Where does Rolando really live? A new case of Miami’s political address dance?

District 3 commission candidate moved around a lot
It’s campaign season in Miami, when voters just have to trust the candidates really live in their district.
This time, we have Rolando Escalona, a restaurant manager and a real estate broker turned political hopeful running for Miami city commission in District 3, who is raising questions about his residency. Escalona says he’s been living in a modest apartment on SW 1st Street for more than a year, which is just in time for him to qualify for this election cycle. But public records suggest he may have a more comfortable setup somewhere else entirely — in a home that just so happens to be in District 4.
According to his candidate qualifying paperwork, Escalona swore under oath that he has been living at the apartment at 700 SW First Street apartment since June of 2024. In mortgage documents signed with his wife, he lists a completely different address — a duplex at 128 NW 26th Ave. His broker’s license is there. His business address is there.
Sine 2019, he has lived at five different addresses in the city.
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It’s natural for one to think that Escalona is pulling a page straight out of the Miami political playbook — the one where you rent an address just long enough to run for office. It’s the kind of “clerical inconsistency” that voters in Miami know too well.
Commissioner Joe Carollo, got dragged through a court fight over whether he actually lived in District 3 or in his small mansion in Coconut Grove when he ran in 2017. He moved back to the house on Morris Lane after it was carved into D3 during redistricting. But it doesn’t matter anymore since he is termed out and running for mayor now. And Alex Díaz de la Portilla, who is also running for mayor, also faced questions about his residency — nobody believes he lived in a 2-bedroom apartment with his brother, his brother’s partner and their child — before his own spectacular fall from grace.
In Miami, it’s practically a political tradition: win the seat first, then figure out where you live.
But Escalona says he hasn’t danced the political address shuffle. He admits he lived in the duplex from January to June of 2024, and said he moved to stay and run in D3 after the property was carved out of during the redistricting process. He didn’t want to run in District 4. Much like the way Commissioner Miguel Gabela had to move to another property he owned after his home was carved out of District 1 months before the election in 2023.
The mortgage documents tell another story. Apparently, Escalona and his wife told the bank that they resided at the duplex when they went to refinance it earlier this year. That was May 19, when the candidate was supposed to be living in the First Street apartment. The mortgage states, under the section titled occupancy, that says “borrower must occupy, establish, and use the property as borrower’s principal residence within 60 days,” and that they also must stay there for a year afterwards. Mortgage rates are often lower for a principal residence than they are for an investment property.
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Escalona says he’s not committing mortgage fraud. He said his wife, who is pregnant with twins (and due around the runoff time), continued to live in the duplex with his mother until recently. That maintained occupancy.
“After watching the chaos and dysfunction at City Hall, I made a commitment to do something about it, which is why I both he property in question and it was in District 3,” Escalona told Ladra in a long-winded text. “With City Hall being caught doing new maps that favored incumbents and politicians, a new map was ordered to e drawn and later adopted by the city.
“Given this change beyond my control, and my commitment to bring change to City Hall, my family and I made the decision that I would move into the new district. My wife stayed behind with my mother to tend to her and our property, while I stayed focused on my promise to do something to end the dysfunction in City Hall. In the beginning of this year, I decided to refinance the property as my wife was still living there with my mother. This is perfectly acceptably as per Fannie Mae guidelines.
“My home is not rented and is not an income-producing property,” he said. “As the year progressed, y wife decided to join me in our apartment in Little Havana as we welcomed the news that she was pregnant.”
Rolando Escalona at Easter with his wife and mother.
The rest of Escalona’s story fits the Miami mold: He came from Cuba as a young man 11 years ago and worked his way up through the hospitality business, from busboy at a ceviche place to general manager at the trendy Sexy Fish. In the meantime, he also earned a degree in political science and international relations, of course, from Florida International University, got a broker’s license, opened up his own corporation, EscalonaGroup, LLC, and bought a duplex in West Little Havana. Miami’s American Dream.
The broker’s license and the business use the address at 128 NW 26th Ave., which he and his wife, Astrid Carolina Gonzalez Nieto, bought for $800,000 in January 2024. They do not claim any homestead exemption there. But Gonzalez does claim both homestead exemptions and the Save our Homes exemption on a house she has owned at 9625 Nw 36th Avenue since 2021.
He is a sleeper candidate in the D3 race, where Joe Carollo is leaving, running against the commissioner’s baby brother, Frank Carollo, who had the seat from 2009 to 2017, and five of other wannabes, including Brenda Betancourt, the president of the Calle 8 Inter-American Chamber of Commerce, Denise Galvez Turros — a marketing professional who ran for office in 2017  and lost — and Rob Piper, who formed the political action committee that tired to recall Carollo in 2020. There are a couple of others, but they are not going to get much traction.
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Escalona has a lot of support from the same circles at mayoral candidate Emilio Gonzalez, the former city manager who sued to get the election back on this year. And he has raised almost $49,000 by the end of June, according to his campaign finance reports. That’s the second biggest bank after Frank Carollo. Of that, he loaned himself $5,000. Lobbyist Manny Prieguez, a former state rep who has backed both Gabela and Alex Díaz de la Portilla in District 1, bundled five checks for $1,000 each. And Escalona got $3,000 from Little Havana businessmen Bill Fuller and Martin Pinilla, who won a federal First Amendment lawsuit against Joe Carollo in 2023. There’s likely more to come there.
He also got two contributions from his wife. It doesn’t go over the $1,000 limit (except by $4.48, and that has to be a typo), but it was in two different checks four days apart with two different names — Astrid Gonzalez and Astrid Escalona — with two different addresses, according to the campaign finance reports.
Maybe Escalona’s wife doesn’t even know where they live.
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