The war between the Diaz de la Portillas and practically all the Miami-Dade delegation just spread its battleground into the Miami Lakes city elections of this coming November.
Former Sen. and soon-to-be State Rep. Again Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who is using his PAC to recall Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo for his role in the absentee ballot scandal, is now going after Manny Cid, a candidate for the Lakes cou
ncil against longtime Councilwoman Mary Collins. Cid also happened to be the chief administrative aide until just a few days ago for State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, who is now also embroiled in an absentee ballot fraud scandal after one of his known boleteras was arrested last month, until just a few days ago. He said he resigned to start a family business. Interesting. What kind of business? He doesn’t know yet. They’re still figuring it out. Really? And I am sure that Cid, who took over the presidency of the Hialeah-Miami Lakes Republican Club from Diaz, Jr., earlier this year is still figuring out what his ties are to Gonzalez and that grupito Ladra will call the Ballot Bandidos — Gonzalez, State Rep. Jose Oliva, State Sen. Rene Garcia and Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban “Stevie El Bobo” Bovo, whose secretary is cooperating with police about the 164 ballots she got from former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina‘s uncle Sergio Robaina at Bovo’s district office in the City of Progress and took them to the post office. True, Cid told me months ago that he was going to resign. But he also told Ladra he was not going to jump into the city election. On Sunday, he told Ladra over the telephone that he changed his mind after talking to his family. He denied allegations from Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi, who also got an opponent at the last minute, and others that their opposition is planted there as revenge for not buckling under pressure to support the Ballot Band of Four’s chosen puppet candidate Manny Diaz, Jr., in the house race for seat 103 against none other than — drum roll please — the Dean’s baby brother, School Board Member and soon-to-be-again-State Rep. Renier Diaz de la Portilla.
Everything comes full circle.
That’s exactly what this is all about, ladies and caballeros and those of you reading who are neither of the two. Because even thought Collins is a longtime DLP ally from old Republican Party circles and Ronald Reagan days, and Ladra is sure the Dean would help her anyway because he is loyal to anyone who doesn’t mess with his family, the mailer that his PAC sent out last week is more about one Manny than it is about the other. It is more about Manny Diaz, Jr., than it is against Manny Cid.
“Too many Mannys (Manny Diaz and Manny Cid),” the mailer has on one side, but only with a photo of Diaz, Jr.
I think so, too, except I would include Sweetwater Mayor Manny Maroño, whose mother is also a known boletera who apparently got a pass from Miami-Dade State Attorney Kathy Fernandez-Rundle, naturally (more on that later), and Manny Machado, the Miami-Dade Police officer from the Hammocks District running a dirty campaign against former State Rep. Juan Zapata, who is poised to become the county’s first Colombian-American commissioner. Que bacano.
But let’s go back to the DLP Mannys. Or is it Mannies? No, that would make them male nannies. Okay, the Mannys.
Cid said, and I kid you not, that Pizzi and Dean DLP showed “intellectual laziness” by connecting his campaign back to his crew. He says he is not connected to anyone and was not recruited for the race.
“The decision to get back in was mine and mine alone, made after I spoke to my family, especially my father and my wife,” Cid said, adding that he’s been working out with his father, who recently was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and has had a lot of long talks that encouraged him to run now and not later. “It was a long conversation with my uncle and family members I hadn’t seen in a long time, so this whole idea that I’m doing it because of someone is intellectual laziness.”
Oh, boy. Dean DLP may be socially lazy, he may be physically lazy — though he has more energy than I do sometimes and don’t know where he gets it — but there is not an intellectually lazy bone in Dean DLP’s body. He is the brains of the three-headed DLP monster and one of the most brilliant political minds to grace Florida. Maybe Manny #2 confused the Dean with one of his brothers. Parum pum.
The Dean didn’t have much to say. He is super busy with his coast to reclaim Tallahassee, his baby brother’s slightly less easy win and his recall against Bovo, let alone whatever else he’s planning against the delegation newbies who dared dare him.
“At least I have intellect. What does he have to offer other than attacking a Republican icon,” Diaz de la Portilla said in a text, because he is telephonically lazy. He would not respond to a follow up text about how Cid had attacked Collins, but Ladra supposes that just simply jumping into the race against her is affront enough for Dean DLP.
Said Cid: “I’m not here to play games. I want to change the political culture of this town and that’s it,” Cid told Ladra in a telephone conversation Sunday. “I understand these games going back and forth but my intention is good policy.”
His supporters, meanwhile, say that Collins is a rubber stamp for Pizzi who will resign shortly after the election so Muscles can appoint a new rubber stamp. They also charge that Pizzi recruited another candidate to run against Cid ally (disclaimer: and Ladra’s dentist) Dr. David Bennett, a longtime city activist and fellow Pizzi pest and public records collector who has been Ladra’s source for years.
I like Bennett and I don’t like Pizzi. Everybody knows that. But I won’t forgive my dentist if he gets involved in any 
of this crap. Everybody, including my dentist — who right now is the only man who can put me in a vulnerable position, and I have an appointment for that coming up — knows that. And I hear that Pizzi — who at least was backed by Diaz, Jr., ally Hialeah Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez (as shown by the fundraiser here) and, I hear, is helping to import the maquinita industry north from Hialeah — is the one who hired Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador to help him with his campaign, something he did not entirely deny when I saw him at early voting last week.
“I’m running my own campaign,” he tells me after I ask him the first time. “Are you working with Sasha Tirador, then,” I ask again. “I’m running my own campaign,” he says, in that soft, whispy voice he has like Mike Tyson’s. So, I ask another way, “But Sasha, I was told and by several people, is one of your consultants, right?” Pizzi must be punch drunk like Tyson, too: “I’m running my own campaign,” he repeats, shifting his eyes to the left, never looking me directly in the eyes for more than a few seconds at a time, which is something that a lot of dishonest and shady people, like Golden Boy Gimenez and FBI informants do. Pizzi, who is also supporting the county mayor’s re-election campaign — because, hey, what’s one more hoodlum? — denied that, too.
In my experience, I find that people who do not want to give you an answer they know you won’t like, generally repeat a non-answer over and over again like that, without looking you in the eye. And I just generally feel that Pizzi is a bad man. I don’t know. Maybe it was the fire that destroyed documents and tons of money, mmmm hmmm, in his office. Maybe it was his sweet deal as City Attorney at Medley and the land use maps that get withdrawn and changed. Maybe it is his connection and relationship to developer Lowell Dunn and the 87th Avenue trade-off some people seem to be so upset about. Maybe it’s all of the above and the multiple investigations — criminal and ethical — into them.
Maybe Pizzi has done a few good things in the lawyer activist past — long ago in the past — and now with his support of Baby DLP, buckling the pressure of the Ballot Bandidos and possibly drawing a planted opponent (more on that later). But his challenger is also a reportedly decent man who was elected founding mayor of Miami Lakes, Wayne Slaton, and it occurs to Ladra that Pizzi would have, could have, should have drawn a challenge no matter what.
Now, I may be glad Pizzi is not supporting Diaz, Jr., but I have mixed feelings about him showing any love to the DLPs, who have sort of adopted Ladra — de vez en cuando, ’cause they are finicky for dog-lovers — and don’t seem so bad up close. I have voiced my opinion to them, so they know, naturally. It’s akin to not wanting Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Golden Boy” Gimenez laying with the Hialeah hoodlum dogs in the unholy alliance that has, as most unholy alliances do, caused the heavens to shoot lightning (read: AB fraud scandal) upon thee. And it’s just a notch or two under the complete disgust I would feel — nay, hearbreaking disappointment worse than with Golden Boy — if they are working with Tirador, as the malas lenguas say the absentee ballot queen is doing to spite Diaz, Jr., and screw with the bandidos, two of whom she has pitted non-candidates against. She’s done that before, when she collected ballots for Hialeah council candidate Danny Bolaños — despite normally being against him — last year against Councilwoman Vivian “I’ll Notarize That” Casals-Muñoz, who is like one of her arch enemies for whatever reason (read: if anybody knows, Ladra’s listening).
But Cid forgot one thing that does count against him. He has been supporting Manny Diaz, Jr., all along. He has to help Diaz, Jr., get elected or Oliva will not have the Speakership in 2018 and his other patrons will not have positions of power. And Cid — like Bovo and Gonzalez and the rest of the Ballot Bandidos — is avidly working against the Dean’s baby brother to make Manny Diaz, Jr., their puppet on a string.
And Manny Diaz, Jr., is up to his eyeballs in the AB fraud investigation — centered, not coincidentally, around Hialeah, Hialeah Gardens and Miami Lakes, otherwise known as the bulk of district 103. So much so, that he has been too embarrassed to show his face at early voting sites. He has sent his wife and mother-in-law and his 3-month-old daughter to do campaign duty for him, instead. Even though Ladra hasn’t seen them since the incident with the boneheaded police call to try to intimidate me because they’re desperately trying not to keep sliding down some more and lose even worse than they were going to lose before they got mired in this criminal mess. And they obviously already have a direct line to the police force commander, Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez.
So there is truth in advertising: We have one too many Mannys, at least. Two if it turns out Cid is aligned with Diaz, Jr., and the AB bandidos, as I sadly suspect. But he still has time to denounce them. Something that Gimenez has run out of — unless there’s a run-off (more on that later).
Oh, Dean, dear. We have too many Carlos’, too. Can we do something about that next?
Dean DLP’s war on the world spreads to Miami Lakes added by Ladra on
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