Mayor’s race is as over already as the no-show debate

• Tweet
• Sumo

• Tweet

The first real Miami-Dade mayor’s race debate, hosted by the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Association Monday night, was sooooo booooring, that the real story is not about who was there – which is almost nobody – but about who was not there.

Most notably: Commission Chairman Joe Martinez, a mayoral candidate who now represents the district where most of the KFHA members live, and his alleged hand-picked successor, Miami-Dade Police Officer Manny Machado – the only real challengers in the only two races that really matter in Kendall.

But let’s not pick on them. Not a lot of voters went, either. Of the 74 people Ladra counted as the mayoral debate began after the two commission district debates (more on that later), 15 or so were family, friends and consultants with the Gimenez campaign, three were judicial candidates, nine were candidates in county races, one is the mayor, two were cops on duty, one was a Miami Herald reporter, another was a Miami Herald photographer, at least four were political operatives there with the candidates and one might have been a Martinez spy. Maybe. He might just be a guy who lives in the Chairman’s district and has photos of his events all over his facebook page because he gets out a lot.

That means that there were, maybe, 42 real people.

Whatever. The two people that counted the most didn’t show. And nobody expected that.

“I wonder what happened,” said Frank Cobo, a member of the KFHA PAC that gathered after the debate to deliberate on who they would endorse (and Ladra suspects it ain’t Martinez). And he couldn’t stop shaking his head.

“One of the major candidates in the county mayor’s race was not here and he’s a commissioner who represents my district,” Cobo said. “And one of the major candidates for that district seat was not here. And that’s sad because we need to ask them questions. How do we know their positions on issues that affect 2.2 million people?”

“I was very surprised he wasn’t here. It’s his turf,” Gimenez told me, referring to Martinez. “Well, it’s my turf, too. I’m mayor of Miami-Dade,” he added, with that attitude that he knows Ladra likes. He’s so relaxed, the confidence oozes from him.

The debate was a non debate. Gimenez was the only one who made some sense and coherently answered all the questions — as far as I could tell, but I wasn’t listening too much because it didn’t matter. It was a no brainer given that he was sitting with the no-chance no-clue club: Disability access activist Denny Wood, who should stick to what he knows; self-published author and self-proclaimed economist Farid KHavari, who either hasn’t learned his lesson or likes to take a public beating; and Helen Williams, who was not a viable candidate in 2008 when she lost against former Mayor Carlos Alvarez, either. Sorry and with all due respect.

Martinez did not return my calls and texts about his absence. He normally does get back to me — eventually. Not this time. Maybe he will call me Tuesday. Maybe he got stuck in the rain and his phone battery died. His campaign manager, Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador — who is also running the race for the other no-show, Manny Machado — didn’t call or text me back, either. She normally doesn’t get back to me — unless it’s to threaten me with some choice obscenities thrown in. But she hasn’t even bothered to do that in a while. She is busy with other petty squabbles and getting her mother into a race with a former client who wouldn’t hire her (more on that later).

So the debate was very, howyousay, anticlimactic.

It was nice to see some old friends, of course. But Ladra is not the only one disappointed that Martinez and Machado didn’t show. Let’s face it, we all went to see them.

Local Republican Party activist and fellow political junkie Mercy Sabina extraordinaire said she had a question ready for the Chairman: “Mayor Gimenez cut his salary in half the day after he was elected. I was gong to ask him ‘Would you do the same thing as mayor?'”

Maybe Martinez wanted to avoid those kinds of questions. Maybe he got lost — the KFHA moved the debate from the regular location at 122nd Avenue to a park on 132nd. Maybe the deluge that descended right as the debate began kept him away.

But Gimenez made it. So did the no-chance, no-clue club that sat with him, God bless ’em. Commissioner Dennis Moss and his Norman Braman-funded challenger Alice Pena made it, although she didn’t look like she wanted to be there (well, in all honesty, none of them did). Former State Rep. Juan Zapata and young Marco Rubio-lookalike Javier Muñoz, both running for commission in District 11, made it.

And 42 non-attached voters.

So maybe it was another reason: Maybe Martinez knows he already lost.