It’s not the likeliest of starting points for one of the most closely watched races in the nation. But in shiny, new senior center, in a 
bright room full of viejitos and political nobodies, former Miami-Dade Commission Chairman Joe Martinez officially launched his 2014 congressional campaign Thursday.
It’s “officially” because Martinez has been talking about it for months. He announced his political aspirations on Facebook the same day in February that he launched his cologne, The Commissioner (“The Brave Fragrance for Men,” available online only for $24 a bottle and really a brilliant Christmas gift for some).
The cologne’s website slogan: “There’s no future in quitting.”
Which seems sorta appropriate. I mean, isn’t it natural to run for Congress when you lose a mayoral race? “If at first you don’t succeed,” and all that.
Martinez was upbeat Thursday as he announced his “grass roots” campaign alongside his wife and “basketball team” of children. Certainly a different mood than he was about a year ago after he lost his bid to unseat Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez in the primary.
The Chairman couldn’t even make it to a second round.
Guess he could have used another four or five candidates or so, to make it like the recall race of 2011.
But Martinez showed much more confidence — one could almost say he had swagger — Thursday as he said he was the guy to beat Democrat Congressman Joe Garcia, who many Republicans think stole the seat from former U.S. Rep. David “King Nine Lives” Rivera riding an Obama presidential wave and the headlines about the incumbent’s 52-count indictment and an investigation into whether or not Rivera illegally planted a ringer in the primary.
Opponents and critics will be quick to remind folks of that 2012 mayoral defeat. They already have. But that was a countywide race. The race for Congressional District 26 — in which the national blue and red teams will battle in our backyard — includes about 70 percent of Martinez’s old commission district. Which could be why he is three points ahead of the perceived frontrunner, Miami-Dade School Board Member Carlos Curbelo, in his own poll, conducted by a D.C.-based firm.
Opponents and critics will be quick to define Martinez as a sourpuss who can be nasty if he feels you turned on him and a small-minded career bureaucrat who doesn’t just want but needs to be in public office to breath.
Opponents and critics will be quick to point out that Curbelo has more money. Almost half a mil in his campaign account, probably twice as much if you count PACs. He also has the support of old guard Republicans, even though the local yokels told Ladra themselves they are staying out of the fight within their ranks.
Martinez knows all this. In fact, nobody knows all this as well as he does. And he doesn’t care. He is going to use that man-of-the-people schtick he’s got down pat to connect with voters, talking to them about the traffic on the Palmetto or the 836 and the two priorities he’s had throughout his political career: kids and seniors.
“Something is wrong with D.C.,” he told the 80-100 people gathered Thursday. “Their answer to everything is postponing a decision until it’s no longer relevant.
“I don’t think our country is headed in the right direction,” he said, calling upon the old timers’ nostalgia for a time when neighbors helped each other out.
“We’ve gone from a hand up, to a hand out,” he said, sounding very Republican, though he insists he will appeal more to Democrats and Independents than the other red choices. “They have all voted for me before,” he said, referring to 12 years on the commission.
And he doesn’t care that his party is already pushing the other guy. At least on a national level.
In what seemed like an effort to take the winds out of his relatively small sails, the National Republican Congressional Committee waited about two hours before they announced that Curbelo was named to the first level of the party’s “Young Guns” program, which promotes promising candidates. The Miami Herald reported that the new status symbol — being “on the radar” of the national GOP — might help him raise even mo’ money.
He already has a lot of the heavy hitting contributors. After all, he is part of the Diaz-Balart family, sorta, having helped both brothers with their campaigns, cutting his teeth with them when he was a teenager.
And while party politics are becoming so pervasive they are even seeping into our non-partisan races, some die hard GOPpers think that they shouldn’t weigh in on this primary at all.
“I don’t think the Republican Party should be picking someone already,” said former Mayor Julio “The Other” Martinez, who was there to support his old friend. “They chose a candidate without the primary.”
They did? Nobody has come out and said so.
“But everybody knows it,” Julio Martinez said.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Nelson Diaz, chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party. “The feeling I get from people here is that neither candidate necessarily has a leg up.
“And Joe’s come here a few times. Carlos has not come,” Diaz told Ladra right before the monthly meeting started Thursday night, confirming malas lenguas who had told Ladra that local GOPpers like Martinez more — or Curbelo less, anyway.
And imagine how el pobre Cutler Bay Mayor Ed MacDougall — who is 14 points behind Martinez in the latter’s poll — must feel about being basically not “on the radar” for the most part.
Joe Martinez told Ladra he hasn’t talked to any Party people about his platform. He hopes they stay out, but he sees the writing on the wall.
“They’re making the same mistake they made with McCollum and McCain, with Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio,” Martinez said.
The new executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, Juston Johnson, told Ladra that they were staying out of it also and that the state party had nothing to do with the national GOP.
“What the NRCC does is what the NRCC does,” Johnson told me. “We’re neutral in primaries.”
Diaz admitted, however, that the party is making that race “the Number One priority” and that the difference will come to who is the most viable candidate.
“They are both good candidates. Right now, it’s about who’s going to raise the most money,” Diaz said.
See? That money thing is already rearing its ugly head.
Another possible obstacle is that Martinez refuses to go negative. He wouldn’t do it last year against “Not So Golden Boy” Gimenez, even after the mayor’s ties to the Hialeah hoodlums embroiled him in an absentee ballot investigation. And Ladra practically wrote the freakin’ robocall for Martinez, with the perfect tagline: “He’s not the man we thought he was.” But Martinez politely declined. He says he won’t play dirty this time, either.
Then again, he may not have to.
Between the Libre Foundation, which has already been airing constant TV ads attacking Garcia on his Obamacare support, and the Koch Brothers, who are rumored to have bought another half mil or so worth of TV time and Facebook ads against the liberal congressman… oh, and Curbelo, who has made it a habit of jumping on every little mistake, real or perceived, and expose every little weakness he can… oh, and the RPOF, because Johnson said “We will be aggressive against the incumbent”… Martinez can just sit and wait.
Or walk and wait. And walk. And walk.
Because what he doesn’t know yet is that four of the five viejitos Ladra spoke to after his little speech at the Olga Maria Martinez Senior Center named for his mother (a Democrat) didn’t have a clue as to who he was.
They were just there for the cake. And the pastelitos. It was a short walk from the next room where they are enrolled in the comedor‘s program anyway.
“No se quien es,” said Gloria Jeronimo, 74. “I don’t know who he is.”
“Parece un buen politico,” said Miren Arrbibe, 71. “He looks like a good politician.”
“I have met him once,” said their friend, Marta Matos, 79. “At the dedication of this building. He is a man who helps seniors and he’s worked a lot for people who need it.”
“Yo, con politico, no quiero nada,” said Valentin Salazar, 84. “Porque ninguno sirve.”
“I don’t want anything to do with politicians. Because not one of them is good for anything,” said Salazar, who didn’t know who Martinez was but told me to “thank him for the cake.”
But Teresa Hernandez, 75, knows exactly who Martinez is — and plans to support him.
“Because he’s a good man. Because he takes care of us seniors. And because of so many other things, I can’t even begin to tell you,” Hernandez told Ladra.
“And because, you know, they robbed him of that other election.”
Joe Martinez Congressional debut: More cake, less ‘punch’ added by Ladra on
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