Former Miam-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez — the first Cuban-American mayor of Miami and is the father of current and termed-out Mayor Francis “Baby X” Suarez — is rumored to be eyeing a run for his old seat in the city. But the senior Suarez, who left the District 7 commission office to run for county mayor unsuccessfully in 2020, told Political Cortadito Tuesday that he was not in next November’s race to succeed his son.
“I’m still under permanent injunction not to run for office and the only person who can waive that is Rita,” Commissioner Mayor Sir Suarez texted Ladra, referring to his wife, the boss. She knows best. This is going to be a circus worse than the special election for District 2.
Baby X may be indicted in connection to his dealings with developer Rishi Kapoor, who is being investigated– or he may be included in the Donald Trump administration as an ambassadorship in Saudi Arabia, a prize for stepping down after running for president for five minutes. The current mayor’s wife Gloria was actually floated as a possible successor in a telephone poll in June. But nobody takes that seriously and she has not been added to the already long list of confirmed, assumed or rumored candidates.
Those are:

Commissioner Manolo Reyes, who has announced he would run but whose health issues could cause him to back down and stay in his District 4 commission seat, where he still has two years on his term. And the mayor doesn’t vote.
Commissioner Joe Carollo, who is termed out and nobody believes he will just retire and fade away and give up the power he likes to abuse so much. Two questions: Will he risk the chance he’d lose a city-wide race? Or will the large field of candidates help him become the frontrunner?
Former City Manager Emilio Gonzalez, who has been talking to would-be supporters (read: donors) about a possible run. If not for mayor, he could also run for District 3 to replace Carollo.
Former Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who told everyone he is running for mayor after the 11 felony public corruption charges against him were dropped in November, just a month before his trial would begin. Diaz de la Portilla, who lost his house in District 3 to foreclosure, may realize, however, that it’s going to be really hard for him to win a city-wide race and decide to run in District 4, instead. There’s no way he’d wait until 2027 to run in District 1 again. But it will be a real rain on his parade if he establishes residency in D4 and Reyes decides to stay in place. After all, he has not yet filed any paperwork and qualifying isn’t until September. Then again, Diaz de la Portilla may keep a “back up” residency in District 3, por si las moscas.
Serial candidate Maxwell “Max” Martinez, a marketing professional who has reported loaning himself more than $122,000, or practically all his campaign funds, according to campaign finance records at the city clerk’s office. Martinez lost a mayoral bid in 2021, proudly coming in with 11% against “the most famous mayor in America.” He has a marketing agency and also ran against 14 other candidates in the special election to replace Sabina Covo.
Serial candidate Michael Hepburn, who ran for commission in District 5 and for congress once as a Democrat, has filed paperwork with the city clerk.
Serial candidate June Savage, a real estate professional who also ran for commission District 2 in the special election and once for mayor of Miami Beach, has filed paperwork with the city clerk.

We’re two short of a baseball team, but Ladra has also heard that people are prodding former Commissioner Joe Sanchez, and that he’s declined because, well, he is still licking his woulds after a rough Republican primary for the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s office. Another name batted about is former Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina. So, play ball!
Both Colina and Suarez are former cops. Is that what the city needs at the helm? Or a military-minded colonel like Gonzalez? Someone que ponga orden at City Hall?

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There are two new candidates for commission in the Coral Gales election this April.
It didn’t take long for someone to file to run in Group 3 after Kirk Menendez decided last week to run for mayor instead for someone to take his place. Attorney Tom Wells, who is Menendez’s appointment to the city’s charter review committee, filed Friday for the seat and will run against attorney Richard Lara, who is the mayor’s hand picked puppet.
Attorney Laureano Cancio (no relation to former Miami-Dade Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Cancio) also filed Friday to run against Commissioner and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson, who is also an attorney and a Lago puppet.
So this April’s election may be a referendum on Vince Lago.
Wells, a Gables resident for more than 30 years, has raised two daughters in the City Beautiful with his wife Diane and is an active member of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, serving as senior warden and on the vestry. He is a member of the Coral Gables Country Club, as well.
A North Gables resident, he fought to keep Burger Bob’s and then became active in the push to reopen Burger Bob’s and then the opening of it’s new reincarnation as the Birdie Bistro — which opened last month. He assists in restaurant operations on the weekends, like serving ice cream to people who recently attended the 76th Annual Junior Orange Bowl Parade. He also advocated for the renewal of the Fritz & Franz lease earlier this year.
Wells often speaks at commission meetings. He supported the ouster of former City Manager Peter Iglesias and opposed changing the election to November and the proposed 2% tax cut last year because it could affect services for a tiny savings to residents.
He said at a town hall organized by Commissioner Melissa Castro that the big winners would be the large developers. Houston-based owners of Gables Station would get a $29,408 savings while Wells’ own taxes would fall by only $94. “Why are we giving these foreign companies a tax cut that’s going to hurt our services?” He called it “a $2.65 million giveaway.”
Read related: Town hall on tiny tax cut in Coral Gables shows residents don’t want it
This pretty much aligns him with the positions of Castro, Menendez and Commissioner Ariel Fernandez, and against Mayor Vince Lago, who has been gas-lighting the commission in an egocentric battle since his two hand-picked candidates lost in the last commission race (read: referendum on Lago) two years ago. Lake Sour Grapes.
“It’s so toxic. It’s so personal,” Wells, 52, told Political Cortadito about the current state of affairs on the commission. “I think I can help restore civility in Coral Gables at City Hall.”

 
To that end, he called Lara — who announced his candidacy during public comments at a commission meeting — on Saturday, the day after he filed. “I said, ‘Let’s try to keep it clean,’” Wells told Ladra. “It’s not going to make or break either of us. It’s not going to define our lives.”
Still, he’s been hazed before at military school so he’s not scared of what may come.
He already has a website and says he won’t be doing a lot of fundraising. He expects to loan himself about $20,000 and will do a grassroots campaign. “We’re not in this to curry favors,” Wells said. “We just want people to vote and put signs in their yards.”
Cancio is a Pedro Pan kid, coming from Cuba in the Peter Pan flights for unaccompanied minor children. He grew up in Coral Gables, went to school in New York then returned 35 years ago. He went back to run the New York Marathon with his daughter, Olivia, in 2017. He lost 45 pounds training for the 26.2-mile race and was featured in the New York Post. The 74-year-old has since run three miles almost every day.
This is one of the reasons traffic is going to be one of his main issues. He sees the near collisions on his daily run and even has been close to being run over, he said. The other issues he will focus on are controlling over development — he became involved when his neighbors and he opposed a large development across from the Plaza proposed two years ago — and education. With all the new condos being built and families moving in, Cancio thinks public school options are too limited and wants to explore having the city run its own school system.
Read related: Kirk Menendez runs for Coral Gables mayor against city bully Vince Lago
He realizes that he will be running against Anderson, who  “is tied to Lago and has supported Lago in everything he’s done,” but also Lago, who is going to do whatever he can to keep his only mostly-guaranteed vote on the dais (that is, if he can pull any energy from his own campaign against challenger Menendez).
“I’m 74-years-old. I feel fine. I have an obligation to, at some point in my life, give back to my community. And I don’t like what’s going on in Coral Gables,” he said. “I’m not going to lose my job. Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m in the enviable position of having the ability to do this.”
He’s no fan of Lago’s, who he calls a “pompous ass” who “doesn’t know what he’s doing.” He said the mayor met with him and his neighbors two years ago when they were fighting the development. “The mayor is the most obnoxious mayor I’ve ever run across,” Cancio told Political Cortadito. “He was going to call the chief of police and have some of the residents arrested!”
Anderson hasn’t done much fundraising yet, with only $4,100 in her campaign account, according to campaign finance records at the city clerk’s office. Lara, the Lago plant, has raised $61,600, but only 3,000 since June, which could show a lack of true community support.
Ladra fully expects there to be more candidates very soon.
There will be thorough, ongoing coverage of the April election. To support Political Cortadito’s efforts on this beat, please consider making a donation to grassroots, government watchdog reporting. Thank you.
The post Two more candidates file for Coral Gables commission race in April appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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Now it’s getting interesting.
Coral Gables Commissioner Kirk Menendez filed paperwork Wednesday to run for mayor against incumbent Vince Lago, the egomaniac that he’s been battling for the last 20 months on the dais, setting the City Beautiful voters up for a gut-wrenching, nasty election. Menendez knows that Lago, who has raised and spent at least $1.4 million through his political action committee, is going to get ugly. Or uglier, as it were.
But he’s had it.
“I gave him every chance to mend fences and bring our community together,” Menendez told Political Cortadito about his decision to challenge the Lago. “But as time went by, I lost hope that he could redeem himself.”
Menendez, who won his first commission race in 2021 in a field of five, was going to run for re-election against a Lago recruited and backed candidate named Richard Lara, a big shot attorney for a radio giant who is likely to run against someone else now for the open seat. Las malas lenguas say Felix Pardo is considering. Coach Kirk, as Menendez is familiarly known, shifted his attention to the mayoral seat Wednesday. He promised to “bring civility, stability, and selfless leadership in a continued commitment to prioritizing the voices of residents.
Read related: Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago gets shut down, censured by 3 he disparaged
“As we celebrate our centennial, the future of Coral Gables is as bright as it has ever been. I remain steadfast in my commitment to the values and ideals that define our Coral Gables community,” Menendez said in a statement. “This is an exciting time for our residents, as our City Beautiful embarks on its journey into the next 100 years. I ask for your support, so that together, we can preserve and protect the way of life that makes Coral Gables so special.”

Menendez is also known as Mr. Coral Gables because of his longtime community activism, including a stint as chairman of the city’s parks and recreation advisory board, and deep roots in the City Beautiful. He volunteers at St. Theresa School, Church of the Little Flower, Knights of Columbus and the Gift Meal Project. He grew up at the Youth Center before it was the “War Memorial Youth Center” and later became a beloved soccer coach. He is currently president of the Coral Gables War Memorial Youth Center Association.
These credentials will serve him well against Lago, who may be better funded but is quickly losing support among voters because of his political attacks and constant complaining on the dais. The mayor has taken sour grapes to a whole new level. That might be why his fundraising has slowed down dramatically, raising less than $10,000 for both his PAC and his campaign account (which has $169K total) since June. According to the most recent campaign finance reports, Lago’s PAC, Coral Gables First, has about $110,00 left from its $1.5 million total raised.
It may not really matter. As evidenced by the last election, where Commissioners Melissa Castro and Ariel Fernandez beat the mayor’s handpicked candidates — which were better financed — Gables voters are not easily bought. Menendez himself beat the better funded candidate backed by Lago in 2021. These local elections are driven more by the issues dividing the community — development, traffic, annexation. This year, we’ll add the hostility at City Hall, where the mayor — who almost got into fisticuffs with the city manager in a conference room earlier this year — has made multiple public records requests through real or imaginary proxies in vendetta battles with the three commissioner who don’t carry his water.
Read related: Vince Lago tries to sneak election date change into strategic plan via committee
Lago has already used his PAC money to go after Castro, Fernandez and Menendez. His camp sends regular text messages to Gables voters questioning his colleagues’ motives and calling them incompetent. Sour, sour grapes.
He’s also spent some of his political capital on a failed petition effort to put three referendum questions on the Gables ballot, one of which would move the election from April to November. He realized, after the last election, that hardcore Gables super voters are harder to fool than the general election voters who show up for presidential or state races and pay no attention to micro local politics.
Lago has been poison on and off the dais. On the dais, he is the master of gas lighting, accusing the three commissioners who have butt heads with him of creating political drama when it is he who turns everything into a fight. Off the dais, he’s gone on radio and television programs to disparaged his colleagues and their family members. Last October, Menendez moved to censure the mayor during a commission meeting. He got the censure approved 3-2, with only Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson — the mayor’s only ally who has recently shown signs of wavering — voting against the censure.
In April, let’s see if Menendez can get voters to censure Lago.
It’s going to be interesting.
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The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust found probable cause that a civilian employee at the Miami Beach Police Department exploited his position and violated the outside employment sections of the county’s conflict of interest code.
Clifford Sparks, the former supervisor of the Crime Analysis Unit, was found to have used his position to facilitate an introduction between lifelong friend and business partner Richard Jerome, owner of Crime Suppression Technologies, and the police department “with the goal of developing a software program for MBPD’s record management system, creating a potential financial benefit for himself,” said a statement from the Ethics Commission last month.
A complaint was filed by the city of Miami Beach Inspector General Joseph Centorino and after a joint investigation with the COE, Sparks admitted to using his subordinates to test CST software during work hours and basically reporting to Jerome, not the chief, “devoting between 15-20 hours per week, including city work hours, in furtherance of CST’s software development,” the statement reads.
He not only worked on the project himself, he also ordered equipment on the city dime to test the project and ordered subordinate employees to test equipment related to that project while on city time.
Sparks also failed to file forms disclosing outside employment and the nature of work being done during two tax years, as required by the county’s Conflict of Interest Code.
For all of this, Sparks — whose last known salary at the city of Miami Beach was $106,000 a year — was fined $1,500 and given a “letter of instruction,” which basically says “don’t do it again.”
The whole investigation began in February when four female civilian employees of the crime analysis unit came to the city’s Office of the Inspector General to file complaints against Sparks, a former police officer who was their supervisor. They accused him of  sexual harassment and misuse of city resources in connection with private business activity.
Some called it his “get rich quick” scheme.

“During the initial and several subsequent meetings with the OIG, the complainants provided details on both matters, including personal observations and experiences, as well as documents such as texts, departmental purchase records, photographs and related material,” wrote Inspector General Joseph Centorino in his report.

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The Miami-Dade Commission on Tuesday will consider purchasing a warehouse property on Northwest 25th Street for $17 million in order to provide future parking and/or a staging area for future construction at Miami International Airport.
The seller has already provided the four tenants at the property — including a luxury car rental business — with a notice of termination of their leases and will reportedly pay for the demolition of existing buildings within six months of purchase, according to a county memo prepared by Chief Operating Officer Jimmy Morales.
“The Property is east of MIA and is intended to be utilized by the Aviation Department for any compatible land use such as parking, or as a lay down yard (i.e., construction staging area), which is a designated area where materials and equipment can be stored and used in connection with a construction project, ensuring the project begins on time and managed more efficiently,” Morales says in his memo, adding that the zoning (industrial-heavy manufacturing) allows for the proposed uses, “including surface and/or structured parking.”
Miami-Dade Aviation has several big projects in the pipeline, including the $400 million cargo facility and the $270 million redesign of the Central Terminal — the first $40 million phase of which coming — and there is already limited space on the airport campus to stage the construction.
Read related: Miami-Dade could give design of $270 mil MIA project without a second look
“The acquisition of this Property will allow the Miami-Dade Aviation Department to utilize the land for parking or as a construction staging area to better organize and facilitate the implementation of its capital improvement portfolio. The Property could also be used for any compatible land use that meets MIA’s demand for global air travel and air freight cargo or for operational purposes,” Morales wrote.
Two state-certifieid appraisers provided appraisals of the property came in at $17 million and $17.2 million, but Miami-Dade Property Appraiser records show that the three parcels at 3901 and 3975 Northwest 25th Street and 3900 Northwest 26th Street, have a combined market value of $11.9 million. The larger parcel has a market value of $10.5 million and the two smaller parcels, which are now used for surface parking, are a combined $1.4 million.

It wouldn’t be the first time the county (read: taxpayers) pay a higher value for a property. Recently, the commission voted to purchase the La Quinta Hotel on U.S. 1 to use as housing for senior homeless, paying $14 million, or $4 million over the appraised value. Commissioners Daniella Cohen Higgins and Rene Garcia voted against it.
The seller of these three parcels has disclosed that there is some contamination on the 150,000 square foot property, Morales said. An initial report by the Miami-Dade Aviation Department’s civil environment engineering division reported no immediate areas of concern, based on the proposed uses. But the county can conduct a more thorough environmental study, he added.
In the memo, Morales says the company is based in Delaware — which is always a red flag — but Florida Department of Corporation records show it is based in Denver, with an address at a co-working, shared office space. MIA at 25th Street is apparently a partner company with Prologis, the largest industrial property owner in South Florida, which is listed as one of the tenants at the Denver address.
District 6 Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera proposed the item on the agenda. Several attempts to reach him Monday were unsuccessful.
 
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With more than 56% of the vote, Miami Lakes Commissoner Josh Dieguez changed his title to mayor last week, beating Vice Mayor Tony Fernandez in a runoff where almost 19% of the registered voters turned out. He will replace Mayor Manny Cid, who was termed out and lost a bid to unseat Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava without the need for a runoff.
In the Nov. 5 election, neither won the majority and some observers say it was because a plantidate Yuniett Gonzalez, a political newbie who had previously given to the Dieguez campaign, got 11%, just enough to force the runoff. As usual, political shenanigans paid off.
Read related: Miami Lakes plantidate forces mayoral runoff: Josh Dieguez vs Tony Fernandez
Dieguez, 35, also just ran a better campaign. An attorney, he is a former member of the rock blasting task force and his messages on public safety, fiscal transparency, traffic mitigation, flooding and infrastructure support, and protecting green spaces were more focused. Fernandez, a business owner, had a simpler message of “people over politics” and keeping the village status quo, which just fell flat.
“I did my best,” Fernandez told the Miami Laker. “It wasn’t in the cards, but you know, on to bigger and better challenges.”
Bigger and better challenges? Good luck with that. Maybe the voters were right.
“It feels great to be the mayor of the town I grew up in,” Dieguez was quoted as saying. “It’s a real honor and a dream come true. I’m looking forward to use that time to focus on the things that make Miami Lakes special and will focus on infrastructure and constituent services.”
The race was pretty even when it comes to campaign funding. According to campaign finance reports, Dieguez raised $85,000 to Fernandez’s $81,000 and spent $74,500 to his $66,000 during the campaign.
 
 
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