Some voters in Senate District 40 got a mail piece this week that attacks former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz for being a lobbyist. But it wasn’t any of his opponents in the GOP primary who put the piece out. It was the Democrats.

The mailer is paid for by the Florida Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and says that “Dirty Diaz” is a “superhero for special interests, a villain to Miami families.” The front has a cartoon character in a suit or buglar eye mask — legislator by day, lobbyist by night — and while its not a Bitstrip, the character looks a little like Pepi Diaz alright. Down to the facial hair and the smirk.

“Don’t expect Dirty Diaz to represnt us in the Senate. His lobbying clients pay much more,” it says, adding that he voted to raise property taxes and increase property insurance costs.

But this may not be just bad news for Pepi Diaz. This mailer could be bad news for former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla and constitutional attorney Lorenzo Palomares, who is likely to win the bronze, because it could mean the Dems think Diaz is going to win the primary. DLP might tell you that they’re hedging their bets, since he has already been hit with so much negativity.

But why waste the money if there’s a chance DLP wins? Why not wait until after the primary? Why not put everything together and have it ready to pull the trigger on Wednesday next week?

Unless… hmm, could it be they are trying to help DLP because he’s an easier target in the general? Ladra thinks that Diaz is a much tougher challenge in the general, principally because of the amount of money he has and has shown to be able to raise, but also because DLP is less moderate than Pepi Diaz, who — especially with his mother and wife being public school teachers — will be more easily able to get NPAs and peel some Democrat votes in the general than the Dean, especially when he’s been channeling The Donald.

So could this be Senate Democrats actually being smart?

Sure, the mailer was sent to an NPA. But it was sent to an NPA with a super voter Republican in the house. You don’t think they know that?

It was bound to happen. In fact, one might wonder what took Annette Taddeo so long to bring up Ana Rivas Logan‘s Republican stripes.

It happened this week, when Democrat voters received a mailer where Rivas Logan is pictured between President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who she only served in Tallahassee with for a year. “A history of voting Republican,” it says on one side. And that’s true. Because Rivas Logan only became a Democrat after she was beaten out of office by another candidate in the SD40 race, former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz (who happens to be running in the GOP primary).

The year was 2012 when Rivas Logan and Diaz were thrown into the same district via redistricting. Neither one would move out. The party backed Diaz, who went on a negative attack questioning her Cuban roots and calling her an unfit mother. One piece linked Rivas Logan, a former Miami-Dade School Board member to then Superintendent Rudy Crew, who was unpopular and hated by Cubans, in particular, for allowing communist books in the curriculum. Rivas Logan switched parties shortly after, citing the anti-immigrant sentiment in the GOP but everybody knows she felt abandoned by the party, even stabbed in the back.

Read related story: Outing non-Cubans in Miami politics

In this primary, it’s all about the fact that she was even in that contest.

“Once Republican, always Republican,” the mailer says. Well, wait a minute. Wouldn’t that also apply to former Gov. Charlie Crist, who ran as a Democrat with Taddeo as his running mate?

The mailer points out that Rivas Logan is still getting “Republican money” because 90% of her money is from the Lewin family of Davie, who own 411-Pain and other healthcare interests and are registered red. Of course, 90% equals $10,000 of the $12,925 she’s collected (and it’s actually more if you consider that she loaned herself $2,500), so big deal?

The piece is paid for by Fight Back Florida, Taddeo’s PAC, which is chaired by Raul Martinez Jr., who used to be former Congressman Joe Garcia‘s chief of staff and who Taddeo ran against in the congressional primary last year. The PAC has reported raising $37,500 since May, including a $10,000 contribution last month from Diario Las Americas Multimedia.

But the piece seems late, landing more than two weeks after absentee ballots went out, and short, coming on the heels of not one but at least three anti Taddeo pieces put out by Floridians for Accountability, an election communications organization that has been inactive since 2008 and didn’t report any activity last month. One of the pieces also tries to compare Taddeo to Trump repeating false allegations from 2014 that she was under IRS investigation for not paying her employees. That simply isn’t true and the complaint that was filed was done so for political purposes. Two other hit pieces targeted where Taddeo invests her money — which includes Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, none of which are Dem darlings.

Read related story: Dade’s newest Dem, Ana Rivas Logan, hails First Lady

Ladra still thinks Democrats will have to hold their nose and vote for Rivas Logan if they want to get that seat back. They should have never lost it to former Sen. Frank Artiles, who was forced to resign in April after he was caught making racist remarks to black legislators in public. But their best chance to get it back is Rivas Logan, who came in second in the primary to former Sen. Dwight Bullard without spending very much or campaigning really. Because the very Republican background that is a liability for Rivas Logan in this primary is what is going to make her a better candidate for the general against Diaz, for a rematch, or former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who would enter the general limping from the full frontal attack campaign in his primary that has included allegations of violent outburstss and improriety with women. 

Or maybe all this drama in both primaries gives the NPA candidate, Christian “He-Man” Schlearth, an advantage.

While it is not the only reason they are the frontrunners in the November election, it helps that former Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Gongora and comeback candidate Mark Samuelian have each raised more than $170,000, leading the pack in their respective commission races, according to the latest campaign reports filed last week.

And leading by quite a distance.

Gongora, who enjoys the most name recognition as a former commissioner and one-time mayoral candidate, has the most of any of this year’s commission hopefuls, with $188,785 raised since March. Or actually $168,785 since $20K is reported as a loan to himself. Also, a quarter of last month’s $40K, or $10,000, comes from Adam Walker of Boardwalk Properties, a real estate investor who owns several small apartment buildings in South Beach and who bundled $40,000 in contributions to Commissioner Michael Grieco, who is running for mayor. Maybe Gongora saw the Political Cortadito story about it in May and hit Mr. Walker up the next month.

Read related story: Michael Grieco its $500K, with help from real estate investor

Nobody else in the Group 3 race even comes close to Gongora’s bank. Adrian Gonzalez, the owner of David’s Cafe and Gongora’s most serious challenge, has raised just over $55,000 and Zachary Eisner has raised $17,250.

In the Group 2 race, Samuelian has raised $170,747, an impressive amount in two months. Until you read the fine print and realize that more than half of that — or $91,000 — is in loans from the candidate to himself. He loaned himself $56,000 in the first report for May, to make it a total of $105,472, and then made another $35,000 loan to the campaign in June, so he could report a total of $62,275. Without the loans, he would be reporting only $79,472 in the same two months — which is not really “more cash on hand than all our opponents combined,” as he claims in one of his email blasts.

Attorney Joshua Levy has reported raising $76,070, but $24,700 is on loan from himself. Rafael Velazquez has managed to resist loaning himself anything to artificially pump up his numbers, even though he has only raised $31,476 so far.

Is Samuelian trying to scare more challengers away? Already, Eisner switched to the Group 3 race against Gongora and Robert Lansburgh (who had loaned himself $50K) withdrew completely, giving Samuelian his endorsement. One of many.

Samuelian boasts basically everybody’s endorsement. Former Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower, former Beach Commissioners Jorge Esposito, Saul Gross, Nancy Liebman, Ed Tobin and Deede Weithorn and former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Katy Sorenson have all given him their nod. So have a number of community activists like Daniel Ciraldo, Frank and Marian Del Vecchio, Brad Bonessi, Carla Probus and Michael DeFilippi, to name a few.

And as the former president of Miami Beach United (he resigned last month), Samuelian not only built a track record opposing the “train to nowhere” and fighting Watson Island development, but he also doubled the group’s membership and increased its influence, which means he made a lot of friends and gained a lot of supporters along the way. Add that to the name recognition he built in 2015 with the 4,999 people who voted for him against John Elizabeth Aleman and you have all the makings of a winner winner, chicken dinner.

Read related story: Mark Samuelian runs for Miami Beach commission, part II

Name I.D. and wall of endorsements are those other reasons that Samuelian is the one to beat, because money alone doe not always do it. After all, Samuelian spent $416,560 in is first bid against Aleman and he came real close — there was a 77 vote difference — but he spent way more than Aleman, who only spent $274,045. In fact, Samuelian also significantly bankrolled that race, too, loaning himself a whopping $216,247,  or more than half his total bank, in installments of $25,000 loans every month, $50K the last month and a little more than $16,000 that he apparently needed at the very end to make ends meet.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Mayor Philip Levine is not running for re-election and will no longer be there to pull the strings, so he’s not going to back any puppet candidate against anyone — at least so far.

Oh, that and there are still four full months to raise funds for the November election.

¡Que arroz con mango!

The Senate 40 race has become a total telenovela in the final weeks, with a five-year old, out-of-state misdemeanor arrest record surfacing at the last minute, implicating something selatious and improper between former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla and the daughter-in-law of the county mayor, who were taken into custody together in a Boston non-smoking hotel room where they were chainsmoking, despite repeated warnings, on a late rainy night.

Shortly after the 2012 incident was first reported in the Herald last week, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez withdrew his support for The Dean’s opponent, former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz. Gimenez will not be the guest star, after all, at a fundraiser planned next week at the Biltmore Hotel (which Ladra assumes will be cancelled), citing the negativity of the Diaz campaign.

“He believes that the tone of that particular race has been unnecessarily negative and will not be endorsing any candidate in that primary,” said Gimenez spokesman Michael Hernandez, because, apparently, the mayor’s political life and endorsments is part of Mike’s job now, too.

Also, btw, the race has been unneccessarily negative for weeks and it wasn’t until his family’s dirty laundry started to come out that G found the campaign offensive.

But what if the information didn’t come from Pepi Diaz? What if it came from ADLP himself? Wait for it… wait for it. I know! Brilliant, right? The guy’s a genius!

If Pepi Diaz — or any of the Tallahasee ghosts who are supporting him (more on that later) — wanted to expose this embarassing episode (forget the girl, the behavior is atrocious enough), they would have spilled the Boston beans before the absentee ballots went out on June 27 . Not weeks after people have already voted.

And ADLP isn’t hurt by this. He is not the married one. In the eyes of most Cuban-American Westhchester super voters, he has done nothing wrong. Heck, some of them will want to high-five him. It may pain Ladra to say it, but this doesn’t resonate. Sure, ella es una sucia, azqueroza. But she is not running for office. And him? He’s a charming, womanizing, fast-talker who has women throw themselves at him all the time. El no tiene la culpa. He’s not to blame, they’ll say.

Ahora, el sinverquenza que saco los trapos? Yep, this actually hurts Pepi, who is seen as the desperate villain who besmirched a woman’s name to get elected and, to boot, won’t have the extra dollars that he expected to have for the end game from a Gimenez anointment. Notice that the news of the arrests came only a couple days after the announcement that the mayor — who should have stayed out of the primary out of loyalty to ADLP for his 2011 win — would headline the Biltmore event for Pepi.

This must have irked The Dean. After all he’s done for that cardboard box! It’s not completely unreasonable to think that he put this arrest info out himself to get the cancellation and also a little bit of free publicity as the smeared former Senator trying to defend “the mother of two young girls,” as he said in the Herald story. Another thing: Tania Cruz, the daughter-in-law in question (and this is the good one), gave a long and impassioned statement as well — which there is no way she would have done without ADLP’s consent. In fact, Ladra suspects he wrote her comments.

Then, boom! Gimenez canceled on Diaz.

Then, boom, boom! His lobbyist son and the presumed tarrudo, CJ Gimenez, also lashed out at Pepi Diaz on Facebook Thursday.

“For those of you that did not receive the latest email from the Jose Felix Diaz campaign due to limited circulation, my father, Mayor Carlos Gimenez is no longer involved with the Rep. Jose Felix Diaz event at the Biltmore on July 18th citing the negative tone of the campaign,” wrote CJ, who celebrated an anniversary with his wife only weeks ago.

“My position (me, CJ Gimenez, not the Mayor) is that I am utterly disgusted with the actions of the Jose Felix Diaz campaign and their pathetic personal attacks against me and my family. So I ask you, do not reward Jose Felix Diaz with your support. Please share this post with your friends and family! I thank you!”

Ladra was told that his other sister-in-law (the bad one) also posted something on Facebook about it.

But what if they’re being played by one of the best in the business? Yes, it would be somewhat Machiavellian to have orchestrated this wag the dog scenario right in front of our eyes.

But look who we’re talking about here.

Brilliant!

With less than two weeks left before the special election primary to fill the Senate seat in District 40 — brought to you by the drunken, racists rants of former Sen. Frank Artiles — you would think that they’d all take advantage of an opportunity to reach a large group of engaged voters at a candidate forum Wednesday sponsored by several community groups.

But they may not all show up. Two of the three Republicans have not confirmed.

Alex Diaz de la Portilla already skipped a Republican candidate forum and was reportedly leading the polls early on, so he may be MIA again, especially for an event hosted by a group of “progressive” groups like the League of Women Voters and the ACLU. He has not confirmed. But even if he’s not there to defend himself, it’s hard to imagine that former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz will not attack him at least once or twice. After all, practically all of Pepi’s campaign has been an attempt, with nearly daily mailers now, to tear Dean DLP down.

Alex should go to the forum. If only to set the record straight on the allegations that Pepi Diaz is making and taking out of context and call him out for running a purely negative campaign against another Republican — isn’t that against the rules? — reminding the folks there that he hasn’t sunk that low.

Pepi Diaz will, of course, deny any connection to the PAC that is spreading the misinformation, but he knows who is behind it (read: David “Discustin’” Custin) and he could stop if he wanted to. Besides, his own TV commercials are at least half about the Dean (90% in one spot) in a very blatant attempt to discredit and mar the DLP name.

And, by the way, old, tired accusations from DLP’s ex-wife from the heat of the passion moment seem ridiculously out of place on a mailer for the guy who lived with Artiles, a legislator who “hired” a Hooters girl and a former Playboy bunny as “consultants” for his campaign. Alex should go to the forum. If only to ask Pepi if he ever met Miss February.

Alas, as of Tuesday afternoon, Pepi Diaz had not confirmed his attendance, which will deprive voters not only of a real-time, face-to-face comparison, but also of some possible drama and entertainment.

It also gives Lorenzo Palomares, the distant third Republican hopeful, an hour all to himself to tell voters why they should vote for him — if they don’t fall asleep. The first thing Ladra would tell them is that the other two didn’t even respect them enough to show up.

Diaz and Palomares were cordial during that first forum that Alex missed. But that was before Palomares — who has dropped the Starbuck name he ran with for Congress with three years ago — volunteered as the defense attorney for the man Diaz had arrested (which, be honest, was a very fortunate media opportunity for him) after the man, who had stopped taking his meds, made threats against Pepi’s life on Facebook. If Diaz did show up, it may make any interaction Wednesday between these two a bit awkward — and perhaps material in a court case.

Talking of awkward, how about having perennial candidate Annette Taddeo and former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan on the same stage but not as friends? Once best buds, these two are in a fierce contest for the Democratic spot on the general ballot. Rivas Logan said early on that this would remain a clean race and she would stick to the issues. But on PAC that is obviously helping her has already sent at least three mailers describing Taddeo as a tax cheat and comparing her to — isn’t this rich? — President Donald Trump.

Ladra fully expects Taddeo, who is reportedly leading in an internal poll, to scold Rivas Logan, who won’t take responsibility and will say she cannot be blamed for what others do. But Ladra highly suspects that she, like Diaz, knows who’s behind the attacks and could stop it with one phone call.

The forum — presented by the Women’s Fund, the Miami Dade League of Women Voters, Engage Miami, the Kendall Federation of Homeowner Associations, YWCA Miami and ACLU Florida — is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in room 6120 at MDC’s Kendall campus, 11011 SW 104th Street.