Talk about kicking a man when he’s down.

First, former Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi loses his re-election just a couple of weeks ago, getting an abysmal 23% against newly elected Mayor Manny Cid. Then, boom, a Miami-Dade court tells him Wednesday that the town is not on the hook for $2.5 million in legal fees incurred during his 2013 federal bribery trial.

Pizzi had been arrested in a bogus grant sting set up by the FBI targetting local electeds. He and former Sweetwater Mayor Manny “Maraña” Maroño were charged after undercover agents caught them accepting bribes in cash and campaign contributions in exchange for getting bogus grant requests passed through their own and other cities.

While Pizzi was found not guilty, Maroño entered a plea deal and got a 37-month sentence. Guess he didn’t have the million dollar lawyers.

Read related story: Spies, lies and video tape: Manny Maroño’s ‘charisma’

After Pizzi got off, he had to sue the state to get his suspension by Gov. Rick Scott lifted and then had to sue the town of Miami Lakes to get his job back. But, in August of last year, he still sued his beloved town for the $2.5 million bill from his legal dream team.  He had up to eight attorneys at once — like he was O.J. Simpson or something. Guess you get what you pay for, because his acquittal is nothing short of miraculous, considering he had been recorded taking cash from a lobbyist/informant in an office closet.

Ladra always suspected that the price had been artificially inflated, jacked up so that Pizzi could have a piece of the pie.  

Maybe Judge Antonio Marin smelled something too and said nana-nina. He cited precedents that established that “for public officials to be entitled to representation at public expense, the litigation must (1) arise out of or in connection with the performance of their official duties and (2) serve a public purpose.”

The city’s legal argument focused on the public purpose part and the judge bought it.

Read related story: Michael Pizzi sues Miami Lakes for $3.2 million in legal fees

But wait just one minute. Because while Pizzi certainly wasn’t serving a public purpose — he was only looking out for himself — you can’t argue that the litigation wasn’t a public purpose, if by litigation they mean Pizzi’s prosecution.

Look, Ladra doesn’t want the town of Miami Lakes, or the taxpayers, to pay this bogus bill. But it’s pretty certain that Pizzi couldn’t have been indicted for bribery in a bogus federal grant scheme if he wasn’t acting in his official capacity as mayor and performing his public duties. Or pretending to. It was the very elected office that federal prosecutors said he used to get those $6,000 in bribes. He wouldn’t have been bribed if he wasn’t the mayor.

The court granted Pizzi — or his multiple attorneys, probably — 20 days to file an amendment to the complaint. And I suspect it will go a lot like that.

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Tuesday night’s loss in Doral was double whammy for political consultant Sasha Tirador, who worked for both incumbent Mayor Luigi Boria and council candidate Adriana Moyano, who both lost their runoff elections.

The victories by their opponents — JC Bermudez and Claudia Mariaca, respectively — was pretty solid, and that includes very comfy leads in absentee ballots.

Is the Absentee Ballot Queen losing her touch? Might she be dethroned? Or does her magic only work in Hialeah?

No, wait. There’s always Sweetwater, where she helped elect Mayor Orlando Lopez in 2015 after she left or was fired from the campaign of immediate past Mayor Jose M. Diaz.

Read related story: Voters replace Luigi Boria with first mayor, JC Bermudez

Boria was forced into a runoff Tuesday after he failed to get 50 percent plus one in the Nov. 8 election. He lost in every category — ABs, early voting and election day. In both rounds Nov. 8 and Tuesday. Although Boria was within 200 votes on Election Day this go-around, he was almost 1,000 short in early voting and exactly 1,100 under founding mayor J.C. Bermudez in absentees. 

Bermudez won Tuesday with a whopping 67% after he got 1,181 more ABs than Boria. Moyano lost in ABs by a smaller margin of 343 votes, smaller even than the margin of 529 she lost in the ABs on Nov. 8.

But these are just the latest two in a string of losses for Tirador.

Let’s remember that Tirador also worked on the Raquel Regalado campaign. And, much to Ladra’s dismay, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez got way more ABs in their runoff last month than the former Miami-Dade School Board Member who could have and should have been our first female county mayor —  — 147,885 to 118,754.

Even earlier this year, it looks like la reina lost every judicial race she worked on except one.

• Rosy Aponte lost in all three races — absentee, early voting and Election Day. But it’s worth noting that even after paying Tirador $16,000, according to campaign finance reports, for “consulting” and “community outreach,” she had fewer absentee ballot votes than the other two candidates in the first round. Her total ABs were 27,667. The guy who came in No. 2, Oscar Rodriguez-Fonts had almost 10,000 more and went on to win the runoff.
• Yoly Roberson, la enfermera, also lost all three races, but the margin was much closer in early voting and Election Day. Roberson, who paid Tirador more than $15,000 for consulting and “communication,” had 46,399 mail-in votes but was beaten by Robert Luck, whose AB count came in at 56,903.
• But her worse performance this year must be with Renee Gordon, who actually won early voting and Election Day tallies but lost so big in absentee ballots that she came in third and didn’t even make the runoff. We usually see this happen the other way around. Gordon got 19,863 absentee votes while the candidate with the next lowest got 25,842 and the eventually, Mark Blumstein, got 32,173 in round one. But maybe that’s because she only paid Sasha $6,400 for consulting and “grassroots.”

To be fair, each of these judicial race winners — Rodriguez-Fonts, Luck and Blumstein — hired election royalty of their own: Al Lorenzo, who was caught in the 2012 absentee ballot fraud investigation into the Carlos Gimenez campaign and has been working quietly behind the scenes since.

Maybe we should call him Al “Absentee Ballot King” Lorenzo?

Curiously, and notably, other members of the Gimenez 2012 team, Jesse Manzano and Dario Moreno, were spotted early Tuesday evening celebrating “the best team’s” win (pictured, left, in the bottom left corner of this picture posted on twitter). Could Lorenzo be part of that best team? After all, Lorenzo consulted for Frank Bolanos, who ran against Boria in 2012 and was endorsed by Bermudez. He’s not on Bermudez’s campaign reports. But that may not mean anything, because neither is Manzano, who was wearing a yellow Bermudez campaign t-shirt on Tuesday. Of course, as of this early Wednesday, Ladra does not know if Bermudez had a political action committee (but if Jesse is involved, he probably did).

And, hey, maybe they volunteered, ok?

Doral’s founding mayor, who served from 2003 until he was termed out in 2012, was sent back to City Hall Tuesday by voters who connected to his getting Doral “back on track” message — and who tossed out an incumbent that had waged a particularly nasty campaign.

J.C. Bermudez won with a whopping 67 percent, a total of 4,680 votes — almost twice as many as incumbent Mayor Luigi Boria, with 2,347. That amounted to only 33 percent, despite several last minute attempts to sway voters, including a false and frivolous complaint filed with the Florida Elections Commission and a ridiculous request for an investigation by the State Attorney’s Office that will be good for a laugh.

Read related story: Ladra responds to Luigi Boria and his silly press conference

It’s the same percentage he got in the first round when there were three candidates, with former Councilwoman Sandra Ruiz coming in third. That means Boria reached his ceiling Nov. 8.

And this despite the fact that Boria outspent Bermudez by more than 2 to 1, judging by the documented campaign reports. Between them, the two men spent almost $1.2 million to become mayor of Doral — which Ladra is sure will be a record for the young city. Boria spent the bulk of that, with almost $800,000 between his campaign and his Doral United political action committee. But what he raised was little more than half a million — because he loaned $265,000 to himself.

While he waged a nasty campaign, the incumbent was (sorta) gracious in his concession speech.

“I never considered myself a politician… For me, the people were always first, before the politics,” Boria said to a group of supporters before he addressed the links his brother-in-law has to an office where eight voters were registered illegally (the subject of a Political Cortadito post that he claims was paid, el pobre).

“I never deviated from the laws. I never did anything inappropriate. They painted this whole picture, but I consider myself an honest person, a tolerant person, a person with integrity and a person with values,” he said.

Read related story: Possible voter fraud in Doral may have ties to Luigi Boria

“I know my vision is different from that of J.C. Bermudez, but I know he has a vision for the city. I congratulate him and recognize that he worked hard… God knows what he is doing. If I win God, has someting good for me. If I lose, God has something good for us.”

In a television interview, Boria even said that Bermudez had been a hard worker and “great servant to this city.”

Former Councilwoman Sandra Ruiz, right, threw her support behind JC Bermudez after the first round.

What a difference a day makes, huh?

But Bermudez might not be in the same collegial mood. He can’t be. Sandra Ruiz will not let him be. Bermudez was elected by people unhappy with Boria and the scandals marked by his tenure and the instability he brought to the administration and the lack of transparency in Doral government. Bermudez is going to have to go into City Hall and start opening drawers and looking behind the shelves to see shat kind of mess Boria left that we don’t know about.

“The people clearly sent a message that they wanted change,” Bermudez said in a TV interview Tuesday night. Ladra was unable to reach him and he did not return calls.

“They want to bring Doral back to the values it once had,” he was quoted as saying in the Miami Herald. “It’s a great message from the community that it’s about decency not money, honesty and not dirty campaigning.”

Read related story: Nasty Doral mayoral race tops $1 million approaching runoff

His message throughout the campaign was to get Doral “back on track” as far as the master plan for development and the transparency and accountability in government that the city was founded for in the first place.

In the council race that also was forced into a runoff Tuesday, longtime activist Claudia Mariaca, a council meeting regular who celebrated with the Bermudez campaign Tuesday night and spoke at his podium (pictured, right) — and who might be the first Argentine elected in Miami-Dade (or the U.S.?) — beat Adriana Moyano, who had the same consultant as Boria, 56 to 44 percent.

Ladra is not sure when the swearing in is. But the next council meeting, according to the city website, is the next day.

Good thing both Bermudez and Mariaca can hit the ground running.

The Miami Beach leg could still be the “backdoor” to a larger, more lucrative county contract

Mayor Philip Levine seems to have backpedalled some on his Loopy Loop.

Earlier this year, Levine defended his beloved train to nowhere, a stand-alone , two-mile, $245-million streetcar that would loop from 5th Street to the convention center and eventually — maybe someday — connect to BayLink or whatever connector was finally moved on by Miami-Dade County. He was hell bent on moving independently of the county and city of Miami with an accelerated bidding process that favored the most expensive firm. He led the commission in a vote to accept the “unsolicited proposal” last December. The move was criticized by many — including Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado — because it could result in the loss of state and federal funds.

Last week, however, after growing public discontent, Levine sent an email blast saying that any Beach train would only be part of a county-connecting project — one of the six corridors approved in the SMART plan is the Beach connector — and said he would hold off on final negotiations.

Read related story: Forum on controversial Beach ‘train to nowhere’

“We will not sign any agreement that commits financial resources to the plan until we have full commitments from Miami-Dade County that they are willing partners in this endeavor and that they are fully committed to a real connection,” he wrote. “This is instrumental, as our taxpayers alone should not bear the full responsibility of building a rail corridor that connects Miami Beach to the City of Miami. But, we know that for it to be a successful system, connectivity throughout Miami Beach and key points in Miami are essential.

“We cannot allow ‘grandstanding’ for political ‘points’ to slow down the progress that we’ve made. This is why my commitment to you remains unchanged. I will ensure that a transparent process through open dialogue continues and that ZERO tax dollars are committed until we have the full support from our local, state and federal partners and then and ONLY then will this vision be brought back to the commission for their consideration.”

Instead of a vote on any agreement, Levine is now presenting a resolution to the commission Wednesday that puts the brakes on the Loopy Loop and also calls for a voter referendum to approve any final contract. 

But this about face doesn’t come out of the blue. Levine can read poll results.

Some voters in Miami Beach received a phone call for a poll earlier this month. They were asked between 10 and 15 questions about the train before they were asked the favorability of several Beach politcos (more on that later). It was an obvious push poll, two residents said, with each question placing the train “in the best possible light.” But we know it didn’t work. Because the result is that Levine is now backing off.

But not really.

The resolution Levine is putting before the commission on Wednesday will only put negotiations on hold. It doesn’t scrap the project to start the process again. It doesn’t throw the train out altogether. It simply “parks” the negotiations until the county moves forward with its part of the formula — or until after the elections next year, whichever comes first.

Because Levine doesn’t want the train to be a campaign issue. If what we’ve seen at public meetings is true, Ladra imagines it polled very badly. Candidates attached to the train — such as Levine or Commissioner Ricky Arriola, who is widely believed would stand in for the mayor should Levine seek higher office — could be more easily challenged with that albatross around their necks. Especially by someone like Comissioner Michael Grieco, pictured left, who is widely rumored to be eyeing the mayor’s seat (more on that later) and whose profile has been growing as he distances himself from his onetime ally. Grieco blasted the mayor for inviting the Cuban government to open a consular office in Miami Beach. And last week, Grieco blasted the train to nowhere in an op-ed piece in The Miami Herald. In fact, he’s not even sure that a train is needed at all, even as part of a BayLink.

So, Levine slowing down on the train track is not him coming to his senses, folks. It’s strategic. And the mayor has every intention of bringing the wireless light rail streetcar back.

He owes it to Alex Heckler, pictured right, a lobbyist who has raised money for him and who represents the Greater Miami Tramlink Partners led by Alstom, the troubled vendor chosen after a trip to France. Heckler also raised money for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez with Levine in the last election cycle. Why is Gimenez important in this story? For the same reason the streetcar is coming back: Because this Miami Beach deal is a back door to the county part of this project, which will cost millions more. If the Beach branch of the BayLink connector is already in the works when the county awards its own contract, points can be awarded to the contractor who has “shovels in the ground” and/or the county can piggy back on the existing contract, advocating for the same system to be used throughout because this vendor — who might otherwise be the least qualified and most expensive — has a unique criteria that the others don’t: They are already here.

Read related story: Uber as public transit is a bad, temporary bandaid

Plus, guess what? The Alstom systems are not interoperable with others. They have some kind of proprietary secret GPS mechanism that they don’t share with other operators either. So, doesn’t that mean that if they get the Beach contract, they would have to get the county contract if we want them to work together? Sure sounds like it.

In fact, there are all kinds of red flags on the selection or recommendation of Tramlink/Alstom that perhaps should be investigated. In a bid protest letter sent to City Manager Jimmy Morales in July, Mark Stempler, an attorney representing a competing proposal from Connect Miami Beach, says that the Tramlink Partners plan should not have been given top ranking because it deviates from the Beach’s own procurement requirements in several ways: 

• It fails to satisfy a “critical requirement that the proposed “Vehicle/Systems Technology” will be interoperable with the Direct Connect Project (read: no guarantee it can connect to the mainland branch).
• It fails to demonstrate that it could even deliver, based on the fact that the proposed streetcars and ground power supply systems that Alstom has used in Europe have NOT been certified to operate in the U.S.
• It fails to meet the city’s stated standards for “character, integrity, reputation or judgment,” based on the City’s finding of “prior admissions of misconduct” by one of the GMTP team members stemming from bribery and corruption charges, including the payment of a then-record $772 million dollar fine to the U.S. Government.

The gist is that these irregularities in applying the same standards to all gave Tramlink Partners and Alstom a greater advantage. Especially with the character flaw one. Because unproven corruption allegations were noted in the case of partners with Connect Miami Beach — but the proven charges against Alstom seemed to be okay. 

In fact, the city may be wiser to go with Connect Miami Beach, the second ranked firm. Particularly after they pointed out last week, in a Dec. 7 letter to Morales, that the $245-million pricetag is much higher than the price on its comparable projects — at $107 million per mile rather than the $45-$55 million per mile quoted for projects in Cincinnatti, Kansas and Milwaukee.

That’s twice as expensive. Is it because of Mr. Heckler’s fee? Or are there other people getting paid off along the route?

In one of his last ditch efforts to keep his seat, Doral Mayor Luigi Boria — forced into a runoff Tuesday — posted a new Facebook video last week in which he compares himself to President-elect Donald Trump.

“Both have achieved the dream of using their experience as successful businessmen to serve the community and this great nation,”Spanish captions read as inspirational music soars and photos of Boria and Trump at Trump’s Doral Golf Resort and Spa and the Miss Universe contest. Even one with the mayor giving Trump the key to the city in 2014.

Someone’s got delusions of grandeur.

“The people saw the progress and honesty in his eyes. Today, together, they will make a difference. His friendship is beneficial for the well being of Doral.”

Read related story: Nasty Doral mayoral race tops $1 mil approaching runoff

The video also has an excerpt from a Trump rally here in which our future POTUS says he stands with the people of Cuba and Venezuela. We suppose that he believes he’s going to take votes away from former founding Mayor J.C. Bermudez, who trounced him in the first round wth 46% to 33%.

But who told Boria that this was a good idea? Guess he doesn’t know that Trump lost in Doral. Lost big league. It was yuuuge for Hillary.

According to figures from the Miami-Dade Elections Department, and compiled by political consultant and fellow campaign junkie Giancarlo Sopo, Trump lost every single precinct in Doral except one. And that precinct 373 is kinda sketchy, as my teenager would say. It’s a commercial area and nobody is supposed to live there. I suspect those two votes are invalid. So Trump lost every precinct in Doral.

Citywide, Clinton trounced with 68% of the vote to his 28%. That’s not even close.

Hopefully, voters will give Boria something else to compare with Trump on Tuesday — a wide margin of rejection.

Disclaimer: This post was not paid by any political candidate or campaign but was, instead, a pure labor of love.