Both the Democrats in the primary race for the seat in State House district 115 are similar in that both are well-liked gringos, perennial candidates who have run before and who are running wholly positive campaigns. In fact, some people who know them both are having a hard time making a choice.

But if the end game is to take out Republican State Rep. Michael Bileca and flipping the seat to blue, then Ross Hancock presents the better odds.

First, let’s look at just the numbers.

Both Hancock and Pinecrest chiropractor Jeffrey Solomon have run against GOP incumbents, but in 2012, Hancock came closer to beating Erik Fresen (lost 51 to 49%) than Solomon got to beating Bileca (lost 53 to 47%). And, even more importantly, he did it with far less money. Hancock had $8,230 to Fresen’s $265,800. Solomon spent $75,000 to Bileca’s $523,000.

Read related story: Perennial candidates may face off in House 115 Dem primary

Also, if Bileca beat Solomon in a year when Obama topped the ticket, there is no reason to think he can’t beat him again when Hillary is expected to cause less excitement among Democrats.

Hancock, meanwhile, may have additional appeal:

• He put his money where his mouth is this time, loaning himself $100,000 to get his message out. He was able to afford a giant billboard on U.S. 1 at 104th Street right on top of the Keg South in Pinecrest which he has secured through the general election (two million sets of eyes a day!) and still has more than $80,000 left. Solomon has loaned himself $5,300 and raised $18,500, but he has spent almost $18,000 so he only has $6,000 left.
• Hancock speaks Spanish, almost fluently. Hancock has been taking Spanish lessons for almost a year now. He wanted to be able to speak to the Hispanic voters in their language. He was on Buenos Dias Miami, Tomas Garcia Fuste’s Mira TV show, Saturday morning.
• He was once a registered independent. One of his yard signs — Hancock has two versions — states “declare your independence,” and he plans to appeal directly to these voters in the general. This could also attract Republican voters who may not be happy with their presidential nominee.
• He has a lot of influential endorsements. And that can translate into a lot of votes. The United Teachers of Dade endorsement pulls teachers and their families and people who think education is important. Ditto for the United Faculty of Miami-Dade. The SAVE endorsement pulls the gay vote and their families. The AFL-CIO endorsement pulls public employees and their families.

But don’t take my word for it. Go to the website for each candidate. If you look at even just the about page, you will see a huge difference. Solomon’s entire page is dedicated to how he has developed his professional career as a sports medicine celebrity. One almost gets the feeling this election presents another professional opportunity. Hancock’s is more about his dedication to environmental causes and his family.

Ladra also saw Hancock turn a Republican voter right in front of my eyes in the parking lot at the Coral Reef Library over the weekend. Well, actually, the Palmetto Bay voter was uncommitted — until Hancock told her about Bileca’s votes on open campus carry and fracking laws. Now, she’s voting for him. She even took a yard sign home!

And those signs! In all her years covering campaigns and elections, Ladra has never seen such a great sign, which is basically a photo of Hancock, paddling through the Everglades in a kayak he built out of mahogany marine plywood.

He built his own kayak! If that doesn’t scream Tallahassee I don’t know what does.

Miami-Dade Police were called to the Coral Reef Library during early voting Sunday after trust fund baby Andrew Korge allegedly harassed one of the campaign poll workers stumping for former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan and ripped palm cards out of her hands.

Yes, Ana Rivas Logan is still in the race. She only suspended campaigning but the more Korge bullied her — sending others to ask her to formally withdraw, then sending two negative mailers to Democrat primary voters likening her to Donald Trump and Rick Scott and following up with a robocall telling voters that a vote for Rivas Logan will not count — the more resolved she became to resume the campaign, albeit just with some poll workers at early voting. After all, that’s all she really needs.

And that must have pissed Korge off.

“He walks up very fast to me and starts yelling, ‘Hey! She’s not running. You are a liar,’” said the woman wearing a white t-shirt with the word “DEMOCRAT” emblazoned across the top in blue. She was passing out palm cards for Rivas Logan and no other candidate. “He ripped the palm card out of a voter’s hand and threw it on the floor. He was telling the voters that their votes for Ana were not going to count.”

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

Korge could not be reached for comment. Ladra messaged him on Facebook, sent him an email and called two telephone numbers associated with his campaign, but got no call back. I wanted to get his side of the story. I mean, he even took photos and could have a video of the encounter.

“He was following me around with his phone like this,” the woman said, holding her phone right up to Ladra’s face and reminding me a lot of the harassment from Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez via Glenn Rice in Hialeah.

“He was harassing me. He was yelling, ‘Who’s paying you?  Who’s hiring you?’ He got in front of me so I couldn’t pass cards to voters,” the woman said. She wouldn’t give me her name. She wouldn’t let me take a photo of her.

“When he was leaving, he was on the phone telling someone else to come down here and he was giving them my description — everything I was wearing down to my hat,” the woman said. “I don’t know. Anyone is capable of doing anything. He has a lot of money. Maybe I get hit by a car when I leave here.”

Rivas Logan got a text just before noon that one of her campaign workers was being harassed. “When I got there the woman was shaking,” the candidate said. Police were called to write a report but the woman didn’t even want to give them her address. “She’s so scared this man will show up at her house.”

Police wrote it up as a dispute. Nobody was arrested.

But Rivas Logan said she has talked to an attorney about filing a lawsuit or complaint for interfering in a campaign. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time. Korge is already under investigation for having allegedly tried to bribe Sen. Dwight Bullard out of the race with $25,000.

One might think he’d be trying to fly under the radar and not draw law enforcement attention.

For all his exaggerated experience as a manager and fiscal expert, it’s ironic (and somewhat funny) that Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez would pay his re-election qualifying fee with a bad check.

That’s right. His original check was no good; it was back dated more than a year. The mayor was allowed to correct this with a “replacement check” — and yet nobody asks if this doesn’t render him unqualified to run our county’s $7 billion budget. Imagine that!

Gimenez, or whoever writes and/or signs his campaign checks for him, intended to qualify for the race on June 17. That’s when he presented his qualifying documents — a sworn oath, his financial disclosure with a net worth of $1.5 million — along with a check for the $1,800 fee. Only it was dated June 10, 2015 — more than a whole year earlier. Is he living in the past, or what? Someone at Elections must have noticed this before it went to the bank because they called and notified his campaign that the check would likely not be honored — you know, banks have a thing about checks that are older than 90 or 180 or 365 days — and that they needed a new check with a more recent date if the incumbent wanted to qualify.

It was like a “Head’s up!”

The deadline to qualify was at noon the next day. But, apparently, Gimenez couldn’t wait. Who knows? Maybe he was playing golf that morning. Because someone delivered the check right after 10:20 p.m. the night of the 20th, according to a stamp on a copy of the replacement check at the Elections Department.

That’s right, again! His second check was time stamped at 10:20-something p.m. You can’t really see all of the last digit on the time stamp, but it looks like a 1, like 10:21 p.m.

Deputy Elections Supervisor Carolina Lopez told Ladra that the same head’s up would have been given to anyone who writes a year-old check, even though nobody did. She also said that nobody had to come in on overtime just for the mayor. The office was already open and employees were already working to file qualifying documents online late into the night, Lopez explained. She said they would accept a check or missing qualifying documents from anyone, not just their boss, if someone came in the middle of the night.

That’s the time they are doing their quality control, Lopez said. Any and all candidates are notified when a deficiency is found. Usually, it’s a notarization issue. The document isn’t notarized or the notary commission is expired. Other times they forget to sign the oath or they sign the wrong oath for the wrong office.

“I dealt with many a candidate after 5 o’clock,” said Lopez, who is, indeed, extremely responsive after business hours and who reminded me that there were about 600 candidates on the ballot when you include all the party committee people.

Okay, I didn’t check 600 of them. But a cursory review of time stamps on dozens of other candidate qualifying checks — from judicial races to community council wannabes — shows that they all presented payment during business hours. Only Gimenez got a time stamp on his check after 5 p.m. Waaaaay after 5 p.m. What does that say about his ability to manage a $7 billion budget? What if he mistakenly backdates a grant application or something? Or doesn’t complete the paperwork on time?

Ladra is being sarcastic. Because obviously the competent Miami-Dade employees will take care of it. Proven by the eagle-eyed staffer at the elections department who noticed the backdated check and took care of the mayor’s mistake. So, at best it’s a sign that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. At worst, it could be an abuse of power. Because Ladra can’t understand why Lopez wouldn’t tell anybody who might be given a head’s up to please come in the next day. After all, we are busy working late into the night with the paperwork we already have! Even if there were a dozen employees there in some back room filing paperwork, the front door to the Doral Elections office wasn’t unlocked, was it? Someone had to call to get inside. The intake window wasn’t manned. Someone had to stop what they were doing to get the mayor’s new check right before 10:30 p.m.

“We do not provide any preferential treatment to anybody,” Lopez told Ladra, and I can understand why she might be upset at my doubts but it’s not about her. “Most of my calls are after 5 p.m. because that is when I have a chance to review the files,” she said. “In order to give our candidates the proper level of service, I give them every opportunity and entertain many calls after 5 p.m. I’m on 24 hours a day.”

Well, if this is a privilege allowed to everyone, I urge candidates in the next election cycle to beat the rush and go in the middle of the night on the eve before the deadline. Call Carolina. She’ll open the door for you.

The issue has become more relevant now because, even if there was no abuse of power, there is certainly a double standard being applied here when the mayor refuses to instruct the elections supervisor to start counting 127,000-plus petitions from voters who want campaign finance reform. A delay in verifying the signatures could mean the measure is not on the November ballot and the activists have sued the county to make it happen.

So maybe Gimenez is simply selfish. He moved hell and high water to make sure he was on the ballot to keep his gravy train seat but he won’t lift a finger to get the campaign reform measure requested by more than 127,000 voters on the ballot. Because he doesn’t represent them. He only represents himself.

By the way, that is more votes than he got for mayor in 2012.

But Gimenez is not known for sticking to process, is he? Look at what happened with the Liberty Square Rising redevelopment bid and the water and sewer infrastructure bid and a number of other business contracts in which he has impacted (read: meddled in) the process. Why wouldn’t he violate the process to keep his job? He has a history of thinking the rules don’t apply to him.

This should be investigated. The State Attorney’s Office and the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust should ask for video tape from the cameras in the lobby and sworn statements from everybody involved in procuring or receiving the replacement check, including whoever wrote the receipt for the second check and corrected the date from the 21st to the 20th. Because the first date hand-written on the receipt for the check was June 21 and the 1 was changed to a 0.

So did the mayor even qualify on time? When was that exactly? Did he get the replacement check in at 10:21 p.m. on the 20th, as indicated by the time stamp, or on the 21st, as indicated in the hand-written receipt? An investigation would end any speculation about what happened.

Because, at worst, Carlos Gimenez used his position to get an unfair advantage in the electoral process. And, at best, he doesn’t know how to write a check.

Voters deserve to know which it is.

After trust fund baby Andrew “Kid” Korge jumped into another Senate race, the common political thought was that Sen. Anitere Flores had nothing to worry about. In fact, we thought Korge jumped because polls showed him she had nothing to worry about. Now with Korge and his attack money out, everyone thought Flores would coast.

But she is campaigning like she never has. Flores is spending money on bus benches and TV ad buys — her first TV commercial aired this week — and driving regularly to the Florida Keys and securing endorsements from almost every group of firefighters there is.

Does she actually think she has a race?

Read related story: Public employees labor union backs three GOP legislators

Flores faces some unknown Democrat named Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who filed right before the deadline. Mucarsel. Mucus (moco) plus carcel (jail). Debbie “Boogerjail.” La pobre. She’s a fundraiser for Florida International University who is just as pretty as the senator and who has raised a respectable-for-a-newby $66,230. She’s only had to spend $4,000 because the Florida Democratic Party has provided in-kind consulting and research worth $46,000.

This is one of the seats they’re desperate to flip, because it’s in a newly redrawn district that President Barack Obama won by five points in 2012. It might be slightly more red, but it appears that the independent voters will make the difference.

So the senator is sweating it.

Flores, who has raised close to $1 million ($946,243) since 2013, has spent a quarter million of it just since June 25. That includes $113,000 on media buys and $62,000 on outdoor advertising (like bus benches and/or billboards) in the same six weeks. Ladra saw the first TV ad over the weekend. And she has about $343,000 left to spend. She also has about $400,000 left in her PAC, Floridians for Strong Leadership.

Read related story: Senate 39’s Andrew Korge vs. Anitere Flores gets ugly fast

And she’s all over the place herself. Saturday she was distributing backpacks in Homestead. Monday she was visiting Wesley House in Key West, which provides services to foster and adoptive families. She’s taken several trips to the Keys, which is a new constituency for her and she seems to be courting them.

So even Korgeless, it looks like there might still be a race in District 39. Or at least Flores is treating it like one.