As if Ladra could get any happier Tuesday night, after the historic victory by Raquel Regalado, who forced Carlos Gimenez into a runoff that we know she can win in November.

But then, Trust Fund Baby Andrew Korge — who shopped around for a seat he felt he could win and then spent $700,000 or more to become a senator and then went mad dog on everybody and their mother — and then came in third anyway.

Our mailboxes in District 40 are going to get a little lonely.

Korge — who sent two dozen mailers and spent a quarter of a million, at least, on TV commercials — was beaten by the incumbent senator he cast as a terrorist sympathizer with money problems and a former state rep and party switcher who didn’t even campaign.

Read related story: Andrew Korge could make anyone a Frank Artiles fan

Sen. Dwight Bullard gets to defend his seat in November, winning with 49 percent of the vote (state primaries are won by the majority not a 50%+1 threshold). Former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan — who suspended her campaign WHEN to avoid the negative attacks she saw coming from Korge (he lunged for her anyway) — got 25 percent and Korge got 22 percent. Only Misselys Perez, who never campaigned or raised a dime outside of what she needed to qualify (plantidate anyone?) got less with slightly over 5 percent.

Bullard raised a total of $153,500 and Rivas Logan came in second with only $17K.

Could it be that the negative mailers turned people off? Could it be that nobody knew who this man who pronounced his name Kor-hay was? Could it be they saw him for the entitled, spoiled little snot who has never done anything on his own except ride his papi‘s coattails?

Korhay was nowhere to be found Tuesday. Nobody I talked to at several precincts saw him. They did see some of his campaign workers holding Sen. Anitere Flores fans at West Dade Regional Library — because that is in her district, not his, proving that more money does not necessarily mean more brains.

Or maybe he’s thinking of running for county commissioner next, against Javier Souto?

May we suggest that Baby Korge do something on his own first. Because Ladra would bet that Korge can’t get elected to the community council in any of the West Dade areas.

Everybody knows already that I am voting for Raquel Regalado for mayor of Miami-Dade. I’ve listed my reasons for years, because it’s really a referendum on Carlos Gimenez and the lousy job he has been doing and the climate of pay-to-play politics he has created, all documented here. Just do a search on Carlos Gimenez. Go back to 2012.

But Raquel is a good candidate in her own right. In six years on the school board, she has helped turn what was once a chaotic laughing stock — the fourth largest district in the country — into a national model. She has reformed the way they do business, from an overhaul of their bus maintenance to pioneering social media and tech policies. From construction to facilities to special education — where she has helped bring education into the 21st century — Raquel has had a hands on approach to her job as one of nine school board members in charge of a $3.2 billion budget and overseeing about 50,000 employees, twice as much as the county.

She has a lot of good ideas. Just check them out on her very well written website (ahem).

And we’ve never had a woman as Miami-Dade mayor and I’m excited about that.

But there are a lot of other important races on Tuesday’s ballot, too. And because people are constantly asking me who or how I’m voting, I decided to post my recommendations for this Aug. 30th. As a proud, card-carrying NPA, this at least gives me the chance to cast a ballot, however straw it may be, in races where I otherwise have no say.

I’m not weighing in on every race, just the ones where I feel I can. And where I care. And I may not always have such an articulate and/or valid reason as I do with the mayoral race. But here goes:

FOR U.S. SENATE

Republican Marco Rubio because I don’t have to have a valid reason. See? I told you. I may not agree with a lot of his positions on issues like climate change and gay marriage, but I like him. A lot. I think he’s real and authentic and he isn’t just telling me what I want to hear. I like his story. I like his family. I like his boots. I like the way he talks. His words move me and I’m jaded AF. Ask anyone. It helps that he grew up down the street — who doesn’t want to root for the home team — and that his mom and I worked at the same K-Mart in Westchester (but I don’t know if it was at the same time). Plus I think that he cannot negatively impact gay marriage, which is legal now, or sea level rise response, which is inevitable.

Democrat Pam Keith because Ladra is half rabblerouser, like her. And because everything she says makes sense. And because the other two guys get on my nerves. Someone please tell Congressman Patrick Murphy that he shouldn’t email me more than once a day.

FOR U.S. HOUSE

DISTRICT 26: Democrat Joe Garcia, because no matter how hard she tries people just don’t like Annette Taddeo — or maybe it’s that they don’t trust her — and I still think Garcia has a better chance of beating Carlos Curbelo in November. And if Carlos Curbelo, a liar and lobbyist with a secret client list, isn’t upset this year he’ll be there forever, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. And we can’t have that. Garcia isn’t always right. But, like Rubio, he’s a true believer. He really thinks he’s right. He’s not doing it for a proxy. And I’ll take a true believer who just happens to be wrong sometimes to a sinister liar trying to game the system any day. The former congressman might have been beaten two years ago by Curbelo, but that was in an off year.

Read related story: Awkward! Annette Taddeo, Joe Garcia face off with polite jabs

DISTRICT 27:

Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen because none of the others can hit the ground running. IRL is a legend who still has a little pull in D.C. With Republicans. With Democrats. She is a popular senior in high school. She is not a Freshman transplant. She will be able to do more.

Democrat Scott Fuhrman because it doesn’t really matter since nobody can beat Ileana, not even a Democrat in a Hillary year. Her gay cred with a transgeder son and her pro-Dreamer immigration stance makes her a crossover darling. But Fuhrman is fun to watch and might make a good elected — one day. So let’s give him the practice.

There’s more. Please press this “continue reading” button to “turn the page.”

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez has siphoned (read: stolen) monies from the People’s Transportation Plan, approved by voters to build MetroRail extensions, and used it for operation costs. He raised bus fares in 2013 from $2 to $2.25 when he bought $40 million worth of new buses. And he has cut bus operations by $3 million this year, saying he’s okay with a 78 percent on-time rate because it’s acceptable for people to be late 22 percent of the time.

Oh, and he spent $33 million on an app that can sell us bus and rail passes on our smart phones and who knows how much on another app that can tell us that the 120 Beach MAX or the 137 West Dade route is going to be late 22 percent of the time.

Now, on the eve of his re-election effort, Gimenez announces his first major transit “solution” (and I use the word solution loosely): Uber ride-sharing!

Ladra is not making this up. And maybe we should have seen this coming when Gimenez and a few commissioners fell all over themselves to make the for-hire passenger service legal earlier this year. Because now, the county proposes that Uber, which was operating illegally for more than two years, be the stop gap between home and the MetroRail.

“The Department of Transportation and Public Works has joined forces with one of the most popular ride-share programs around: Uber,” reads the almost breathless press release from the county. “The collaboration is just another way DTPW is working to ease riders’ commutes and help reduce congestion on the roadways by encouraging more drivers to opt for public transit.”

Read related story: Watch as Uber’s intimidating tactics catch fire

This is public transit? Someone else’s car?

“At Miami-Dade County, we’re all about moving our residents forward and making it easier for all Miamians to get where they need to go,” Gimenez said in the release. “By collaborating with Uber, getting to and from our transit stations is easier — and faster — than ever.”

Well, wait. It will still cost you $3 a trip, so that’s $6 a day, assuming you use Uber also to get home. So that’s $30 a week, or $120 a month. Just for the stop gap ride. We would still have to pay the bus and/or train separately.

Oh, and wait. It’s only good for people who live within 15 miles of a Metrorail station. Live in Homestead? You’re still screwed. Wait for the bus that is late one day out of the week. Nobody is about moving you forward and making it easier for you to get where you need to go.

Oh, and wait. It’s a temporary fix. Only good for the next month. The “promotional fare” will end Sept. 30. After that, Uber will charge market rates — or you can go back to walking and hitching rides with your momma.

Or paying $4.50 for parking. Because Ladra predicts that the only people who are going to take advantage of this are the people who already drive to MetroRail and park their cars all day there. The difference for them is $3 a day. Or $15 a week for a someone else to deal with the traffic. That may be worth it to just about anybody. Do without lunch.

“A lot of our residents are curious about trying public transit, so we want to make the choice an easy one,” said Transit Director Alice Bravo. “By collaborating with the ride-share companies, our riders have the benefit of a quick and easy trip to one of our Metrorail stations for a low, affordable price, without worrying about parking.”

Bravo is really counting on Gimenez winning his re-election. Here she is at a honk and wave rally on a recent Saturday — protecting her $235,000-a-year job making ridiculous statements like that. And like this.

“Uber will get you to us, and then let us do the rest.”

Doesn’t it feel like a commercial for Uber? Did their lobbyist get the county to do this? Who benefits more? The county? The rider? Nope. Uber benefits more. This is the best PR you can buy.

But who is Bravo kidding? This ridiculous partnership is not going to attract a lot of new riders who can’t afford $120 a month for a stop gap trip. But it might cost Miami-Dade some parking revenue.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez moves to legalize Uber, pardon penalties

The county doesn’t care. “Don’t sweat your commute, and let Miami-Dade and Uber take you where you need to go.”  It sounds so good. Like a bumper sticker.

Tell you what, Mayor Gimenez, why don’t you make Uber pay all their fines from the many months they snubbed their nose at the law and operated illegally? Take that $3 or $4 million you want to forgive, and apply those funds toward bus maintenance and operations so we can be on time more often.

Because what good are the $40 million in new buses you bought last year if nobody will ride them? Because they’re late one out of five days?

Last year, everybody was so happy about the $40 million in new buses — nobody mentioned they’d be late 22 percent of the time.

One of the scariest things that could happen Tuesday is that Trust Fund Baby Andrew Korge could actually win a seat on the Florida Senate.

God help us all.

Because he really doesn’t deserve it. Not only has Korge done nothing at all notable in his short adult life but live off his Papi’s millions, he has also behaved during this campaign alternately like an entitled cry baby and a bully with a big bat (read: wallet). He has not behaved like someone who could be a senator.

The self-righteous little punk has driven fear into the hearts of local Jews by trying to make Bullard look like a terrorist sympathizer. Korge had a fundraiser last week in Aventura — bet he pronounced his name Korge with a hard G, there, and not Kor-hay like Jorge —  where he told contributors and supporters that Bullard is soft on Israel (although he is a state senator, not a U.S. Senator) and wears a scarf that might look like a Palestinian Kaffiyeh.

But Ladra bought her brother a scarf for Christmas that looks a lot like the one in the picture of Bullard. I got it at Dadeland Mall. At Abercrombie & Fitch. I’ve seen them on the accessory wall at DSW, too.

Also, I wear a lot of Indian jewelry and clothing — and that doesn’t make me Hindu. This is America, and Miami even, where we can adopt customs from other cultures without being judged.  Korge sure can adopt our Latino culture. In an appeal to Hispanic voters, he has taken to pronouncing his name like Jorge with a K (Kor-hay).

Read related story: So much Andrew Korge in the mailbox — maybe a record

He’s also spent a lot of money on mailers. But you can’t be sure exactly how much just by looking at his campaign reports, because he doesn’t list them as such. In fact, the PAC — which has sent the majority of mailers — has no mailer or postage expense line items at all. Ladra had to assume those fall under the “media” expenses paid to David Heller’s company, Main Street Communications. That amounted to about $220,000. Korge has spent almost that much on his media buys and production as well, but the mail budget has to be a record number. (Heller is going to have a nice holiday season this year. Tip: Don’t buy your male relatives scarves from Abercrombie & Fitch.)

Ladra lives in District 40. My home got 24 mail pieces from the Korge campaign. Most of them are negative attacks on Sen. Dwight Bullard, the incumbent, and former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan, who “suspended her campaign precisely to avoid the dirty campaign — she could fly under the radar and win — but she got hit anyway.

Korge wants to be senator so bad he tried to buy his way in. He offered Bullard $25,000 to drop out of the race. Oh, not in cash. An investigation into allegations of bribery found no wrongdoing because all Korge did was offer to raise $25,000 for Bullard — but in another seat.

Read related story: Andrew Korge still shops around for a seat — or a sellout

“Dwight lied to voters and the media,” Korge told Ladra in a text message on Friday, all excited that he could spin the news into an exoneration. Because Dwight didn’t lie.

The Miami Herald story said “Korge’s claim was bolstered by text messages that showed Bullard, weeks earlier, had asked for help from Korge in fundraising, according to a final report on the investigation released Thursday by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.”

The problem with that is “weeks earlier” was when Korge was running in another seat, against Sen. Anitere Flores, and could have been seen as a Bullard ally. There’s nothing wrong with Bullard seeking fundraising help from one of the most prolific Democratic fundraising families in South Florida. It was actually smart.

But for Korge to make the offer again after he jumped into the race against Bullard should constitute bribery,  Ladra is thinking that the definition of bribery needs to be expanded. Because the intention is the same.

Now he is trying to buy the seat with $800,000 spent between his campaign and his PAC. Ladra bets it goes up to $1 million before the primary is over. He seems like the kind of politician who might just be willing to throw money at anything. He might do the same thing with our tax dollars.

Baby Korge also has a robocall telling voters that a vote for Rivas Logan will not count. Don’t you believe it. The man who would be senator is lying through his teeth. That’s how much he wants to be a senator, dammit. Because he knows damn well that a vote for Ana Rivas Logan will count. That is why he has spent good money attacking her, too.

There are three candidates in the Democratic primary for Senate in district 40

The Democrat in Ladra’s house voted for Rivas Logan and we will argue that she didn’t have to campaign to win. Her name recognition alone had polls showing Ana beating both before she suspended the campaign and their negative back and forth could help her rise above it all.

Read related story: Senate 40 race: Ana Rivas Logan still in it, could win it

But, yes, Ladra is scared that Rivas Logan didn’t do enough and Korge — with his mailbox fetish and TV ads and fear-inducing robocall — could take the crown. Is this how Korge will treat elected office? Will he lie and cheat and bribe his way to success there? The end justifies the means?

He’s going to be insufferable for sure.

It’s almost enough to make Ladra support Frank Artiles, the state rep who is running against whatever Democrat wins in November.

So, if you’re a Democrat in District 40, please vote for Rivas Logan or Bullard. Don’t make Artiles the lesser of two evils.

There may be an upset in the race for Miami-Dade School Board District 1, which encompasses Miami Gardens, Carol City and North Miami.

The race for District 7 is pretty much sewn up. Unfortunately, Aster Bato Mohammed is no match for Lubby Navarro, the school board lobbyist appointed by Gov. Rick Scott two years ago to fill the position vacated by Carlos Curbelo‘s run for Congress.

But incumbent Miami-Dade School Board Member Wilbert “Tee” Holloway is facing a real, live challenge, not from former State Rep. James Bush III — who has barely campaigned — but from Steve Gallon III, a former principal at Northwestern Senior High with considerable community support and a thicker campaign wallet, despite some controversy.

Gallon has raised more than Holloway, with almost $93,000 reported as of Aug. 25. He has spent all but about $10K of that with more than $81,000 in expenditures. That’s more than the total of what Holloway has reported raising ($76,000) in the same time period. But the incumbent has spent about $55,000, so he has twice as much left as Gallon.

Many think Holloway, who recently retired from his job at AT&T, should retire from the school board also. Not because he is 68, but because he has been there for nearly a decade. Like Navarro, he was appointed by then Gov. Charlie Crist when he was termed out of the Florida House in 2007 to fill the seat of Robert Ingram, who had died. Holloway easily beat a half-hearted challenge in 2008 and was re-elected unopposed in 2012.

Gallon, 47, was a teacher and then became principal at Holmes Elementary, taking that school off the critical list before he became principal at Northwestern Senior High. He served there for seven years — the longest tenure of any principal at that high school — and was promoted in 2005 to the district level department director for school operations and alternative education. In 2008, Gallon was picked to become superintendent of Plainfield Public Schools in central New Jersey. But that ended in controversy two years later after he was arrested for allegedly using a false address to enroll his godsons in school. The charges were dismissed — but only after Gallon agreed to never seek work in New Jersey schools again.

He came back to Miami-Dade to start an education consulting company and his work with some local charter schools with financial troubles became part of a state ethics investigation. But, in the end, Gallon was not found to have violated any rules.

He says controversies have been overblown and that they overshadow his accomplishments, such as the creation of new high schools and improving school safety. “My life and my career and my legacy is far more than a snippet of a few years — not actually a few years, a moment of time — in Plainsfield, New Jersey,” he told the Miami Herald.

And while Holloway has the endorsement of the teachers’ union (most likely because he’s the incumbent and they got a raise this year), Gallon has the support of AFSCME and some of the district’s most notable community leaders — Betty Ferguson and T. Willard Fair — who black voters actually listen to.

Maybe that’s because he has five or six school with consistent Fs in his district year after year. He’s had time to fix it and hasn’t been able to move the needle forward. But he points to improved graduation rates in the district, the opening of new schools, more contracts with minority-owned vendors and the reform the student suspension policy as achievements.

This race took a nasty turn earlier this month when Holloway — who was chairman of the James E. Scott Community Association (JESCA) when it filed for bankruptcy in 2009 — threw his vice chairman, Larry Handfield, under the bus came under the microscope. The nonprofit was one of the largest social service agencies in the U.S., providing educational and support services for children, at-risk youth and elderly residents in some of the 305’s poorest neighborhoods. Holloway said he was only at JESCA “in name only” and didn’t handle finances.

Records and history show that it was Handfield who alerted the county about JESCA’s spending of federal and county funds — funds earmarked for programming and services — on administrative salaries and operational costs (read: executive perks).  This mess is arguably what cost former Miami-Dade Commissioner Dorrin Rolle, who was a $200,000-a-year president at JESCA, his elected office in 2010.

It’s possible that it just took a little longer to claim Holloway.