The following is a letter written to one of the Miami Herald editorial board members by Michael Rosenberg and Rita Schwartz, co-founders of  the Pets’ Trust, after the paper’s Facebook live interview of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. With their permission, Political Cortadito is publishing it as an open letter to the entire editorial board.

“I don’t know if you and your fellow board members have watched the House Of Cards with Kevin Spacey, but if not….your interview with Carlos Gimenez was like an extension of that show, particularly when he spoke about the Pets’ Trust.  I have shared the Herald editorial video with several dozen people and they all commented on how visibly tense or annoyed he became when the words Pets’ Trust was brought up.

The Mayor loves to say about us “They just want to increase taxes and I’m not going to do it”.  He says that over and over no matter where he is (House of Cards!).  In 2012 when we first went to the Mayor and Commissioners about the idea of saving our animals, the economy was sinking, and there was no money. The only way to get the additional funds was to ask the community if they would agree to reach into their pockets to invest in our animals. The people of Miami Dade County said yes.  In 2014, 2015, and 2016 there was no need to ask for a tax hike. The property tax dollars were pouring in.   In 2015 over 250 Pets’ Trust supporters went to the County Commission meeting and 25 people spoke. NOT ONE ASKED FOR A TAX HIKE. They all said use the surplus to honor the vote. Watching the Mayor give you that same political answer, “they want to increase taxes,” is politics at its worse. He uses those words to dismiss the will of the people, rather than finding a way to honor the will of the people. He should not be our Mayor…EVER AGAIN!

During the interview he stated, “What do those Pets’ Trust people want?” I suppose you must believe he has been calling us day and night to find out that answer (House of Cards!). We have tried to meet with him for TWO YEARS! HE refuses to meet with us because facing the truth from those telling the truth is not something that is part of his make-up. He should be using us as an example of how democracy works. Of how people come together for a common cause. Rather, he denounces us publicly over and over.

How many more times do we have to hear him say and imply that that we are in it for the money!?!? He knows full well how those funds would be handled.

These slanderous charges are part of our lawsuit against him. The Mayor continues to tell the public that we are getting the money (House of Cards!).

We have written his office over and over and over demanding he stop saying this, or prove it. But, he doesn’t have to stop, and this shows us more than anything what kind of person and Mayor he is. When we hear this, we always ask for the proof.  What doesn’t exist can’t be found, but the Mayor keeps saying it. The bully pulpit is aptly named in this case!

You asked him if there was a personality clash. He denied it, but there most certainly is. The Mayor does not like to be challenged with persistence, determination and facts. Can you imagine the atmosphere he has created among the people that work for him, who wouldn’t dare challenge him for fear of losing their jobs? I once asked a police major how many more officers she needed in her district. She would not answer for fear that it would get back to the Mayor. Can you imagine how much better our County could be if we had a leader that respected his employees….and respected the voters, a mayor that implemented the will of the people. Well we don’t have that. We have a government of fear.

Soon you will make an endorsement. Your editorials in the past two years have practically BEGGED people from the community to run for office so fresh ideas could re-energize our thinking, our way of doing things. Take a look at your endorsements these past two years. Sometimes new people are simply not qualified and you endorse the same old same old….but sometimes new blood stands out with character ideas so refreshing that it would be a sin to not have them as our leaders.

The people of the Pets’ Trust have watched Carlos Gimenez up front and personal for four years. He lied to us. He slandered us. He missed an incredible opportunity of using our example to inspire people to become involved.

If the Miami Herald were to endorse a person like that, it would suggest business as usual is okay, and that the change you speak of so often and eloquently  for our community, will be delayed again.

In other words, the House of Cards continues to grow, and the people grow more and more distant from participating in government.  Forty years of public service is enough. We need new and younger people with bold ideas.

I read that in the Miami Herald.

Michael Rosenberg and Rita Schwartz, co founders of the Pets’ Trust.

Michael Rosenberg spent time in a cage to call attention to the plight of our animals.

As the election gets closer, Carlos Gimenez and those friends and family who benefit from his elected office have gotten more desperate in their attempt to hang on to power and the goose that lays the golden egg.

First, they say that she was against police body cameras. False. Regalado simply said that there needed to be a policy and standard operating procedures in place first. She testified to this in Tallahassee, as a leader should, urging for a uniform policy to guide departments. This month, she was vindicated when a study by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights raised concerns about departments that rush to use body cameras without any policies or standard operating procedures.

Then, they say that she has been late or missed a bunch of school board meetings. Wrong again. She doesn’t always go to the proclamations and awards given out for the first hour or so, but Raquel Regalado has probably introduced more legislation than any other school board member in the history of the school board. You don’t do that by missing meetings. And anybody who knows her knows that she is an absolute workaholic.

The next allegation is an even bolder lie, just as absentee ballots began to arrive: They say she committed fraud, claiming a Homestead Exemption on a home she did not reside in.

Last week, a blogger with malicious intent wrote about this false allegation that the Gimenez campaign had fed him. How do I know they fed him? Because three different reporters have admitted to me that they were provided with the same information. That’s standard for campaigns and not a surprise. We, too, have provided reporters with information given to us. Or did you think the Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks found out about Ralph Garcia Toledo and his $200-an-hour job at Water and Sewer all by himself?

Read related story: Raising money for the mayor; making money from his administration

The difference is, the information we provide to the media is true. I say “we” because I am officially on Team Raquel in a media and communications role. That means that when I get information or tips that I normally would write about on this blog, I instead try to get others to write about it in the mainstream media. Because I know the TV stations and the daily paper have a bigger audience. And that is part of my job on the campaign. Not writing about the campaign here, like some of the Gimenez apologists will charge. Recently, I have been forced to publish the information here because the election is getting closer and voters deserve to know. But everything I write and everything I forward to other reporters is true.

The mayor and Dotty Vazquez at his Hialeah campaign office in 2012. She now works in his office at County Hall as a county employee.

Like the fact that a well known boletera who helped Gimenez in 2012 — an election in which his campaign was tainted with absentee ballot fraud — is now working in the mayor’s office as a $36,000-a-year aide doing public outreach in the senior centers,no less. Or that the mayor — who gave millions away in federal housing grants to the wrong people (wink, wink) — has proposed to pay the demanded refund to the U.S. Housing department by promising portions of future federal grants for several years. You know, after he’s no longer mayor we’ll get less federal housing money. And the concern that his cuts of domestic violence funding and police units could be rooted in a personal attitude toward women and relationships because of his own 2004 charge and his son’s charges of domestic violence.

Meanwhile, the information provided by the Gimenez campaign is false. Raquel Regalado is at every meeting or almost every meeting (maybe she missed one or two of them in six years, I don’t want to overstate). She is all for body cameras — done the right way. And she never committed any fraud. And that’s why none of the mainstream or legitimate media jumped on the story when they first got the property information, which was public.

In fact, it took the blogger several visits to the property appraiser to make this story happen. That’s right. It wasn’t a story, there was nothing there, until the blogger took comments made by Regalado out of context, cobbled together a story ignoring any facts that didn’t support his theory, and then got the appraiser to go after her three weeks before the election. When he was told that she didn’t have a property for them to lien, this blogger took it upon himself to inform the appraiser about a family home she got 10 percent of after her mother died, so they had something to move on. Maybe the media should start reporting on how this blogger set this whole thing in motion. What motivated him to cobble together this story out of comments taken out of context and bent to his hypothesis?

Once Raquel provides the complete documents, this will all be over.

Because it is ludicrous to believe that, as a sitting Miami-Dade School Board member, Raquel Regalado would intentionally cheat her own constituency for what? For a measly $2,000 or $2,500? Because the rest of it is interest and penalties. It is even more ridiculous to imagine that even if she had been evil enough to take advantage of the situation, she wouldn’t have taken care of it when she decided to run for mayor. What’s $2,500 to millionaire Norman Braman, her main donor?

It wasn’t taken care of because she didn’t even know about it. Fraud, ladies and gentlemen, needs intent. It is defined as the “intentional use of deceit, a trick or some dishonest means to deprive.” Key word: Intentional.

Yes, she moved out of her house and into a rented home. She was in the midst of a contentious divorce and her ex-husband had a claim on the house they had once shared. Meanwhile, the bank was foreclosing because she could not afford, as a newly-single mother, both the mortgage payments and her daughter’s autism therapy. It was not a difficult decision for her to make and any parent can understand. She abandoned the house so that her ex-husband would take up residence and possession of the home he had some rights to, as per the divorce settlement. He had every intention of moving into the home. When he didn’t, the foreclosure moved forward.

She never rented the house to anybody, as is the case with real Homestead exemption fraud cases. Nor did she claim another Homestead exemption on the new home, as other people committing fraud do. She didn’t stay and live in the house for free during the foreclosure. And, in fact, since she wasn’t paying the mortgage, she didn’t continue to pay the taxes on it. Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia said the property taxes for both years that Regalado didn’t live in the house were paid for by the mortgage company that took possession of the home. Foreclosure proceedings take time. Her name was still listed on the property but the home was no longer Raquel’s. The bills were paid by the bank.

So the oversight isn’t even hers! The mortgage company got the tax bill and paid it, failing to make the changes to indicate there was nobody living in the home anymore and that it was in the process of foreclosure.

See? There’s no there there. But you can’t fit all that on a robo call.

Curiously, before Raquel could clear things up, the Gimenez campaign already had their own robo call out to voters using the word fraud three times. It went out immediately after the story — like it had already been written and edited and approved and produced. Paid for by some Committee for Integrity — yeah, right — that is unlisted as a PAC or ECO, probably a non-profit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors. Astute political observers might surmise that the robo call — and the whole story and complaint to begin with — are part of the long planned political strategy mapped out by the Gimenez team against the only real challenge they’ve had in five years.

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

Miami Lakes Councilman Manny Cid scored another young GOP VIP — possibly the Holy Grail of 305 GOP endorsements — when Sen. Marco Rubio recorded a robocall for his mayoral bid.

“The 2016 election cycle is about the future,” Rubio says after identifying himself. “Not only the future of our great nation but the future of many municipalities here in Florida. And one leader that represents the same vision as I have is Manny Cid.

“He is a true conservative leader who believes in cutting red tape and wasteful spending. He’s a proven reformer who will serve Miami Lakes residents well as their mayor.”

Cid is running against incumbent Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi and founding mayor Wayne Slaton.

Read related story: Young GOP VIPs back Manny Cid for Miami Lakes mayor

“Senator Rubio and I share similar values and visions for the future. Having him in my corner means a lot to our efforts to bring ew leadership to Miami Lakes,” said Cid, who worked as a legislative aid for former State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez when Rubio was House Speaker.

“I was fortunate to work on one of the 100 ideas for Florida’s future. These types of ideas and reforms have inspired me to promote transparency and accessibility at Town Hall,” Cid told Ladra.

And, of course, that he’s “honored to have his support.”

Pero, por supuesto! Here’s a one-time and future presidential hopeful, the guy who came in No. 3 this year, endorsing little Manny Cid in a municipal race with less than 20,000 registered voters. It’s such a coup that Cid uploaded the recording to YouTube. You know, for people who miss Marco’s call or don’t live in Miami Lakes and just like to hear his voice (don’t judge me). 

Rubio is running his own re-election campaign and has come out to endorse very few candidates. In fact, in addition to , Ladra can only remember him coming out publicly for one other Republican on the ballot: Donald Trump.

In the District 40 Senate primary, trust fund baby Andrew Korge has sent the single Democrat voter in Ladra’s household 12 mailers in the past couple weeks. That’s more than all the other candidates on my ballot — combined.

It’s gotta be some kind of record.

Korge, who is running against incumbent Sen. Dwight Bullard and former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan (like it or not) in the Aug. 30 election, is the richest of the three candidates by far, with a $700,000 war chest amassed. 

It’s no wonder he has sent 12 mailers. He has money to burn. Whoever is doing those mailers for him is going to have a good year.

Read related story: Andrew Korge PAC attacks Bullard finances in mailer

Five of those mailers have been negative attacks. Two attacks in both Spanish and English against Bullard, for campaign finance violations and campaign spending. And one in just Spanish attacking Logan. Because he knows where he’s weak.

The other seven are positive, and two of them are in both Spanish and English. They talk about creating jobs and raising the minimum wage and “protecting Democrat values” and improving our public schools. But the most important part, for the campaign, are the pictures of Korge with both Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

In fact, it’s not enough that Korge has Democrat photo ops. One mailer promotes his “Democrat roots” with vintage pics of his grandfather George Korge with former super blue Congressman Dante Fascell, for whom grampa was campaign treasurer. You have to appreciate the old timey album feel of the photos with corner sleeves. There’s even one of Kid Korge as a 3-year-old wearing a Fascell shirt at one of the legislator’s famous Labor Day picnics. 

Why’d he skip a generation? Ladra is sure there are pics of Papi Chris Korge with all these Democrats and then some. Could it be because Chris Korge made all his money in the sweet concession deals at Miami International Airport that he got during the Alex Penelas days?

Read related story: Alex Penelas crowd hosts Andrew Korge Senate kick-off

All but two of the mailers — one positive piece and the hit piece on Rivas Logan — were paid for by the political action committee Friends of Andrew Korge. The PAC had raised a total of $385,129 as of the end of July and still had $217,940 to spend. But, while it looks like he has spent at least $87,000 on TV commercials, none of the expenses so far account for the intense mailbox activity. It must be coming in the next report. The candidate’s own campaign account also listed zero mailers under expenditures and it only had $90,442 of the $343,516 raised.

But there’s another campaign finance report coming soon. Korge will likely spend $1 million before the Aug. 30 primary. His opponents have a fraction of that. Bullard has less than half of the $126,883 he raised as of July 29. And Rivas Logan, who has suspended her campaign, had less than $10K of the $17,500 she raised.

Ladra doubts her mailbox will be seeing anything from either of them — but more from Korge.

Whoever wins this contest, will have to go up in November against State Rep. Frank Artiles, who now wants to be a senator. Artiles has $251,428 left of the $411,893 he raised. Plus he has access to multiple PACs and will likely get help from the Republican Party of Florida to win a seat they so desperately want to flip.

 And while he doesn’t have a primary opponent, Artiles has already sent two mailers from his campaign.

Did you hear the one about the mayor’s campaign consultant working a side gig for a casino giant? No, there’s no punchline. Because it’s no joke.

Up until just a few months ago, Jesse Manzano-Plaza – Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez‘s political strategist, campaign spokesman and chief apologist — had been working for Resorts World and Genting, the Mayalasian New York partnership that wants to build a massive slot house in downtown Miami, for at least a year.

That’s right. That means he had both jobs at the same time.

Wouldn’t that be a classic example of a conflict of interests? The mayor is supposed to represent our best interests. So are his people, by extension. But one of his operatives represents the best interests of a casino giant that wants variances and land use changes so they can bring slots to Biscayne Bay. Or, well, he did until just the other day.

Original plans for the Genting massive casino on Biscayne Bay. Now they just want a big slot house.

In fact, we wouldn’t even have known about Jesse’s side job — and he would still be working for Genting today — if he hadn’t been forced to quit after his client sued the county (read: us taxpayers) to force the casino a few months ago. And how much you wanna bet his departure is just a leave of absence. There could be his job waiting for him after the election — if he wins.

And how many other clients does Manzano have that could take advantage of his connection to the mayor and the mayor’s leverage with commissioners? We just don’t know. He won’t say. He comes from the Carlos Curbelo school of secret lobbying clients because they used to work together.

Read related story: New purple spindoctor duo: Jesse Manzano & Ben Pollara

But he is also still a junior partner at LSN Partners with Marcelo Llorente and Alex Heckler. They lobbied for CH2M Hill, the engineering firm that won a $139-million contract and which put Ralph Garcia Toledo, the mayor’s BFF and former campaign driver, in a $200-an-hour job at the Water and Sewer Department — $672,000 billed to the county so far since December 2014 — for going to meetings and tracking the progress of certain projects.

Yes, I know. Time to break out the flowcharts. The conflicts of interests that stem from the mayor’s office are hard to track without flowcharts.

Manzano went on live Spanish-language radio in May after the Miami Herald exposed his lobbying job with Genting to defend himself. “Unfortunately, I have to make a living,” he said, trying to turn the tables by calling any attention to this obvious conflict a political attack. Because any criticism of him or Gimenez is a political attack, didn’t you know?

But Jesse admitted to having been a registered lobbyist for Genting from 2011 to 2015, when he last registered — which was nine days before getting his first paycheck from the mayor’s political committee. Since joining the mayor’s team, he said he’s only worked as a “communications consultant” for Genting. Yeah, that’s lobbying with a different name. He was communicating with Gimenez in an advocacy role and consulting Genting on how to get the mayor on their side.

Like with $60,000 in campaign donations from Genting and the Capo Group, which owns the Genting resort in Bimini. That’s a good start.

“I am not registered as a lobbyist for the company,” Manzano said in the interview with Roberto Rodriguez-Tejera. “I haven’t been since last year. Precisely to avoid whatever perception that could create.”

Read related story: Jesse Manzano and Carlos Gimenez, together again for 2016

Perception? Perception, bruh? The reality still is that someone close to the mayor and working to re-elect him to office is also and simultaneously working to seek concessions — whether as a lobbyist or as a consultant or as a publicist — for his client, a casino giant that needs access and favors from politicians.

How is this a conflict? Well, are we to believe that Jesse didn’t know about the lawsuit coming against the county?  Because that seems far-fetched. More likely is a scenario in which Genting sought Manzano’s advice on handling public opinion and what in the business is called “crisis management.” It is also likely that Manzano’s very insight into and access to Carlos Gimenez was pivotal to his role. Or is somebody going to tell us that Jesse, knowing Gimenez and having daily contact, didn’t give Genting the best possible work product he could? Or did he warn the mayor about the lawsuit?

But the problem really isn’t Manzano. The problem is Gimenez. Because this is a pattern with Carlos Gimenez. The people closest to him have ties to county vendors and developers with big plans to take advantage of us. It is so commonplace and expected now that people regularly refer to these inside deals as the mayor’s friends and family plan.

• His lobbyist son works for Donald Trump at the same time as Gimenez wants to give the millionaire presidential candidate a public golf course.
• The company that employs his other son gets a $4 million no-bid contract to re-roof the Adrienne Arsht Center after a leak
• His daughter-in-law Barby lands a job (wink, wink, nod) with another subcontractor for “public outreach” on the same multi-million water and sewer project mandated by federal and state courts.
• His in-laws get multiple no-bid contracts for multi-million dollar construction projects at the airport and elsewhere
• His best friend and campaign finance chair gets a juicy $200-an-hour post for mostly “clerical work,” by his own admission, and has billed the county more than $672,000 in 18 months.
• And now we know his campaign consultant is paid by the casino giant that wants to bulldoze its way onto Biscayne Boulevard. Or was paid until the other day. And will be paid again.

Why do I feel like Ladra’s forgetting someone? This is one of the reasons why the public has lost faith in local government. Because of insider deals and conflicts of interests that erode our trust.

And if Carlos Gimenez is the king of the sweet insider deal, and he is, Jesse Manzano is the court jester. He’s the clever entertainer, or “licensed fool,” used by the king to distract the commonfolk (read: us voters) with magic, storytelling and sleight of hand. That’s what he does when he serves as the mayor’s mouthpiece, which is a lot lately.

Jesse is the one who represents the mayor in public forums (county spokesman Mike Hernandez can only work on campaign stuff in secret, not out in the open). Gimenez nunca da la cara. He is afraid to debate or even face Raquel Regalado, his only real and viable challenger, even on air at separate times. So he always sends Jesse or Mike (who has also consulted for private companies and now wants to be head of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, God save us), to respond and speak for him. This week, Manzano has gone on the radio and Spanish-language TV to attack Regalado and defend his boss. After all, Genting is not going to get anything out of Raquel! So Manzano is using a poorly researched and possibly libelous blog post that he planted the seeds of to malign the only real challenge to his ace in the hole for Genting and CH2M Hill and whatever other clients he may have that we don’t know about because they haven’t sued the county yet. He is really only doing his job.

The only question is, which job and for whom?