No, you did not see the same guy qualify twice for two different seats in the city of Hialeah elections.
It just so happens that two of the challengers look quite alike.
Activist Julio Rodriguez, who is running against Council Vice President Luis Gonzalez, and Marcos Miralles, who is running against Paul “Pablitiquito” Hernandez are two young men with short, dark, buzz-cut hair, the same receding hairline, shy smiles on clean-cut faces, jagged chins and piercing dark eyes under thick eyebrows.
The only big, or rather tall, difference is that Miralles is a giant at six-feet, four inches in height. “He has a foot on me,” said Rodriguez, who measures 5’8″ so not quite but almost.
But they could be brothers. They could even star in their own Discovery Card commercial for that that series of late payment forgiveness ads with “real people” answering the phone who look and talk just like the customer.
It’s fabulous. The ad, and the new political brotherhood. Because it is likely that Rodriguez and Miralles will collaborate and run on a slate. Hialeah has a history of slate races and these have the same spirit besides the same look.
Rodriguez, 24, has been fighting the lack of transparency and political abuse at City Hall for years. Miralles, 19, is running on a platform centered around transparency. Rodriguez has repeatedly requested that the city put it’s public council meetings online and air them live on video. Miralles is also a technology buff who plans to use social media quite a bit in his campaign.
Rodriguez reached out to Miralles, in fact, after he saw the young Publix produce boy’s dramatic YouTube video.
“At first I thought he was a plantidate,” Rodriguez said, using the word that Ladra coined for a planted candidate, thrown into a race intentionally by another candidate in order to divide the votes. “But after talking to him a little, it became apparent he was genuine.”
Rodriguez arranged a meeting between Miralles and former Hialeah Police Det. Ricky Garcia, who died suddenly Monday of a heart attack before he could qualify for the race. Otherwise, you’d see three musketeers: Miralles told Ladra that he had met with and spoken to Garcia, as late as Sunday afternoon, and had decided to switch seats from the Group 6 race where Garcia was challenging Hernandez, to a run against CouncilwomanKatherine Cue-Fuente, who ended up unopposed.
That would have made for a full slate with former Mayor Julio “The Other” Martinez, who is challenging the mayor.
“Once I met Ricky, I knew I could not run against him. We wanted the same things,” Miralles said.
After Garcia died Monday, Garcia’s friend and campaign director, Jorgito Morffiz, asked him to stay in the group and run against Hernandez. Miralles had rushed Monday to Hialeah Hospital to be with Garcia’s family and friends.
“It’s what Ricky would have wanted,” Morffiz told me, adding that Hernandez was a better challenge because of his conflict of interests, one of the reasons Garcia had decided to go against him.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Miralles said about hearing of Garcia’s death. “Here is a guy who was so full of life just the day before. He was so excited about our possibilities.
“Ricky had very high hopes for what we were doing,” Miralles said.
The 2012 Hialeah High graduate told Ladra that more people are approaching him at work, in the produce section of the Publix on East 2nd Avenue near the Hialeah Park race track.
“They’re excited,” he said. He’s had questions sent to his website since he qualified and inquiries, believe it or not, as to how to donate so he added the link to the page.
Miralles, whose cellphone caller id has his abuela‘s name (super cute), says his will be a totally grassroots campaign. He got involved after signing up for more information on a Libertarian Party website, after which he was contacted by another local “Libertarian-leaning” thinker, who then volunteered to be his campaign manager.
Pierre Alexandre-Crevaux, a server at a restaurant in Coral Gables who takes the metrorail from Florida City to Hialeah because he has no car, is doing it pro bono.
“Marcos wanted to run and Iam more than happy tobe able to fight against the monsters at City Hall in Hialeah,” Alexandre-Crevaux said Wednesday, maybe knowing exactly what to say to melt Ladra’s heart. “He asked for help from the Libertarian Party and the party sent me to the rescue.”
Miralles said he talked to his family about it first.
“I told them, we’re going to get a lot of shit. Someone might slash our tires,” Miralles told Ladra, because he is all too aware of the abuse that the mayor and his henchmen land on opponents, like mayoral candidate Juan Santana, who was harassed in front of his home.
He hasn’t felt any heat so far. “Not yet. But I’m expecting it because Ricky once told me they threw shit, I mean actual human feces, on his property,” Miralles said. Yep, they did. Ladra was there when someone slung human feces at Garcia’s auto shop in East Hialeah late on Election Night 2011.
If, or when, Miralles starts to feel the wrath of the Hialeah hoodlums, he will have something else in common with his twin candidate: Rodriguez, who was threatened when he campaigned for former Mayor Raul Martinez in 2011, is used to beinh taunted by Glenn “The Goon” Rice, the mayor’s unlicensed and unscrupulous enforcer.
Then they will be even more alike.
Young Hialeah lookalike candidates likely to slate together added by Ladra on
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