There were no fisticuffs, but it was lively and lines were definitely drawn in the debate last week between the five candidates for Miami-Dade Property Appraiser — a juicy $196,000-a-year job 
overseeing the assessment of property values, which is the main source of revenue (read: cash cow) for the county budget as well as all the cities and towns within and the Miami-Dade School Board.
The event, sponsored by the Miami Association of Realtors and American Society of Appraisers, was called a “forum” but turned out to be more of a debate, with candidates turning on each other and getting time, even, for rebuttals.
And some stark differences emerged between the five candidates vying for the seat vacated earlier this year by former State Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who beat former Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia in 2012 by 5,000 votes — all absentee ballots — but was tapped in January as #2 to Gov. Rick Scott, who needed a Hispanic on his ticket.
Even some in the audience at the Coral Gables event last Thursday said that what they saw on the panel were two longtime politicians, two reformers and one hothead.
The latter would be Albert Armada, who basically yelled every answer to every question and seemed angry all the time. He also seems to have a man crush on Carlos Gobel, an appraiser whose signs are popping up all over my neighborhood and who was inexplicably endorsed by the Florida State FOP (I mean, why do they care?) Armada must have said Gobel’s name 17 times and also admitted that he would make a good property appraiser, some day. Not now, ’cause it’s his turn, but some day.
Read related story: Pedro Garcia files for his old job to replace Carlos Lopez-Cantera
Gobel would be one of the so-called reformers. The other is Alex Dominguez, who is on his third-time’s-the-charm try for public office after a failed bid at a Florida House seat in 2012 (lost the primary to the eventual winner, the newly married State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez) and a botched challenge to Miami Commissioner Frank Carollo last year.
Maybe those were just practice runs because it appears that Dominguez was made for this position. At least it looks like he enjoys the subject matter. He’s studied it and has the most research done on the skyrocketing number of appeals that are overturned in Miami-Dade when compared to Broward. He is the only one who brought audio-visual aids to the forum.
“Alex was awesome. He was the only one who came prepared, who had statistics,” said Mitash Kripalani, a commercial and residential realtor who also liked Gobel. Two colleagues standing with her said they liked Garcia, because you knew what you were getting. But Kripalani disagreed.
“Pedro is part of the problem and this other guy is a politician,” Kripalani said, referring to the two candidates that everyone referred to as veteran insiders — Garcia and State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, who is termed out of office and has to find a landing spot until the Hialeah hoodlums in power at the City of Retrogess let him run for mayor there, which is what he really wants and where he originally had set his sights. You could tell from Thursday’s debate that Eddy’s Hialeah heart is not in this race.
Well, either that or he’s extremely confident in his absentee ballot machinery, not just in Hialeah but beyond. Remember, he has political consultant David “*^%$#@!” Custin working for him, and Custin just ran an election in Miami Beach, adding to his countywide AB prowess (more on that later).
Gonzalez told the audience that his number one priority would be controlling fraud, which is laughable since he’s a big fraud himself, having a no-show job for we don’t know how many years and lying about his residency — living outside the district he was elected to represent — and using boletera Deisy Cabrera, who was arrested in 2012 for absentee ballot fraud in Hialeah. That’s why Ladra almost burst out laughing when he said “accessibility and transparency is my forte. It’s what I’ve done over the past 15 years of my life.”
Read related story: Eddy Gonzalez files for property appraiser, as expected
He also admitted that he didn’t know what he was doing and said that he would be seeking input from he public about how to fulfill his duties and do the job.
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