Commissioner Joe Carollo freelances as ‘Miami Al Dia’ morning AM radio host

Miami doesn’t have Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera anymore on weekday morning radio to let us know what’s really happening at the county, the different municipalities, the state and the country. But, hey, we have Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo every day at 10 a.m. on America Radio Miami 1260 AM to feed us lies.
As if he didn’t already drone on — on and on and on — during commission meetings.
Carollo, who is threatening to run for Miami mayor, gets an hour Monday through Friday to blast his enemies and support his friends — including recently elected Miami Commissioner Ralph “Rafael” Rosado, whose campaign Carollo coordinated — in a show he calls Miami Al Dia. The program sits in between the three-hour programs of Emmy Award winning journalists Sandra Peebles, before, and Carines Moncada, after.
They must be livid.
How is it okay for a politician to have an hourly morning radio show to use for electioneering and political retaliation? It’s basically an hour long ad and there’s no disclaimer. His communications director, Karen Caballero, who is paid $115,043 a year from city taxes, sits there in the radio studio with him, though it’s hard to figure out why, since this is not part of his city job or her city job. Caballero — the same staffer who tricked Ladra into coming to the district office to get served with a subpoena as a witness in a case brought by the mayor of a neighboring city — is the blonde on the bottom left corner in the photo below.
Neither of them responded to several calls and texts for comment.

Remember, this is the same guy who was found by a jury to have violated the First Amendment rights of two Little Havana businessmen by weaponizing the city’s code enforcement against them. He lost and was ordered to pay a $63.5 million. One could say he is now weaponizing the airwaves.
Carollo used the space and time to attack Jose Regalado — who ran against his puppet candidate, Rosado — and the whole Regalado family (including the candidate’s sister, Miami-Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado, and their father, former Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, now the county property appraiser). He made scurrilous and baseless allegations about every single one of them, calling them communists and associates of drug traffickers.
The commissioner has also used the airtime to blast other candidates who are or are threatening to run for Miami mayor, including Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, who has filed paperwork, and former Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who is just bluffing. He called Portilla’s campaign stunt — handing out fruit to high priority elderly voters — Operation Mamey and called Higgins a Marxist Johnny Come Lately pandering to Hispanic voters (same ol’, same ol’).
Read related: Ralph Rosado and Joe Carollo beat Jose Regalado in Miami D4 special election
“They learned Spanish with JustiLanguage. And all of a sudden they want to be mayor,” he said, referring to what is actually an English instruction school in Westchester. He could have been including former City Commissioner Ken Russell, who has also filed paperwork and has shown pretty fluent and locally nuanced Español on recent interviews and social media posts.
Carollo also calls former City Manager Emilio Gonzalez, who served in the U.S. Army for 26 years, including a stint as a military attache with the Defense Intelligence Agency and who has also filed paperwork, “Coronel Chiringa” (or Col. Smallshit in English), and former Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina, who keeps getting mentioned in polls, a liar.
Gonzalez said it’s not the first time Carollo nicknames him and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t listen to the show. I don’t think anybody does,” Gonzalez told Political Cortadito.
The station’s program director told Ladra that they are between Nielsen contracts and are not currently measuring their ratings with listeners. How convenient. However, one of the recordings last week has 68 views on YouTube — and that’s over five days.
Colina lives in Miami Lakes and, as such, is not running for mayor, despite being named in some polls. He also doesn’t listen to Carollo’s propaganda and doesn’t care. “It would be concerning to me if it was a more respectable person,” Colina told Ladra. “A vast majority of the people know who Carollo is and know that the majority of the things that come out of his mouth are inaccurate or biased or just self-serving.”
Current colleagues also mentioned. Carollo is all aglow about Rosado, going on and on Wednesday about his “illustrious” swearing in on Tuesday. But two of them are regularly skewered: Commissioners Damian Pardo and Miguel Gabela. Carollo has gone so far as to call Gabela’s wife “La Llorona” — or the crybaby — after the woman showed up to a commission meeting and emotionally testified about being harassed and watched by Carollo and his goons. He also played a song by the same name.
It seems a bit childish at times. Like a high schooler podcasting in his garage.
Read related: Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo to lose appeal on $63.5 million judgement
The commissioner DJ also sometimes fills the space with this-day-in-history anecdotes. One recent Thursday, it was the anniversary of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run and also the release of both the movie Dancing with Wolves and the album The Joshua Tree. He played a little U2 that day, but he daily airs what must be theme songs of old western TV shows, like Bonanza.
He once played the theme to The Godfather on the day Marlon Brando was born. But he just had to mention how former Police Chief Art Acevedo — another regular target of Carollo’s — called the commission a mafia. He marked the birthdays of actor Doris Day, and singer Miguel Bose (he played “Amante Bandido”) and wishes people a Happy Feast Day on occasion.
On the day that Richard Nixon died, Carollo talked about meeting him and getting a campaign check for one of his campaigns. “It’s part of the memory I lived that nobody can take away from me.”
But he always has time for the rants. And when there’s not an election that he’s trying to influence, Carollo is always “reporting” on the undercover activity of the hidden Sandinistas and Chavistas in our midst, alleging that anyone who crosses him is laundering money for the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela. He also constantly rages against the leftist Democrats trying to gain control of the city and hails President Donald Trump, trying to position himself as the Trump candidate in the mayoral election (But so is Diaz de la Portilla, who can’t stop campaigning on the “injustice” of the public corruption charges against him in 2023).
Carollo says on his show that the attempt to move the elections to November of next year is a scheme by “extreme leftist Democrats who want to get control of the city of Miami… by creating Biden districts.” He says any proposal to increase the number of districts is also a Democrat plot. And the lifetime term limits are an attempt to stop him from exposing the real corruption in the city.
In other words, Miami Al Dia is a lot like Carollo himself: There’s a conspiracy everywhere.
Ladra hates to admit this, but it makes for good radio. It’s very entertaining when Carollo gets all hot and bothered and starts to raise his voice in what definitely sounds like practiced outrage. His prolonged silences are just as dramatic. It’s radio theater from the golden age of radio. But it’s bad for you. Like drugs. Ladra might need an intervention.
It’s not the most responsible broadcast.
Luis Gutierrez, the program director for America Noticias Radio Miami, said that Carollo is not paid for his time nor does he pay for the hour himself. Gutierrez says that the commercials he brings pay for the hour and that if Ladra can secure $1,400 per show, or $20K a month, she could have one, too (which is a great idea Mr. Mike Fernandez! Let’s dare them to do it!)
Other sources, and just plain common sense, indicate that this is a quid pro quo for the $150,000 that Carollo had the city paid America TeVe, which was affiliated with America Radio Miami, to cover the New Year’s Eve bash at Bayfront Park. The money came out of the Bayfront Park Management Trust, where there is already an investigation into the commissioner’s alleged misspending of public funds for his private or political gain (same thing).
Read related: Miami paid $150K for one long Joe Carollo commercial on New Year’s Eve
In addition, the commissioner’s wife, Marjorie Carollo, is reportedly the “agent” who buys the air time, meaning she gets a commission, which is usually 15%. That means that if Carollo’s political action committee spent $500,000 on radio ads on the show, which could be a conservative guess, the couple got $75,000 in commission 0ver the 43-day election cycle for the special election that ended June 3. Nice little gig, right?
Gutierrez said he did run it through legal and Carollo’s airtime doesn’t violate any federal rules, “as long as he’s off he air by September,” which is when and if Carollo qualifies for the mayor’s race. If the commission doesn’t move it to 2026 (more on that later).
In the meantime, “If an opposing candidate wants equal time, we’ll take the money. I don’t have a problem with that,” Gutierrez told Political Cortadito. “This is straight business for me. I’m not on the right. I’m not on the left. I’m bipartisan — as long as the money keeps coming in.”
Ladra asked him if she could have an hour of time some mornings if Political Cortadito got enough commercial sponsors to pay $20,000 a month. That’s apparently the value of the “freebie” time Carollo is getting on the air. Could it be considered an “in-kind” donation to his campaign?
Gutierrez said he would have to ask Carlos Vasallo, the owner of the station, who is really good pals with Carollo, if they would put me on the air.
“I run the station but I don’t set the rules. And I would have to filter that through him,” Gutierrez said.
There will be an update when he gets back to me. But Ladra is not holding her breath.
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