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Among the House races in South Florida this November, one of the most important, despite the little media attention, is the race to replace State Rep. Manny Diaz, Jr. in House District 103.
Why is it important? Because Diaz, the GOP mafia’s pick to run for the Senate seat vacated by Rene Garcia, is one of would be State Rep. Jose Oliva‘s yes men and speaker vote. That seat needs to stay firmly an Oliva vote if he is to have the mighty power next session. How loyal does that person have to be? So much so that Oliva handpicked his very own employee, Miami Lakes Councilman Frank Mingo, an Oliva Cigars supply chain manager, to run for the seat.
He is literally a lackey.
Democrat Cindy Polo, a mom on a mission, could have a real chance against Mingo in the year of the woman on a supposed blue wave. So of course they threw a challenger against her in the primary. This way they can attack her and force her to burn her money in an August contest.
Enter Richard Tapia, the possible plantidate who came out of nowhere. Well, actually, he came out of Kendall, allegedly moving into a Hialeah apartment in the district one day before qualifying on June 20.  Hmmmm. It certainly could look like he moved in just for the race. Or maybe “moved in” is better.
At least he didn’t just become a Democrat. He did that two years ago.
Tapia was a Republican two years ago when he announced a run for a Miami-Dade School Board seat in the Little Havana district. Actually, he’s bounced back and forth a few times but he’s been a Republican more than he’s been a Democrat by at least 12 years.
He seems to have a hard time making up his mind. Tapia was even registered as everything for some time in 2016. He last switched from Republican to Democrat in December of 2016, four months after he dropped out of the school board race. But he went from Democrat to Republican in February that same year and from No Party Affiliation to Democrat in January, only 12 days before that. Talk about indecision. Tapia had switched to NPA from Republican in 2014. But he had been Republican since 2002, when he switched from Democrat in August of that year.
Whew. Yeah, I’m dizzy, too.
Tapia’s bio on Bloomberg says he has provided political strategies to the insurance industry as well as to “candidates seeking public office, achieving the elections of various state representatives, a U.S. Congressman, and a U.S. Senator.” Ladra wonders who those are. Bet they’re Republican. Someone should ask him, because he wouldn’t talk to me. And is that the kind of public servant Miami Lakes wants?
He was also Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo‘s appointment to the planning advisory board. Bovo, a died-in-the-wool Republican, is pretty tight with Oliva and would not likely appoint someone who would go against Oliva’s handpicked Diaz successor.
What seems far more likely is that Tapia is a plant, put there solely to smear Cindy and make her spend her money so she is at a disadvantage when it comes to the general. And if Tapia actually wins the primary, which is unlikely but possible, he will not try very hard to win the general. In fact, he may drop out. It wouldn’t be his first time.
This is the same guy who withdrew from the School Board race in 2016 after getting nudged by lobbyist and mayoral son CJ Gimenez, who met with him in a restaurant to talk him out of it. That’s because CJ’s aunt and the mayor’s sister in law, Maria Teresa Rojas, was running for the same seat. How much you wanna bet that Tapia was talked into this race?
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Tapia wouldn’t talk about it. Reached over the weekend, he referred all questions to his campaign manager, Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador, who is known to work principally for Republican candidates. In fact, Ladra cannot remember a single Democrat candidate Sasha has worked with.
Of course, Tirador could just be into it to go against her old partner, David Custin, who works for Mingo and all of Oliva’s flying monkeys. It’s not like she hasn’t been driven by a grudge before.
It didn’t help Tapia’s case that he hung up on Ladra and answered a texted question about his P&Z appointment with “have a great day.” Tapia doesn’t even have to drop out if he wins the primary. He could throw it. He could just suspend his campaign or do something really stupid on purpose to hand Mingo the election. Or he could let it be known that he doesn’t really live in Hialeah.
Meanwhile, Polo seems like the real deal, another mom who got woke by the Parkland school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Senior High in February. She filed her first paperwork for the seat in March.
“I’m not running because it was part of a career plan,” she told Ladra. “It was a necessity.”
Polo, who used to do communications for the MDX Authority, helped found the Northwest Dade Democratic Club almost two years ago and hoped to find someone else to step up. After Parkland, she saw Mingo’s name all by itself and decided that the someone was staring at her in the mirror. She was encourage by many, including former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, who gave $500 to her campaign in May, according to state campaign finance reports.
Tapia, she said, called her and asked her to move her race to District 105. Polo said nana nina.
“He might not know what Hialeah girls are made of.”
Polo — who is involved in the area residents’ anti-blasting movement — wants to represent a community she says has been ignored for too long. “No one’s ever knocked on our doors, no one’s ever talked to us. I’ve lived here all my life so I know,” she said. “I want to give a voice to the area.”
See? Not a plant.
 

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The congressional primary in dielection is too important. So I did something I thought I would never do. I registered as a Democrat.
Ladra has been a deep purple, card-carrying, proud NPA all her adult life. It started as a pragmatic choice by a journalism student who did not want to be linked to either extreme agenda. It ended up being perfectly suited to me since I found issues and problems in both parties that I was just unable to swallow. So I stayed NPA and proudly proclaimed it from every rooftop.
This year, I have already vowed to vote blue up and down the ballot because of Parkland. Yes, a school shooting at a Broward high school that took 17 lives did what LGBT rights and immigration battles, climate change and taxation and energy priorities and even the systematic privatization of what should be public education couldn’t do — it turned me into a single issue voter. After watching the Florida legislature debate gun control in the wake of those deaths at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, I had no choice. Those creeps who said the MSD students didn’t know what they were talking about and put guns in our schools, they need to be voted out. We need a blue majority in Florida.
So, yeah, I am going to vote for the Democratz in November in both my House race (Jeff Solomon has my vote Aug. 28) and Senate District 40.
But I couldn’t wait for November when it comes to congressional District 27, because there is only one Democrat candidate in the primary on Aug. 28 that I know can beat the eventual Republican winner, who is apparently going to be Maria Elvira Salazar — and that’s Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez.
I can hear some of you now saying that I am only doing this because I am a paid campaign staffer. That’s ridiculous. Do the people who worked for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez only support her because they work for her? Do the people on Marco Rubio’s staff secretly wish they could support someone else but are there only because of their paychecks? Shame on you. If you think my vote is worth any amount of money, or that I would change my voter profile from my entire life, you are delusional. This is something I treasure. Nobody can pay for my vote. You have to earn it. And Kristen has. I was always going to vote for her. Rosen Gonzalez only invited me to be part of Team Kristen because I’ve supported her for the three years she’s been in office. Heck, I supported her candidacy two years prior to that, before she withdrew from the 2013 city elections on the Beach. So, yes, I am paid to help her with her messaging and media. But no, I am not paid to support her. I do that for free and happily because of who she is.
What is it about her? A few things.
A single mom, like me, she is the only candidate in the Dem #FL27 primary who has a full time job and lives paycheck to paycheck, like me. She recycles obsessively and drives a hybrid. She walks the walk, not just talks the talk. She is a teacher, with ten years experience as a professor at Miami Dade College and a real intense desire to make community college free for everyone, so higher education becomes a right and not a privilege. She has passed legislation to raise the minimum wage and protect hotel workers from sexual harassment, so she took on the hotel industry in a city that depends on hotels. Sure, she is often unpolished and sometimes says things off the top of her head that she later regrets. I kinda like that about her. Because at least she says something. Her answers are not pat rehearsed and practiced talking points written by someone else. Trust me, sometimes I wish she would stick to my script. She can’t. It is in her nature to be natural. She is the real deal.
She has also been campaigning the longest, having announced a bid for that seat before Ileana Ros-Lehtinen retired. So she was willing to challenge the congresswoman on her own turf. That takes guts. She has something slightly resembling gumption. Nobody else had the nerve. They only jumped in after it was an open seat, which makes them opportunists of a sort.
Most importantly, Kristen is the only candidate in the Democratic primary who speaks Spanish fluently. That is going to become important after Aug. 28 when whoever wins has to battle Salazar for votes in a district that is 73% Hispanic.
Ladra likes Matt Haggman. We worked together at the Miami Herald and he was a fine journalist. But he and his campaign are out of touch with the average voter or resident in my community. Ladra likes former State Rep. David Richardson. Despite his stupid trip to Cuba and the fact that he talks about being the first gay elected to the House like its his only achievement, I think he has good intentions. I love the fact that he took it upon himself to visit state prisons and evaluate their operations as a state legislator.
But neither of them speak Spanish very well. And when pressed to vote for a David Richardson or a Matt Anything against a Maria Elvira Salazar, I fear that a lot of the elderly, high performing voters in the district will go for the name with the Z in it. This is not racism. It’s clarity. Nobody is saying this is how it should be. Just that it is what it is.
And that Gonzalez has two Zs.
There are only a few hours left to change your voter’s registration, if you are an NPA like me and want to vote in the primary. You have to do it before midnight at this website here.
But this message is also or more for those of you already registered as a Democrat: Think about the impact of your August vote in November and don’t throw it away. Think about who would be the best match against the eventual GOP nominee before you cast your ballot. Think about who will best be able to represent the majority of the district, and speak to her constituency in their language.
Then vote for Kristen Rosen Gonzalez.

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