Mayor Carlos Gimenez PAC pays pollster… for what exactly?

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Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez was re-elected last year in a primary with 54 percent and a 24 point lead over number two, former Miami-Dade Commissioner Chairman Joe Martinez. He doesn’t reasonably have to campaign again for another year at least, according to local standards.

Or so one might think (more on that later).

But his political action committee, Common Sense Now, paid $4,500 in May to AI Advisory, a Miami Lakes company that, from what we gather, does polling. The itemized expenditure on the second quarter finance report, the bulk of the $5,500 spent, was tagged for “voter management software,” which could, arguably, be code for polling.

Maybe the mayor was getting the pulse of the community for his proposed tax hike. Maybe it was pre-budget business (more on that later). Maybe it was about cats and dogs. Maybe it was post Dolphin stadium stuff.

Or maybe it was pre-Dolphin stadium stuff.

Armando Ibarra, president of AI Advisory, did not return repeated calls and messages left on his cellphone.

But Ladra knows him from when he did a poll in April on the public temperature for the unprecedented deal the mayor had struck with the Stephen Ross, owner of the Miami Dolphins to finance the roof and upgrades to their stadium with tourist taxes. The unusually widely published results of the poll — which was reportedly done for TeleMiami and aired on its La Diferencia show — interestingly enough showed that people were warming up to the idea, with 63 percent against compared to a 73 percent opposition weeks earlier in a poll done by FIU Professor and serial pollster Dario Moreno (who by the way got paid a whopping $29,500 in three seperate checks for one or more “poll” — $5,000, $7,500 and $17,000 all the same day — by the Common Sense Now PAC in January).

Anyway, one would think that the AI Advisory poll would certainly be beneficial to Mayor Gimenez.

Even more interestingly enough (read: suspiciously enough), Ibarra also noted that Gimenez was still quite popular with flat disapproval ratings and increased job approval ratings — numbers that I doubted then and even more so now. According to Ibarra’s April poll, the mayor’s disapproval rating rose just one percentage from 29 to 30, while his approval shot up six points from 42 to 48 during the time he pushed this unpopular scam that was eventually killed in Tallahassee.

That would certainly be beneficial to him, too.

Perhaps worth $4,500 from his PAC.

  Carlos Gimenez, Dolphins stadium, Miami Dolphins, polls, Stephen Ross