Ken Russell qualifies for November Miami mayoral race; ADLP dips one toe

With a lucky 13 candidates expressing interest in the Miami mayoral seat, now that Francis Suarez is termed out, only one qualified on opening day Friday: Former Commissioner Ken Russell.
Russell has been openly campaigning for months, after entering the race in March. The former District 2 commissioner resigned in 2022 to run for congress and lost in the Democratic primary against Annette Taddeo (who then lost against Maria Elvira Salazar).
Meanwhile, another former Miami commissioner, Alex Díaz de la Portilla — yes, the same one who was suspended by Gov. Ron DeSantis after getting slapped with bribery and money laundering charges in 2023 — filed his first paperwork.
Diaz de la Portilla, who has been campaigning in the shadows for months, didn’t qualify, however. Candidates have until Sept. 20 to do that. All he filed was a statement of candidacy and a form appointing a treasurer to a campaign account. Maybe he is still putting his financial information together. It’s pretty complicated. Or maybe he’s still threatening to run and won’t qualify.
Read related: Alex Diaz de la Portilla is knocking, giving out mameys to be Miami mayor
“The ‘threat’ became a reality, mi gorda,” he texted Ladra Friday evening, after he sent a new photo of his same ol’ goodie bag, except now it has three mameys, an avocado and some sanitizing wipes in it. Did he have those left over from COVID supplies?
Except it’s still just a threat. He could have filed the forms he filed Friday months ago. Why didn’t he just qualify while he was at it?
ADLP might also still be thinking about it. Political observers say he may have a better chance at running to replace Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins — who has announced her own Miami mayoral bid — in the county’s District 5. He has run and lost there before. Right now, the only potential candidates are former State Rep. and onetime Miami Beach commissioner David Richardson, who lost a bid for tax collector last year, and former Miami Commissioner Joe Sanchez, who lost the 2024 Republican primary for Miami-Dade sheriff, who is rumored to be asking around to see if he can get the funds (more on that later).
Filing and qualifying ain’t the same thing. There are ten other candidates who filed way before ADLP did. It does not mean they will all qualify. Higgins submitted petitions last month to qualify, but still has to submit her financial statement and other documents. Former Miami City Manager Emilio Gonzalez, the one who sued the city and got the election back on this November — after three commissioners tried to cancel it — is expected to qualify soon.
The others on the maybe list are former Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez, the current mayor’s dad, who was mayor of Miami twice, first elected in 1985 as the city’s first Cuban-born mayor, onetime congressional candidate Michael Hepburn, former Miami-Dade Community Council Member Christian Cevallos, perennial candidates Max Martinez and June Savage and first timers Alyssa Crocker, Ijamyn Joseph Gray and Linda Anderson, who doesn’t stand a chance as an official member of the Socialist Workers Party.
Let’s see how many of them pan out. But it’s almost guaranteed there’s going to be a runoff after the Nov. 4 election. And a poll last month indicates that contest could be between Higgins and Gonzalez.
Read related: Poll has Eileen Higgins in Miami mayoral runoff with Emilio Gonzalez
Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo has also been threatening to run, coyly tossing out the notion that he may or may not on his daily morning “Loco Joe Show” on AM radio and attacking Gonzalez and Higgins on the regular. But he still hasn’t filed a single page with the city clerk.
Russell was the first and only one to qualify on Friday. He filed everything in the morning: the oath, a change in campaign treasurer, his financial disclosure and a voluntary, signed statement that he will adhere to fair campaign practices (let’s see if ADLP does that).
“It’s official,” Russell posted on social media. He said he will issue a statement over the weekend.
Russell likes to tell the story that his political career started with a sandbox. When the city wouldn’t clean up the contaminated park where his kids played, he rallied his neighbors and did it himself. It’s a great origin story.
From there, he parlayed the “dad with a mission” vibe into a seat at City Hall, where he talked about affordable housing, sea level rise, police accountability and fair wages. His current campaign is centered on affordable housing and fighting the corruption he says has so obviously taken over City Hall. “Miami must stop paying tens of millions of dollars in legal fees to defend the corrupt practices of elected officials and their staff and put that money to good use: Improving our neighborhoods,” he writes on his Ken Russell for mayor website.
Since leaving City Hall, Russell has been a lobbyist and consultant, most notably for the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, a position he may have lost because of pressure from Higgins.
Read related: Eileen Higgins pressures Sierra Club and Ken Russell resigns as lobbyist
Before politics, Russell, who speaks five languages (six, if you count Miami Spanglish), was an international yo-yo salesman (yes, really), which took him to more than 50 countries. Now he says he’s ready for his toughest trick yet: cleaning up Miami City Hall the same way he cleaned up that little park.
“It seems like a mugshot is a prerequisite for running in the city of Miami,” Russell told Political Cortadito. “Voters are over it  and they are not letting Alex near the cookie jar again.”
The charges against Diaz de la Portilla — 14 felony counts from a public corruption investigation — stem from a pay-to-play scheme in which the commissioner was accused of taking campaign contributions totaling more than $250,000 to giveaway a public park to the owners of a private school outside his district. Actually in Russell’s old district. The charged were dropped last November, just weeks before trial. It was being handled by the Broward State Attorney’s Office after our esteemed Miami-Dade SAO, Kathy Fernandez-Rundle, recused herself. ADLP, who was arrested weeks before his re-election failed (lost to Commissioner Miguel Gabela), has been calling them politically motivated from day one.
Ladra bets we’ll continue to hear that refrain again and again as he continues to paint himself as some kind of victim. Like Donald Trump. But taxpayers will be the real victims if the city of Miami ends up paying his $1.3 million in criminal attorneys’ fees.
Anyway, Gabela is not termed out until 2027 and ADLP didn’t want to wait. Besides, the mayor’s office has always been his pipe dream. He has talked about it at least since he lost the state rep race in 2012 to Jose Javier Rodriguez.
And while he had not opened a campaign account before Friday, Diaz de la Portilla raised $278,000 in the second quarter, through June 30, for his political action committee, Proven Leadership for Miami-Dade. That includes $100K from the same couple he was accused of taking bribes from. The Dean has also been posting more regularly on social media, but for some reason started a brand new Instagram account in recent weeks, where he has basically been writing love letters to himself.
Read related: David and Leila Centner give fresh $100K to Alex Diaz de la Portilla PAC
“My commitment to the community is not measured by speeches, but by constant presence, by a sincere embrace and by truly listening to every neighbor,” he posted Aug. 25. “Being with our seniors, sharing with families, and walking through every corner of our communities is what inspires me and gives me the strength to keep moving forward.
“I firmly believe that leadership is built hand in hand with the people. Not from a distance, but from closeness sharing joys, concerns, and dreams. Politics only has meaning when it turns into concrete solutions that improve people’s lives, and that has always been my commitment.”
Cue the violins and the photo ops: Alex hugging viejitos in parks, handing cafecitos to abuelas, and pretending this is about anything other than clawing his way back into political power — one creepy abrazo at a time. It’s too predictable.
There are a whole two weeks for ADLP to make good on his threat, or Carollo for that matter. If Crazy Joe throws his hat into the clown car, he could be the second Carollo on the ballot. Brother Frank Carollo, who was the commissioner in District 3 before Joe, has filed paperwork to run for the same seat again. But the only one to qualify in that race is Yvonne Bayona, president of the Miami Historic East Shenandoah Homeowners Association.
Nobody has qualified in the District 5 race, where King may face one or two challengers: Frederick Bryant and Marion Brown have both filed some paperwork with the city clerk’s office indicating their intent.
The post Ken Russell qualifies for November Miami mayoral race; ADLP dips one toe appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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