ponce de Leon Boulevard building to Location Ventures, the development firm owned by Rishi Kapoor that was investigated for its $10,000 monthly payments to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez for “consulting. Oh, and he also rented a retail space to Kapoor.
This Ben Alvarez track record has already raised eyebrows in the community and Commissioner Melissa Castro has officially asked the mayor to reconsider and appoint somebody else. This may be unprecedented in Gables commission history.
“As public servants, we have the responsibility to make decisions that protect the integrity of our city and uphold the trust placed in us by our residents,” Castro wrote in a memo to her colleagues.

“This is not a position I take lightly, nor is it one I raise with any sense of personal malintent toward Mr. Alvarez. I have no relationship with him and, to my knowledge, have never met or spoken with him,” Castro wrote. “My sole responsibility is to advocate for the well-being of our residents and ensure that those serving in positions of public trust meet the highest ethical and professional standards.
“The Code Enforcement Board plays a critical role in upholding our city’s quality of life. Its members must be fair, impartial, and above all, committed to enforcing our city’s laws with integrity and transparency. Given the significance of this responsibility, we must ensure that appointees to this board not only meet the technical qualifications but also embody the values and ethical standards that Coral Gables represents.”
Castro sent the memo because she did not want to discuss this publicly at a meeting.
“I take no pleasure in bringing forward information that could cause embarrassment to Mr. Alvarez. He is a resident of Coral Gables, and like all members of our community, he deserves to be treated with respect,” she wrote. “That is why I am addressing this privately among my colleagues first, rather than allowing it to become a public matter unnecessarily.”
Oops. Too late.
“However, I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent when I believe an appointment poses a risk to the integrity of our governance,” Castro said in her memo. “I believe in due process and fairness, and I strongly believe that every individual is innocent until proven guilty.
“Unfortunately, in Mr. Alvarez’s case, the legal system has already determined guilt on multiple occasions.”
Read related: Hypocrite Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago votes against appointment
Ladra doesn’t think Lago cares about the Alvarez baggage and history. It is not his first controversial appointment. In 2023, the mayor appointed his buddy Manny Chamizo, who is facing felony stalking charges, to the water advisory board. Chamizo’s criminal trial is scheduled for March 24.
Lago uses board appointments to try to get his agenda through. He appointed Nicolas “Nick” Cabrera, the self-appointed Prince of Coral Gables and son of former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera, to the city’s board of adjustments so he could get a setback variance for a gazebo at his house approved. It didn’t work. Lago was denied his pretty little barbecue gazebo.
Last year, he had Planning and Zoning Board member Claudia Miro removed from her position by Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson after Miro failed to vote to put former Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers on the board, as Lago obviously wanted. He sent her a series of butt hurt text messages after her vote.
Miro is now running for commissioner in the open seat vacated by Kirk Menendez in his run for mayor against Lago.
Menendez, meanwhile, has not appointed any would-be criminals to city boards.
Police Report Ben Alvarez by Political Cortadito on Scribd

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Campaign finance reports filed last week by the candidates for Coral Gables mayor and commissioner show that nobody did very well in the final quarter of 2024. Donations slowed down big time.
Mayor Vince Lago actually gave money back instead of raising any. His campaign report shows zero contributions, but that he returned two $1,000 checks from Pumayana, a residential developer and investor with projects in the city, and C2S Construction Solutions, an interior renovations firm based in Sunny Isles Beach. We don’t know why those checks, given in June, were returned on Nov. 19. But it’s not because they were duplicates. Political Cortadito checked.
Lago’s political action committee, Coral Gables First, also reported zero contributions and also returned a $2,500 check to Pumayana, as well as two $1,000 checks to Bahama Sunrise Development, which, according to the Florida Department of Corporations, is partially owned by Pumayana. Those contributions were also refunded on Nov. 19.
Commissioner Kirk Menendez, who decided in December to challenge the mayor instead of running for reelection, isn’t doing much better. Menendez, who raised almost $15,000 last year as a commission candidate, only raised $2,550 more in the last quarter.
But Menendez is also spending less, hundreds compared to $40,700 spent so far by Lago, more than half of which ($28K) went to his campaign manager, Jesse Manzano.
Read related: Kirk Menendez runs for Coral Gables mayor against city bully Vince Lago
Still Coach Kirk has raised a total only $17,550 compared to $167,000 raised by Lago just in his campaign account, not including the PAC. Of course, that’s thanks to many maximum contributions of $1,000. Of the 201 contributors listed on Lago’s campaign report, a whopping 151 have given the most that they can. Those include checks from Benjamin Leon, who Donald Trump has named as ambassador to Spain, and a whole football team of lobbyists, including former Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla and South Miami Mayor Javier Fernandez.

In comparison, of Menendez’s 40 contributors, only eight gave the maximum $1,000 donation.
Lago also has a bunch of bundles, like $15K in 15 maximum checks from real estate investor Tomas Cabrerizo‘s multiple companies, and $11,000 from developer Allen Morris, who got a his 10-story Ponce Park Residences project approved unanimously by the commission in May. Lago praised the project, and the developer, who reduced the size and density of the luxury condominium, which was originally planned for 16 stories. The $11K came in 11 separate checks on June 12, less than a month after the approval.
Leon gave another $5,000 from his companies and Lago also got $5,000 from JustWell Health, which is a healthcare and a real estate holdings firm.
Vice Mayor Rhonda Anne Anderson has reported raising only $$11,550 from 14 donors — 11 of those contributed the maximum $1,000, including herself. She also got two $1,000 checks from former Commissioner Wayne Withers, but only $250 from former Mayor Don Slesnick. Anderson’s campaign account shows she has spent $1,600 so far.
Attorney Richard Lara, Lago’s pick to run for commission against Menendez (now an open seat) has raised more than Anderson, an incumbent, with a reported total of $63,350.70 from 139 donors. Of those, 32 gave the maximum $1,000. Lara’s support has also waned since he announced at a commission meeting last February. He reported only $1,750 raised in the final quarter of 2024, after reporting $3,080 in the third quarter.
But he’s spending like the campaign was a shopping spree, with almost $23,700 spent so far, including $1,500 monthly consulting fees to Nicolas Cabrera, son of former Commissioner Ralph Cabrera and lackey of Lago. He’s also paid Alex Miranda, the former chief of staff and campaign spokesman for former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine (a Democrat who ran for governor), $3,000.
Running against Lara is attorney Thomas “Tom” Wells, a Menendez ally who has, so far, paid for everything himself. A total of $2,878 on signs, door hangers, a website, business cards and campaign buttons. Wells, who is the vice chair of the charter review committee, is a regular at Birdie’s Bistro, formerly Burger Bob’s, and is a well known entity in the City Beautiful. Unlike Lara. So maybe he doesn’t need so much money. It also appears, from the 2023 election, where both of Lago’s well-funded candidates lost, that money doesn’t matter as much in the Gables as in other cities.

Laureano Cancio, who is running against Anderson, is also counting on that. Cancio, like Michael Anthony Abbot — a fat chance candidate for mayor — has raised $100 to pay bank fees.
“The last election was won by people who didn’t have the most money. You can win without money,” Cancio told Political Cortadito, adding that he’s counting on the Lago backlash to hurt his sidekick, the vice mayor. “The mayor is pretty much hated by everybody,” he said.
“I’m spending the least amount of money I can and I’m not beholden to anybody,” Cancio added.
But he is concerned about the Lago/Anderson/Lara slate. “These three candidates seem to be running as a team and, if the trend is not reversed by Election Day, it is very possible that they might take the majority control of the commission, to the delight of Lago who lost that control two years ago.”
Cancio is counting on forums and other public speaking engagements to reach voters and while he is the only candidate, so far, to bring up education needs and the idea of the city running it’s own school system — in light of all the development — he recognizes that the biggest issue will be that very development.
“Overdevelopment seems to be the issue most likely to prevent the troika of Lago, Lara, and Anderson from walking away with victory,” he told Political Cortadito this week. “Coral Gables voters have identified this issue as being of critical concern for the community. Lago’s critics have even predicted that the issue could become the mayor’s Waterloo.”
Ladra love how he talks.
Two new candidates who announced last week, Felix Pardo and Claudia Miro, don’t have any financial reports yet.
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