A partisan campaign likely made the difference
Even though Zoraida Barreiro was ahead for a tiny little bit in the special shotgun wedding election to replace her husband on the Miami-Dade Commission, she was never winning. The tiny 45 vote lead she had after absentee ballots were counted wouldn’t hold.
Democrats, who had made this nonpartisan election a grudge match, own early voting and election day results, for the most part. And this held true Tuesday as Eileen Higgins soared over Barreiro, matching her lead and getting a 277 vote gap in la gringa‘s favor with early voting for a 51 to 49 split. And that only grew as the night continued.
Read related: More people come out to vote in special Miami-Dade District 5 runoff
Partial election day results just before 8 p.m. showed Higgins with more than 53% to less than 47% for Zory, a 913-vote gap.  By the end of the night, when all 60 precincts reporting, Higgins kept the 53% vote with a 955-vote lead. So, as expected, Zory Barreiro won ABs — though with an insufficient gap — and la gringa won early voting and Election Day. A closer look shows that la gringa barely lost ABs while arrasando with the early and day of votes.
In the end there were 2,000 more people motivated to vote than in last month’s first round (13,943 t0 11,905 total votes) even though there were four candidates then, including former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who came in third ut still got more than 3,300 votes.
But even though two dynasty names were beat by a relative newcomer, the race was more a partisan thing than a dynasty thing.
This ain’t the first time that Miami-Dade Democratic Party gets involved in what is traditionally a non partisan race (Daniella Levine Cava was the first time), but this is the best time. Or, rather, the most intense time. We’re talking a reported 34,000 handwritten postcards sent to Democrat voters in District 5 from progressives all over the country! We’re talking a paid political consultant who took time from the heated Florida gubernatorial election to help Higgins get over the well-oiled machine of GOP veterans!
By the time the Miami-Dade Republican Party got involved it was too little, too late. That Marco Rubio mailer and robocall would have been far more effective three weeks ago, before absentee ballots went out. They got involved only a couple of weeks ago.
“It’s also been a bad year for Republicans. It also happened eight years ago and eight years before that,” said Miami-Dade GOP Chair Nelson Diaz.
Read related: Dems push full court press for Eileen Higgins in special District 5 county race
But most political observers in the 305 said this race was unprecedented because of the dem involvement.
“Higgins’ election win was more about winning the battle of expectations by the Democratic Party,” said Hector Roos, a political analyst and consultant who did not work for either campaign. “It was not just the result of three months of negative campaigning, criticizing ‘dynasty politics.’ That’s actually a very common and unusually unsuccessful campaign message.”
No, Roos said, this campaign was about whipping your base — Patrick Murphy beat Rubio by seven points in District 5 — into a frenzy.
“Like it or not, hyper-partisan strategies combined with limitless outside resources and funding in small turnout special elections win, as seen in examples across the country,” Roos said.
Higgins did not return a phone call and text message, but it may have been buried in a hundred other texts and calls.
A “very disappointed” Zoraida — wife of Bruno Barreiro, who resigned to run for Congress and thought he had this in the bag — said that the attacks on her as a dynasty candidate and the hyperpartisan rhetoric drowned out any debate on the issues.
“This woman has a mind of her own,” she told Ladra late Tuesday night, as she laughed, patted backs and said good night to volunteer poll workers who have been with the Barreiro campaign machine for 20 years.
“Unfortunately, this campaign wasn’t too much about District 5,” Barreiro said, “and these are the results.”

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It’s not even over yet, and already more people have voted in the runoff for the special shotgun wedding election in Miami-Dade District 5 than in the first round when there were twice as many candidates.
Early voting ends Sunday and already, through Saturday, there had been 2,055 ballots cast at the four early voting locations. Voters cast 1,696 ballots during early voting before the May 22 election, where Eileen Higgins and Zoraida Barreido got the top two scores (35 and 33 percent, respectively) to proceed into the runoff Tuesday.
And even though Carlos Garin and former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla got bumped off in the first round, there have already also been more absentee ballots cast this time: With 8,250 just through Friday compared to 7,715 for all four candidates last time.
That means more than 10,300 people have already voted. And does that mean that Higgins is closing the gap?
Common political thought has Zory — wife of former Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, who is running for Congress and timed his resignation to help usher his wife into office — taking Tuesday with 60% of the vote. Ladra thinks it’s going to be closer: maybe 54-46, which would still be an amazing finish for la gringa, a newby candidate nobody heard of before April.
Look, that’s not what Ladra wants, mind you. It’s just what is happening. Miami Herald reporter Doug Hanks tweeted that there were more Republican ballots cast than Democrats, by less than three percent. But the push that Barreiro and her supporters are making at the end is unprecedented among Republicans, who typically focus on absentee ballots.
Yes, Higgins is a good candidate and makes an attractive prospect, even before the Democrats put her on overdrive. She would bring a much needed voice and add checks and balances to the commission. And yes, I do believe those postcards from people outside the district urging Democrat voters to come out have made a difference and narrowed the gap.
But then: (1) This is a district where Hispanic voters have traditionally outperformed for Hispanic candidates; (2) A Barreiro, albeit Bruno, has represented the district for 20 years; (3) Most if not all of Carlos Garin’s votes and ADLP’s votes go Zory’s way.
And then there is (4) The Marco Rubio factor.
That mailer with Marco Rubio’s endorsement — the golden ticket of GOP nods — went not just to super voters, Ladra heard, but also to every single Republican registered in the district. It was really call to action, an effort to encourage Republicans who were going to sit it out, to come out Election Day. If there hasn’t been a robocall already, one is coming.
That means the numbers are just going to keep going up.

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The Republicans know former State Sen. Frank Artiles wouldn’t stand a chance against newly-minted Sen. Annette Taddeo in a rematch so close to his fall from grace: Artiles was forced to resign his seat last year after he was caught in a drunken, racist and sexist tirade against fellow legislators in a Tallahassee watering hole, setting up a special election in District 40.
Democrat Taddeo won the seat in a bitter fight with former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz.
But how would she fare against a Repubican superwoman? We’re about to find out.
In the “year of the woman,” the GOP has apparently settled on Marili Cancio to run against Taddeo and try to take that seat back. Because she wasn’t their first choice.
Several sources have told Ladra that former Miami-Dade Commissioner and State Rep. Juan Zapata and State Rep. Jeanette Nuñez, who terms out this year and has not found a place to land, were both encouraged to run before Cancio. Zapata said he had “been approached through third parties. I was clear from the get-go that I had no interest.”  Nuñez doesn’t want to have to move.
Las malas lenguas also say party honchos tried to convince two of the five Republicans running in the open race in House District 115, vacated by termed-out Michael Bileca, to switch — although not Bileca himself?
Everybody knows that Cancio, who has served on Republican clubs and is often invited to TV programs to present the GOP side of every argument — you know, because they’re always right — makes a great candidate. She’s knowledgeable. She’s smart. She’s pretty. She’s well spoken. She’s practiced. She doesn’t get nervous. She’s got access to people with money.
Okay. So she lost her first attempt at elected office in the 2010 Republican primary for congress against David “Nine Lives” Rivera, getting only 11% and finishing third, under even “Captain” Paul Crespo, who got 24% despite having been arrested for DUI. Not a good first showing.  But she is much more well-known and stronger now.
Some political observers might ask why she’d try again in a bluish district in a blue wave year. Seems like a waste of political capital. Ladra says it’s because Marili likes a challenge. If it were easy, she wouldn’t be into it.
But she also doesn’t buy into all the hype.
“I don’t think that special elections are a true reflection of what’s going to happen in a general election,” Cancio said, referring to a wave of Democrat wins in special elections across the state — including Taddeo’s. “Independents are going to be very important.”
Cancio, the daughter of onetime Miami-Dade Commissioner and concrete giant Jose “Pepe” Cancio, said she was courted to campaign and had already discussed moving to the district to be closer to her son in South Miami and her just pregnant daughter in Pinecrest. She decided to go for it — and will be renting in the Dadeland area while she puts her Key Biscayne house up for sale — because Taddeo has done nothing, she said.
“She didn’t bring back any dollars. She voted against gun control, she voted against the budget, she voted against a raise for teachers,” Cancio said, adding that her contacts would have her hit the ground running from Day 1. “I’m going to bring the money back to Miami-Dade that she’s not able to bring,” she said.
But when she said that Taddeo voted “against gun control,” what she meant was against the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Student Safety Act because of the Marshall Program that puts guns in the hands of school staffers, which caused a quite a few Dems to vote against the bill, which passed 67-50 after a divisive debate with some victims’ family members against it.
“If she wants this to be about arming teachers and the defunding of our public schools, then bring it on,” Taddeo told Ladra Wednesday. “If she had bothered to go to any of the town halls that I went to in the District, she would know that we are severely underfunded and that people don’t want guns in schools.”
As expected, Taddeo voted against the MSD bill, named after the high school in Parkland where 17 lives were taken in a mass school shooting, because it puts guns in schools and because “all it does is provide an unfunded mandate,” Taddeo said, referring to the $400 million the state said should go to school hardening. “And after we worked so hard to take out the arming of teachers, they left in the arming of other people — the lunch lady, the librarian, the janitor — and I’m not okay with that.”
She said she spent much of the first session building relationships. She studied all the Republican bills and tried to find one bill from each GOP senator that she could co-sponsor. “So I could meet them and talk to them about the bill I liked,” she said. “We have to find what we have in common.” She said Republican lawmakers expected a party first liberal and she surprised them by being a small business owner.
“I actually do make payroll every two weeks,” said Taddeo, who owns a firm that does language translating. “They didn’t know this.”
She ended up co-sponsoring five bills with Republicans.
But her claim to fame is a flood insurance (SB 1282) bill that she sponsored and really carried through session. It passed unanimously and basically forces homeowners to sign the part of their insurance policy that would show they know they don’t have flood insurance if they don’t specifically get flood insurance. It is intended to encourage more people to get flood insurance coverage.
“I worked with the insurance industry to make sure we didn’t overburden them,” she said.
Now, Ladra would hate to think that Cancio is the type of candidate that would stretch the truth to get elected.
But Taddeo also did happened to bring some dollars back home, including funding for the Miami Military Museum, a project originally sponsored by none other than Artiles. Sen. Taddeo will be at the upcoming ribbon cutting. Other appropriations bills she sponsored or co-sponsored include:

$250k for a Children of Inmates project “Babies and Brains,” which is targeted towards early childhood education of children with incarcerated parents (an extremely high-risk group of children
$25 Million for post-hurricane beach recovery
$80 Million for Miami-Dade adults with disabilities
$750k for the Miami-Dade Institute for Child and Family Health
$250K for the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust
$69k for the West Miami Community Center
$1 Million for Zoo Miami
$400k to fund the Miami Fire and Rescue Department Mobile Command Center
$1 Million for the University of Miami’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center to research cures for firefighters with cancer
Nearly $100 Million to FIU and MDC in education appropriations

“I actually had an extremely successful first session not only in money to be distributed, but even projects that had never been funded before,” Taddeo said.
Marili should have at least known about the money for Miami Dade College, where she has served on the board of trustees for seven years. The biggest “sacrifice” running for office is to give up that seat, she said. But she also believes that experience is going to help her get elected. “I know what we need here, the infrastructure we need,” Cancio said.
A known Trump supporter who often defends his policy decisions on TV and radio, Cancio said she didn’t think that would hurt her in this election. “The economy is doing better. Businesses are doing better,” she said. “I’m running for state, not federal, and I’m going to make that about local issues, transit issues.”
Well, one thing is certain: The debates are going to be interesting.

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Coral Gables taxpayers pay sweet property bills for sweet services like trash pick-up and crack code enforcement. For the last eight months at least, they’ve also been paying for the city manager’s political consultant.
Cathy Swanson-Rivenbark has old timey Gables political consultant Stan Adkins — who also runs Commissioner Pat Keon‘s campaigns — officially helping her with the long delayed annexation process in the High Pines and Ponce Davis neighborhoods. But he also seems to be unofficially helping her manipulate the commission, do damage control on bad news and even script what the mayor and employees are supposed to say at commission meetings, according to emails and text messages between them.
According to city records, Adkins has been making $4,000 a month since November, mostly it seems for PR projects for some of the most controversial or touchy city issues. That would amount to $48,000 a year, which is under the $50,000 that would require the city manager to get approval from the city commission. There is also an invoice that indicates Adkins and Associates did some flyers and door hangers for several city programs and a brochure on legislative priorities — for a total of $11,834.
Emails between Adkins and several city officials indicate that he is helping the city sell the annexation of High Pines and Ponce Davis to somebody — either the commission or the residents. He was also consulted on the selection of the logo for the city’s hurricane preparedness public outreach, a media buy of radio ads, messaging on the police vacancies and recruitment and PR for other city programs or issues — most notably the poop scoop campaign.
But it looks like he does poop scooping of another kind.
The City Beautiful’s own public information officer, Maria Higgins Fallon, keeps Adkins up with social media posts about the Gables and also sent him links to stories about Hudak’s pool party as well media inquiries.
Some emails and text messages make him out as the city manager’s personal fixer, ala Olivia Pope on Scandal, only not as pretty and no white hat.
Read related: Coral Gables manager spanked for interfering with background check
When the Sun-Sentinel published a series of stories and editorials last month about how Cathy had left Hollywood taxpayers o the hook for a $28 million giveaway grant to the Margaritaville developer, Adkins got a series of emails from Higgins Fallon, with links from the paper. No words. No instructions on what to do, because he knew what to do. Damage control with commissioners is Ladra’s guess.
Neither Adkins nor Swanson-Rivenbark returned repeated calls to their cellphones. Swanson-Rivenbark did not return text messages either.
There is no doubt that the Gables city manager needs political mentoring or advice. In fact, given her recent behavior, Ladra is surprised she has any. Maybe Adkins is losing his touch. Let’s reprise, shall we?
Swanson-Rivenbark has been hurdling one catastrophe after another since she was hired back from the city of Hollywood, where she was under investigation for mismanaging $1 million in city funds:

Almost immediately she started hiring lackeys and cronies.
She tried to appoint two police chiefs and was told she could not by her own city attorney.
She covered up the spying on citizens and commissioners by a police major.
She took it upon herself to cancel a study ordered by the commission to look at the impact of development along the U.S. 1 corridor, paying a $50,000 fee anyway.
She seemingly intentionally planned and designed a new public safety building without talking to or involving the public safety leaders.
She got into a pissing match with the beloved police chief, issuing an opportunistic and unwarranted reprimand from a bogus and politically-motivated anonymous complaint she later had to rescind.
Then it was learned that she interfered with the 2015 background check of one of her lackeys.
And now we find out that she’s been using a taxpayer paid political fixer or spin doctor.

Part of the scope of Adkins’ job description, it appears, was reviewing the script that Swanson wrote for herself, Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli and Chief Ed Hudak for the meeting in April when she was to rescind the unwarranted reprimand that she never should have issued in the first place.
“I accept the manager’s resolution and want to thank her. I respect the manager’s authority,” Hudak was supposed to say. “We both share a desire to have a government with the highest integrity. We have agreed to work together in the best interest of the city going forward.”
Adkins asked: “Has this been agreed to?”
Read related: Coral Gables manager’s petty reprimand on chief backfires on her
No, it had not. Hudak never ended up saying those words. Which apparently surprised some people. After Hudak accepted the rescinding of the reprimand, Commissioner Keon asked if that was it? Didn’t he have something else to say? Hmmm?
Now we know why she asked. She must have known about the script! What else has she and Cathy been conspiring because now we know why Keon seems to always defend the manager no matter what: They share a consultant.
Ladra doesn’t know how Keon is going to be able to look anybody else in the eye at the commission meeting on Tuesday, which should get pretty interesting now.
Commissioner Vince Lago was already going to discuss her inappropriate interference with the background check into her lackey, Assistant City Manager Frank Fernandez, who may have been hired without the safety net of a full and independent vetting.
Ladra is certain that the discussion will be expanded now to include this. How could it not?

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Are nonpartisan municipal races a thing of the past?
 
The Democrats made them do it.
That’s what Nelson Diaz, chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, said about an email they blasted Wednesday for Zoraida Barreiro, who is running in the special shotgun wedding election for the county commission district 5 seat vacated by her husband Bruno Barreiro, so he could run for Congress.
“Of course we’re going to help Zoraida,” Diaz told Ladra last week. “And you can blame the Democrats. My preference is not to do that. It’s important to have independent, free elections at the local level. But if Democrats are going to get involved to push their radical, left wing agenda, then we will get involved.”
And so they did.
“We Need to Stop the Democrats,” the email reads.
“The Democrats are trying to force a radical, left-wing liberal that just recently moved to Miami from out of state. She is so out of touch with our community, she has stated her support for the elimination of the Homestead exemption. If she wins, they will have enough Democrats to take down the tax deduction and it will increase our taxes,” it says, urging votes for Barreiro.
“We cannot allow the Democrat to win!”
Read related: Dems push full court press for Eileen Higgins in special District 5 county race
Sure sounds like a desperate cry — and Ladra is pretty sure Higgins would not advocate lifting the Homestead exemption, which isn’t the county commission’s purview anyway, but, hey, it’s a good tactic in the working class parts of the district: “Oh! My! God! She’s going to raise taxes!” It’s almost as good as “She’s a communist!”
Diaz said Higgins said as much in a Spanish-language TV  interview. But la gringa — whose Spanish is okay but could be better — was only saying what many electeds at the county and cities are saying: That this additional exemption voters are likely to pass in November is going to drain government coffers and cause serious cuts. Government officials and sitting electeds everywhere are worried about that and planning.
“It must have been misinterpreted in my terrible Spanish,” Higgins said, adding that the county mayor has done a good job. “We have to plan for it. When we sit around meetings and say we want more buses we have to remember that when we vote in November.”
Democrats have been actively and publicly helping Eileen Higgins in this race since the very beginning. She was the only Democrat running against three Republicans, including former State Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla. The party paid political consultant Christian Ulvert, who took precious time from a gubernatorial candidate. And Higgins had local electeds, state reps and even another gubernatorial candidate endorse and promote her online.
She won the first round with 35%, two points over Barreiro, forcing a runoff. Democrats like to think they did that. After all, it’s not their first rodeo.
While it’s the first time the local GOP steps into a traditionally non-partisan municipal race, Diaz said, the local Dems have been involved in them since at least Daniella Levine-Cava ran for Miami-Dade Commission. Her race in 2014 against incumbent Lynda Bell, who happened to be a staunch right-to-life Republican, became the first local non partisan election the Miami-Dade Democratic Party got really involved in. Since then, they’ve helped Homestead Mayor Jeff Porter, Miami Beach Commissioner Micky Steinberg and Miami Commissioner Ken Russell.
Read related story: Eileen Higgins would upset the apple cart, add checks and balances
“We’ve always had the approach that if you’re running for office, who you affiliate yourself with, what party, speaks to the types of decisions you’ll be making at the dais,” said Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairman Juan Cuba. “Even though it’s local, we’re dealing with zoning and services. And you also deal at the local level with national issues — minimum wage, affordable housing, police oversight.”
Sanctuary cities. Gender-neutral bathrooms.
“We do want to make sure we are electing people who align with our values, especially at the local level where we need more people who will fight for working families,” Cuba said.
The Miami-Dade Commission already has a Democrat majority. And that doesn’t necessarily translate to a “progressive agenda” when it comes to the votes. The mega mall development, for example, was passed with Levine-Cava as the sole dissenting vote. In fact, that happens to her a lot. And the ordinance to hold immigrant detainees for ICE — to remove Miami from the list of sanctuary cities and please Donald Trump — was sponsored by Sally Heyman, a Democrat and former state rep.
On the flip side, Mayor Carlos Gimenez endorsed Hillary Clinton — though one could argue that was a publicity stunt since his son works for Trump — and Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Diaz, another Republican, is very friendly to labor, which is usually a Democrat characteristic. Barreiro has long been considered a moderate Republican because he pioneered LGBT issues. But he represents Miami Beach, so maybe he sorta had to.
Read related: Lynda Bell vs. Levine-Cava debate becomes heated spar
Levine-Cava, the first Democrat elected to the commission with the party’s help, says she doesn’t see the commission as a partisan body. “It’s more about local issues and quality of life. Transit is not a Democrat or a Republican issue,” she told Ladra.
Well, maybe not. But let’s bring up the idea of raising taxes for it or having special taxing districts and you will see partisan division.
Some people fear that this marks the end of nonpartisan races in Miami-Dade and they could be right. Florida law requires judicial candidates to stay non-partisan, but how much you wanna bet that we know who is a Republican and who is a Dem. Candidates in the big cities like Miami Beach and Homestead are already using the invisible “D” and “R”behind their names for campaigning. Small cities are likely next in an increasingly divided and polarized political society.
 

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