Miami Beach candidate Dave Crystal is clearly confused

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There are a slew of candidates in the upcoming Miami Beach election and Ladra doesn’t know them all.

But one of them seems a little confused, or too emotionally and mentally instable to serve in office. Plus he needs tougher skin.

Dave Crystal, who is running for commissioner in Group 1, shot off an email to me — titled “your asinine and inaccurate account of me” — demanding a retraction and apology for poking fun at his “tutoring business” and writing about his abysmal showing in the last election — when he ran for mayor and came in third, beating a woman who got just over four percent.

“Dear Elaine,” he starts, but that’s about as nice as he gets.

“I demand to know who hired you to do that hit job you did on me in your recent ‘political cortadito’ piece! If that is the measure of your journalistic integrity than you clearly do not qualify as a journalist,” Crystal wrote, but since he can’t tell when to use “than” and when to use “then,” I’m not taking it too hard.

Also, Dave, it wasn’t about you. The post you refer to — which was published March 17, by the way (making you also a slow reader…and I hope you don’t tutor reading) — was about David Cardenas withdrawing from the race. It certainly wasn’t a “hit job” on you. You are not that important. You were just a couple of lines near the bottom. Because I mentioned all the candidates so I kinda had to include you.

And, as everyone knows, nobody hired me. I am as unemployed as you are. Work for myself. Isn’t that great?

“Firstly, I do not know why you mention my 13% as a failure, when in fact I had the highest votes per dollar spent ratio of all 4 candidates in that race,” he wrote. Yes, but you still came in “a distant third” to Mayor Matti Bower’s near 60 percent, as I wrote March 17, and more than 10 points behind number 2.

Oh, but he has an explanation for that also.

“The reason Steve Berke did 9% better than me is that he spent $150,000 whereas my team spent only $24,000! Clearly i was the most qualified candidate with the best message; I simply did not have the money to get that message out to everyone,” Crystal wrote.

Okay, so allow me to correct myself: You were a miserable failure at raising money.

Now, allow me correct you: It was not 9% — it was more than 10 points. Berke got 23.38 percent to your 12.97 percent. That is a difference of 10.41 percent. I hope you don’t tutor math. Which brings us to his next beef.

“Secondly and most importantly, where the hell do you come off telling people I am ‘unemployed’?????? I have a successful tutoring business in the Miami Beach area and have helped dozens of high school kids fulfill their collegiate dreams,” Crystal wrote, using multiple punctuation marks to express his dismay.

Sorry, Dave, but “entrepreneur” usually means unemployed. So does tutor. I tutored in college. Grown adults usually tutor when they have no work or are between jobs. Or if they are teachers looking to make an extra dollar because their pay is as abysmal as your last election showing.

Besides, Ladra is sarcastica and harsh. And if you are running for office, you better get used to it.

“I and my team DEMAND a retraction and written apology within 30 days. Sincerely, Dave Crystal.”

Well, this is all you are going to get, Mr. Crystal. Not really a retraction, right? Because I didn’t write anything wrong. Albeit maybe I wrote it with a little zing.

I don’t sound too apologetic, do I? Because I am not.

You, however, should hurry and apologize not to me but to all your supporters who you just embarassed with your completely inappropriate and — to borrow a word that candidates running for office should avoid — asinine email.

Perhaps most concerning (read: foreboding) for you is that this is not the way that commissioners and elected leaders express themselves or reach out. Even to critics. Which I wasn’t. Not really.

Back then, anyway.