Miami D4 campaign mailers cast race as commie rumbero vs liar who likes taxes

Joe Carollo and his PAC are back to same old tricks 
It is so predictable that the special election for Miami Commission seat in District 4 would have someone calling one of the candidates a communist.
But it still hits strange that it would happen to Jose Regalado, the youngest son of former Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, who arrived in the U.S. in 1962 as a Pedro Pan kid, shipped to the country by his parents in a massive Catholic Church operation to save children from the communist regime taking hold on the island. The mayor’s father, the candidate’s grandfather, spent 22 years as a political prisoner. His brother Tommy worked for TV Martí.
But those details are lost in this classic Joe Carollo tactic, which the Miami Commissioner — who is pushing hard to get Ralph Rosado elected, instead — has used in many, if not all, his campaigns. Carollo, whose political action committee is dropping daily mailers to D4 voters on Rosado’s behalf, doesn’t need proof. Communist is just a word he throws out. Like chavista.
“José Regalado doesn’t care about the pain of our people,” one mailer says in Spanish. “He tells you one thing upfront and does something else behind your back.” It’s intentionally vague, based on pure emotion, trying to irritate Cuban voters with a tired photo Carollo has used time and time again of Academy Award winning actor and known socialist apologist Sean Penn at a Miami Heat game in 2011. They just happened to run into each other. Ladra thinks it was during the Miami Film Festival.
Read related: Manolo Reyes’ widow comes out strong for Jose Regalado in D4 special election
At least this time, Carollo is using it against the right brother. In 2017, he used the same photo in a mail piece against Tomas N. “Tommy” Regalado when they both ran for commission.
But wait, there’s more.

Not only is Regalado a commie, like the rest of his family — but other mailers say the Regalados are laundering drug money for chavistas tied to the Venezuelan government (another recycled attack) and that the 40-year-old candidate is also a “rumbero,” which is cuban slang for partygoer or club aficionado. And how dare he enjoy our nightlife?
Regalado and Rosado are running in the special election June 3 to replace Manolo Reyes, who passed away last month. And Carollo is reportedly pouring at least half a million dollars from his PAC, Miami First, into the race. He is that desperate to get Rosado elected and get a third vote on the commission to move his agenda forward and block any attempts at true reforms like the lifetime term limits that Commissioner Damian Pardo is pushing (more on that later).
If it seems like life or death for him, it is because it is. This race could really either breathe life into Carollo’s power  (and abuse) for whatever time he has left on the dais — which could be longer than we think if the election date is changed (more on that later) — or kill it for good. So Carollo is throwing everything at Regalado to see what sticks. That is also a classic Carollo tactic.
Ladra predicts that nothing will stick. Because D4 is Regalado Country. These people know the Regalados — which also include Miami-Dade Commissioner Raquel Regalado — are not cartel-cozying communist chavistas. That’s not even a stretch. That’s a giant heap de lo que pica el pollo. El Pollo Carollo, in this case.

Not such a stretch: A mailer sent earlier this month that paints Rosado as Carollo’s puppet and quotes a Political Cortadito exclusive in which the candidate outright lies to Ladra about the commissioner being at a city park with him to direct a video campaign ad.  “Who will control Ralph Rosado on the Miami Commission,” the mailer asks in the headline. “Joe Carollo, who has cost the city of Miami taxpayers well over $15 million in legal fees for his defense and settlements due to his rampant abuse of power is openly funding and supporting Ralph Rosado’s campaign.
Read related: Miami’s District 4 candidate Ralph Rosado is backed, helped by Joe Carollo
“Ralph Rosado was caught lying about his close relationship to Joe Carollo,” it says on the other side, quoting the story in Political Cortadito from earlier this month: “Rosado… denied that Carollo had been at the park with him. ‘No. He was not directing. He wasn’t there,’ Rosado told Political Cortadito. When Ladra told him she had video of Carollo and his wife at the park with him and his mother-in-law, and asked if he wanted to change or stick to his answer, Rosado hesitated a little. Then he said, ‘I’ll get back to you.’”
He never did, by the way.
“Tell Ralph Rosado one Joe Carollo on the City of Miami Commission is enough,” it ends.
Actually, one Joe Carollo on the City of Miami Commission is one too many.
That mailer was paid for by Proven Leadership for Miami, a PAC chaired by Miami River Commission Chairman Horacio Aguirre and used for the senior Regalado in his campaign for county property appraiser last year. So was the one sent this week that calls Rosado “a proven tax and spend bureaucrat” with a “documented history of incompetence and raising taxes.”

Read Full Story