It started good at the top of the ticket. Then, ouch.
Was former Sen. Bill Nelson and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum actually winning with absentee ballots? Because early results had them just over 50.
Even Jeffrey “Doc” Solomon had 525 votes over newly-elected State Rep. Vance Aloupis, right, who ended up winning by 591 votes.
But that feeling of rising hope quickly turned to disbelief and dread when the blue wave turned into a wipeout after Gov. Elect Ron DeSantis and former Gov. and Senator elect Rick Scott turned it around.
We had a few bright spots where the wave did crash nicely.
Democrats gained two seats in Congress, with the election of Donna Shalala over Republican Maria Elvira Salazar (though not as solid as she should have) and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell‘s stunning victory over Carlos Curbelo. That’s a bright silver lining for Ladra that we will come back to.
And Ladra’s favorite new elected, mom gone mad Cindy Polo beat back former Miami Lakes Councilman Frank Mingo in District 103. That was a tremendous upset as Polo, right, was underfunded and losing in Miami-Dade, 56 to 44 percent. The voters in Broward — because the district also includes Miramar — saved us flipping those numbers so she won 53 to 47 percent.
But locally, Polo was it. Democrats failed everywhere else.
While Miami-Dade was overwhelmingly pro Gillum and pro Nelson — they won the 305 each with about 60% of the vote — and Democrats were able to defend Sen. Annette Taddeo from a challenge by Republican superwoman Marili Cancio (next time, Marili, don’t attack with lies about Taddeo and the NRA and talk about your own achievements), they let another Senate bid die and lost several opportunities to gain Florida House seats — even letting one flip red in District 118.
Former State Rep. Robert Asencio became a one-term legislator probably because he was too busy trying to help everybody else and didn’t campaign enough to keep his own seat. Granted, it was definitely an upset surprise for Anthony Rodriguez, who lost the primary two years ago to King David “Nine Lives” Rivera, to beat him ever so slightly, 51% to 49%.
The same narrow win gave Doral Councilwoman Ana Maria Rodriguez a seat in the House, replacing Ambassador Carlos Trujillo in District 105, beating Javier Estevez by a scant 560 votes. Democrats are used to voting for Ana Maria, right, that gap was expected to be even wider, but only because the party invested zero time and money in this flippable district.
The real pain comes with what happened up north, where special interest favorite State Rep. Manny Diaz Jr. beat firefighter hero David Perez for the Senate seat in 36 vacated by Rene Garcia (who will run for county commissioner in two years).
Now we heal and rest until next year when it’s time to gear up for 2020. Maybe Democrats will figure something out between now and then.

Read Full Story

It looks like Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo loves a good spanking.
After getting smacked down by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge who said his lawsuit to block the strong mayor referendum on the city ballot had absolutely no merit whatsoever, Carollo filed an appeal late Thursday — an 11th hour hail Mary to deny voters the chance to weigh in on this controversial charter change.
Carollo, who asked for an expedited hearing because the election is Tuesday, must think the strong mayor measure is passing. Why else appeal the decision this far in?
But, more importantly, who is paying for these frivolous lawsuits? What is this costing taxpayers? It’s costing them something. More than half of the eight (!) attorneys involved — including two former federal prosecutors — represent city or county employees or entities.
Read related: Judge calls Joe Carollo sore loser, rips apart strong mayor lawsuit
City Attorney Victoria Mendez represents the city, Mayor Francis Suarez and City Clerk Todd Hannon in the matter. Every hour that Mendez works on the case is paid by city taxpayers. Deputy Miami-Dade Attorney Oren Rosenthal, who makes $298,000 a year, represents Supervisor of Elections Christina White. Every hour Rosenthal works on the case is paid by county taxpayers (including city taxpayers).
But there is also outside counsel: Raquel Rodriguez, of McDonalds Hopkins, for the city and the city clerk, and Robert Martinez, of Colson, Hicks Eidson, for the mayor. Every billable hour of theirs for this case is on taxpayer’s back and on Carollo. That’s already a hefty bill for the city. Ladra made a public records request Friday for the payments or invoices so far but had not received a response as of the evening.
And we still don’t know whether the city will end up paying Carollo’s attorney, too. Mendez told Ladra on Friday that the city had made no payments to either Jesus Suarez, who filed the lawsuit, or Genovese Joblove Batista, his law firm.
But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be payments made later. Both the original motion and the appeal repeat that the plaintiff is Carollo, “individually and as commissioner of the city of Miami.”
Read related: Miami taxpayers could be on hook for Joe Carollo’s frivolous lawsuit
It’s those last six words that could leave the city on the hook.
Carollo won’t talk about it. He did not return multiple calls and text messages. But the attorneys aren’t doing this for free.
There are no legal expenditures reflected in either Carollo’s PAC or the Miami Dade Residents First, the PAC belonging to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who is using it to push a no vote.
Also, while she is not on the list of attorneys who got a copy of the notice, Gimenez daughter-in-law Tania Cruz is involved in some way. She got a text message from Jesus Suarez two minutes and three seconds after the lawsuit was first filed. “FILED,” it said, all in caps. Like he was reporting to a supervisor?
Then there are also Jennifer Blohm, Ben Keuhne and Marcos Daniel Jimenez representing the Miamians for an Independent and Accountable Mayors Initiative PAC, which gathered the petitions to put the question on the ballot. Strangely enough, Keuhne was on Carollo’s team just recently when the commissioner won a challenge to his residency.
Read related: Mayor Carlos Gimenez clan involved in Joe Carollo lawsuit vs strong mayor
One of the arguments made in the lawsuit is that the petition did not meet requirements — which Circuit Court Judge Miguel de la O ruled did not matter since it was the city commission that voted to put the measure on the ballot.
The main argument is exactly the same, which the judge categorized as tears over spilled milk: Carollo didn’t get his way on the dais and the question moved forward to the ballot. So he took his gripe to court.
Does this mean that he’s going to legally challenge other decisions that go against him on the dais?
Because that can get expensive.

Read Full Story

Something scary happened at the home of South Miami Mayor Phillip Stoddard on Halloween four years ago: a 16-year-old boy got sick from alcohol or drugs and ended up in the hospital, where he stopped breathing three times.
Stoddard has been sued by the young man, who said the mayor let him drink alcohol and endangered his life at a Halloween party thrown at Stoddard’s house by his then teenage daughter in 2014.
“When we got there, the dad introduced himself and he showed us a table that had a bowl of fruit punch and chips and there was a bottle of alcohol sitting at the end of the table,” Loro told Ladra. “And he told us there was more fruit punch in the fridge, then went to his room.”
Hours later, Loro said, he was vomiting and had to be carried out of the house. He ended up unconscious and woke up in the intensive care unit at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.
The lawsuit says that Stoddard was responsible as the adult with control of the premises under the Florida Open House Party law. It seeks an undetermined amount of damages in excess of $15,000.
“At all times material, Phillip Stoddard was aware that the plaintiff, age 16, and other underage minors were attending the party where he provided alcohol,” the lawsuit states. As the adult owner of the house, and under Florida’s open house party laws, Stoddard had “a duty to prohibit its use and availability to minors.”
Stoddard says the allegations are nonsense, “a political hatchet job” orchestrated by attorney activist Steve Cody.
And the mayor’s recollection of that evening is a bit different.
“That kid snuck onto our property and drank a lot of vodka and got sick,” Stoddard said. “He was perfectly fine when he got out of the hospital. I haven’t seen or heard from this kid since.”
He doesn’t deny that there was alcohol at the party. He denies supplying it.
“I found alcohol and I threw it away. I stood up on a chair and read them the riot act,” the mayor said. “I’ve taken booze away from these kids. My wife took booze away from them. They took it to the park across the street. I saw them holding Solo cups.”
According to an investigation report, the boy’s mother said she dropped Carlo off at about 8:30 p.m. At 11:45, she got a call from one of his friends telling her to pick Carlo up because he was sick.
“Upon her arrival she noticed that Carlos was slumped over and not responding to her commands when she spoke to him,” the report states. Mayte Loro rushed her son to the emergency room. “Upon arrival at the hospital, Carlos was falling into a deep sleep causing him to stop breathing,” wrote police officer M. Lopez.
Mayte Loro said her son stopped breathing three times. “The doctors couldn’t figure out what he had ingested in order to help him. One of the doctors told me that he must have taken some synthetic type of drug because it wasn’t coming up on the blood work or the urine test.”
Stoddard also made a statement about his daughter having a Halloween party for friends in the Coral Gables High IB program.
“About 90 minutes in, I found a mostly empty large bottle of Bacardi white rum in the kitchen — it wasn’t ours. I stopped the party, gathered all the kids, and told them that no alcohol, pot or other illegal sustances would be consumed in our house, in our yard or in the park in front of our house,” Stoddard wrote at City Hall three days later.
“All night, my wife and I patrolled the house, yard and park. My wife found kids in the park with vodka and made them leave. Apparently young Carlo Loro had obtained vodka in the park,” Stoddard continued. “I did not see that he was impaired because he had been sitting quietly on the living room sofa.”
Loro’s parents were so embarrassed, he said, they didn’t even ask for him to pay the deductible on their insurance for his hospital visit.
Stoddard says the lawsuit amounts to harassment and wouldn’t even have been filed if Cody — who has also filed ethics complaints against Stoddard for using city funds to pay his attorney — and private investigator Joe Carillo hadn’t dug up the old police information report and convinced Loro to sue.
Loro admitted that he hadn’t thought about calling an attorney until Carillo found him.
“Joe Carillo approached me and informed me that I have rights,” said the young father of a 3 month old daughter (photographed left) who works at a smoke shop. “He said what happened to me was wrong. And I told a friend who put me in touch with an attorney.”
Carillo says Cody hired him to look into Stoddard’s past behavior with minors.
“In doing so, I came across this incident and decided to investigate,” Carillo said, adding that he spoke to Loro eight times to “make sure what he was telling me was true.”
Stoddard said Carillo interrogated his 85-year-old mother and even visited his daughter at the congressional office of U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, where Stoddard’s daughter works as an intern.
“It amounts to legal harassment,” Stoddard said.
Cody is well known for creating videos that attack politicians he doesn’t like, such as former Miami Beach Mayor Phil Levine and Commissioner Jonah Wolfson for having opened that quid pro quo PAC and he also created some web videos for Kristen Rosen Gonzalez in her congressional bid. He’s been long involved in politics, waging the lawsuits that created single member districts in the county.
Recently, he formed a non-profit 501(c)(4), A Better Miami-Dade Inc., so he could raise money for these fights the without having to say where he’s getting the funds. The PAC also made a contribution to Gwen Graham.
It boils down to a grudge. Stoddard should not have shut Cody down at a South Miami Commission meeting. The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust found probable cause that Stoddard did violate Cody’s “right to be heard” under the Citizens Bill of Rights. That’s only one of the ethics complaints Cody filed. The other is for voting (he should have recused himself) on getting the city to pay his legal fees defending against the Martinez de Castro lawsuit.
“Five minutes on the microphone and this wouldn’t have happened,” Cody said.
But the bigger problem might not be in Stoddard’s actions — or lack of action — at the party that Halloween night. It might be in actions taken after to try to cover up any wrongdoing or even the perception of wrongdoing.
A police report taken at Loro’s hospital bed looks unfamiliar to the young man, now 20, and also seems scripted.
“That’s not my handwriting and it also doesn’t sound like me, like what I would say,” Loro told Ladra. And he’s right. It doesn’t sound like anything a teenager would say and, instead, sounds like it was scripted to get Stoddard off the hook.
The statement is allegedly written by Loro at 1:40 a.m. Nov. 1 — so was in between the times the boy stopped breathing? His mother said she went home to take a shower and that when she returned she was told detectives had talked to her son.
“I went to a party at the South Miami Mayor’s house and there was alcohol outside of his house in the park and I had some vodka to drink,” Loro allegedly wrote in his statement. “And there were people inside the house also drinking.
“The mayor, at one point, found a bottle in his kitchen, stopped the party, addressed the bottle and told everyone inside the house that he cannot have minors drinking alcohol on his property. He then put the bottle he found in a safe place and then left to his room. After the mayor left to his room the party continued on for the night.”
Really? Loro wrote all that by himself with no coaching? Ladra finds that hard to believe.
Another statement from Loro taken on July 27 this year disputes the statement police said he gave in 2014.
“The date and time of the statement is incorrect as well as all of the words highlighted an with my initials,” Carlo wrote, referring to practically the entire second half. “I did not write these highlighted words and what is depicted on this statement is not what occurred at the party that night.”
Using the police department to cover up any possible malfeasance or negligence is worse than the original allegation that he let teens drink at his house.
Ladra has been told that the state attorney’s office is investigating.

Read Full Story

As the war of words between Carlos Gimenez and his family and Xavier Suarez and his family continues to heat up, a new radio spot paid by the Suarez PAC began to air Tuesday — calling Gimenez a fraud.
Suarez narrates the Spanish language, 60-second spot and makes comparisons between Gimenez and his son, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, asking voters to reject all the county questions on the ballot and vote yes on the three charter amendment questions in the city.
“Democracy gives us the opportunity to reward politicians who represent us well and punish those who defraud us,” Suarez starts, after introducing himself.
“In the city of Miami, Mayor Francis Suarez has worked like a champion for the people. He kept his promise and immediately took out the red light cameras. He goes to the comedores and community meetings day after day. He added free trolleys all over the city. And he connected us by rail to Broward and Palm Beach.
“He asks us to vote yes to the three questions on the ballot,” Suarez says.
Read related: Hypocrite Carlos Gimenez knocks strong mayor, petition pay
“Meanwhile, the county mayor has misspent the half penny tax, to the tune of $100 million a year, and he’s taken control of MDX with its tolls and unnecessary construction,” Suarez said.
“Say no to Gimenez. Vote against the referendums for the county. Vote yes for our Mayor Francis Suarez. Vote yes to the questions in the city of Miami.”
The spot is paid for by Imagine Miami, the senior Suarez’s PAC, which, according the the latest campaign finance reports available, hasn’t raised any money since July and has only spent $20,000 since September, mostly on donations to other candidates and PACs. There is still more than half a million available there to be used through Nov. 6. We’ll find out how much Suarez spent on producing and airing the ad in the next report. Ladra expects it to be on the radio a lot.
In comparison, Gimenez, who is indeed chair of the MDX board, has raised $70,000 for his PAC just in the last two months, using it to send at least four or five mailers urging Miami voters to reject the strong mayor referendum. He’s used the opportunity to attack both Papa X — his nemesis, as his strongest critic on the commission — and Baby X, who las malas lenguas say he will challenge in 2021.
Last month, after Suarez tweeted about $100 million in MDX monies that seemed missing from the budget, but were added later under capital improvements, Gimenez got personal, taking a swipe at X’s time as Miami Mayor and saying he left the city in better shape when he left as city manager, presenting budget figures that sources say his staff got through a public records request at the city.
Read related: Mayor Carlos Gimenez clan involved in Joe Carollo lawsuit vs strong mayor
That would be a second time Gimenez uses county staff or officials for his family feud. The first was when he got Commissioner Rebeca Sosa to tie up the CITT request to disentangle the half-penny tax funds from the operational budget. That vote by the board that voters created to oversee the tax they voted for in 2002 has still not been presented to commissioners (more on that later).
“I have dealt with him politely, almost obsequiously,” said Suarez, who did dial his criticism down last year before ratcheting it up again this summer.
“He has promised me he was going to do it [detangle the half-penny tax funds from the general budget] three or four times — in my house, with his son present — and then went back on all those promises that he made not only to me personally but to the electorate, which is more important.”
Then he went after Baby X, which is unforgivable.
Read related: Carlos Gimenez nets $70K vs city strong mayor — for what in return?
“Without any particular reason, without any consultation, without any discussion, he went after the strong mayor in the city,” Suarez the senior said. “He is already the strong mayor in the county. He has the airport, the seaport, water and sewer and plus now he has MDX. What more do you want?”
He wants to land as mayor in the city of Miami, unseating your boy. That’s what.
“That’s laughable,” Suarez said.
Ouch. Strong words again. Ladra fears that Gimenez will strike back.
“How can he hurt me? Gimenez is termed out,” Suarez said. “I don’t see a political future for him.”

Read Full Story

Former State Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who just lost special election for county commission in June on the heels of a loss in a special Senate race, has moved from his room in his parent’s house in Little Havana to a riverfront condo next to Sewell Park so he can run for city commission next year.
Dean DLP’s new digs on the 18th floor of the Terrazas Riverpark Village Condo, at 1861 NW S River Dr., is a 967-square-foot, 2-bedroom, 2-bath unit purchased in 2016 for $345,000 by Josefa Ortas, whose mailing address is in Madrid.
It also happens to be in Senate District 37 and Florida House District 111, but it is doubtful that anyone in the Diaz de la Portilla family wants to go up again against Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, who has beaten both Alex and big bro Miguel. And it’s hard to believe ADLP would make este sacrificio more than two years before the next state race.
Besides, las malas lenguas say he is definitely eyeing the city seat so he can conspire with BFF Commissioner Joe Carollo, who he campaigned for and supports. Carollo also campaigned with ADLP in city of Miami senior housing complexes and is reportedly under investigation because of allegations he used city resources trying to elect his friend.
Read related: Gimenez family hit in Senate campaign… ADLP’s wag the dog
But the burning question is: Does Alex really live at Terrazas, where the typical rent for a 2/2 on a high floor — like the one with this view in this picture — is $2,100 a month, or is he pulling a Carollo?
To remind readers, Carollo wants us all to believe that he lives in a small Brickell apartment and not in his mansion in Coconut Grove. His residency was challenged in court by the second place finisher who sought to prove that Carollo did not live in the district for a year before qualifying, as required.
The judge ruled in favor of Carollo, who signed the lease for the Brickell Station Lofts unit on Sept. 22, 2016. The deadline to qualify for the ballot in that election was Sept. 23, 2017.
ADLP changed his voter’s registration address on Sept. 15. The qualifying period for the Nov. 5, 2019 Miami city election is from Sept. 6 to Sept. 21.

Read Full Story