One of the people watching the elections and the absentee ballot scandal in Hialeah with interest is former Miami-Dade Commissioner Natacha Seijas, who was recalled along with former Mayor Carlos Alvarez last year in an manipulated political maneuver piloted by a billionaire car dealer that wants to control the commission (more on that later) and a gypsy con artist with no ethical backbone.
And Ladra happens to think it’s the best thing that ever happened to her.
Maybe Norman Braman and Vanessa Brito inadvertently even saved Seijas life. The woman looks amazing after she’s lost about 80 pounds and about 20 years from her 75-year-old face, which is smiling all the time. She has such a great disposition you would think she’s in love. She is a new woman, I tell you. She should have been recalled years ago.
She says she is saddened and sickened, really, with the thievery of votes from the most vulnerable victims — frail and confused elderly residents. And while Ladra can’t help but think Seijas benefited from the AB operations as some point — since this is Hialeah and it’s been going on for decades — I’m not sure she ever really participated in her own drive. I mean, she never really needed it since she always won with an overwhelming margin. And AB get-out-the-vote campaigns are for marginal candidates. Anyway, 
one can’t help but notice that while she may be saddened and sickened by the whole disgusting affair, she’s also “lovin’ it” a little bit — so to speak. Seijas is definitely feeling a little vindication these days (Ladra knows the feeling, sister) as some of the people who stabbed her in the back and took her down for their own ambitious greed and/or envy are getting embroiled in the AB scandal that promises to keep dropping them dominoes. And she’s probably smiling because them dominoes include her recall replacement and former friend and protegé, Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban “Stevie El Bobo” Bovo, who wielded the biggest knife last year.
Just look at that face. Does that say “told ya so” or what? And Ladra has it on very good word that former Mayor Alvarez, the other recall victim, is giggling a lot these days, too. But I don’t know if Alvarez wears it on his sleeve — er, I mean head.
Seijas showed up to vote at JFK on Friday during the early voting last week and got invited to come back the next day for free paella and granizados, courtesy of Miami-Dade School Board Member and former State Rep. Renier Diaz de la Portill
a, who is running for state rep again in seat 103 now and just has to up the ante every day. They’re DLPs. That’s what the do. Though nothing beat the fire truck with the jingle coming out of the speakers. Not even the people from the other campaigns coming over to drink cherry granizados and eat the delicious paella.
Saturday, she wore a cap on her head that seemed to send a message to all the haters and back-stabbers. It’s a McDonald’s cap I think, though I doubt by the look of her that she’s having any super-sized meals there. She’s having salads.
“I’m loving’ it,” the hat proclaimed. “It’s a little funny,” Seijas told me, adding “what I love is that I’m not in the middle of it.
“But it’s a very sad, too. These people are taking advantage of people who don’t even know who they are voting for. It’s not just the elderly and sick, it’s people who don’t have the educational level to know they are being taken advantage of and that their vote is being stolen.”
The woman even has the sense of humor to pose for not one but three photos for Ladra. That’s class. That’s also the sign of someone with nothing to hide. Seijas, by the way, has never shied away from Ladra or refused to take my calls, unlike some people (read: Bovo) even if she does reserve the right to not answer some questions. I can respect that. She is extremely polite, even though she doesn’t like it when I mention her name in a post that is not about her and will likely be a little unhappy, at least at first, that I’ve gone on and on and on about her now in a post all her own. She probably thought it’d be a photo in another post and that was that.
But the transformation the commissioner has gone through is something that is worth writing about.
“We have been enjoying life much more now that we’re not in political life,” said Terry Murphy, her one time office administrator. Notice the plural? He’s getting his doctorate in public administration from FIU. “She’s spending more time with her family. She’s taking time for herself.
“And people are getting to see her as she really is and realize she was a good public servant and did contribute to he political life in Dade County,” Murphy said.
In other words, she is so much less of the monster Brito made her out to be. The perception is shattered.
Murphy also said that Seijas would be the first to blast this AB manipulation from the dais. “If she was there, she’d be putting legislation forward to put a stop to this once and for all,” Murphy said.
Seijas told me herself that she would. “I commend Commissioner [Rebeca] Sosa for having put a penalty in it last year. But more is needed,” she said, referring to the amendment to the county ordinance adding 60 days in jail or $1,000 fine for anyone caught with more than two ballots — but Ladra wonders how that is going to apply to Daisy Cabrera, the boletera caught with 31 ballots. Does she get 60 days times 29? Does she get a $29,000 fine? She should.
The recalled commissioner said, however, that the reform has to be done at the state level (and she’s right). And she’ll help however she can, even as a non-elected, she said. “If the unions get together and want to present something to the legislature, I will pay my way and fly to Tallahassee to bring it to them,” she said. “This has to stop.”
Well, Ladra says, why didn’t she stop it when she was there? Sure, I believe Murphy when he says that Seijas she never paid for her own AB operation. Not even in her toughest race against former Sen. Roberto Casas in 2000, in which pollster Dario Moreno had the commissioner down by 11 points.I believe him because she didn’t have to do it herself. So long as she was allies with former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina and State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, a former Hialeah Council and Bovo, who was a councilman and a state rep before he became her Judas. But mostly Robaina and his do-boy Hialeah Housing Authority Director Julio Ponce, because that is where the bulk of the ballot fraud goes on, public housing. And that’s why they keep building more and more of it (more on that later).
But she knew it was going on. A lot like Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez can’t deny that he knew the Hialeah endorsement would come with the absentee ballot machinery — and, indeed, perhaps what the malas lenguas say, is true, which is that his polls showed him closer than he has said and he wanted those ABs to cinch the win.
Maybe Seijas is a different person in more ways than one. Ladra sure hopes she continues to come out of her shell and raises her voice against these hoodlums and Ballot Bandidos. She says we will see and hear more from her.
“The pressure of the recall was so much and I couldn’t say anything, I wanted to respect the judge who prohibited us from speaking about it,” she told me Sunday evening in a telephone interview. “And I was probably a little grouchy because of that,” she added, when I told her she’s smiling a lot these days.
“But I’m not going away again. It’s a community I love. How can I leave them to this?”
Ladra has three little words to that: “I’m lovin’ it.”
AB scandal: Natacha Seijas is “lovin’ it” — sorta added by Ladra on
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