Pete Cabrera’s move to fire the city clerk will hinge on one vote — Mayor Luigi Boria’s. But the two men have one thing in common: Campaign consultant Sasha Tirador.
The war between newly elected Doral Councilman Pete Cabrera and City Clerk 
Barbara Herrera has escalated pretty quickly, even for Doral’s standards.
Cabrera, who won his seat back on Nov. 4 after a two-year absence, already had requested an item to fire Herrera over what he said is unprofessional behavior and inefficiency (read: poppycock). He did this within three weeks of being on the job.
Read related story: More Doral drama as ‘new’ councilman aims to fire clerk
The move, which everyone says is retaliatory from an old battle the city clerk won with a defamation suit settled in 2011, will get it’s public prime time tonight, Wednesday, at the city council meeting that starts at 6 p.m. Get there early, though. You’ll want a front row seat.
Well, that’s if the city attorneys even let the commission discuss he possible firing, which has now become the subject of another legal matter. 
Because last week, Herrera filed another discrimination lawsuit against Cabrera — this time in federal court under the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission protections. She asserts that his effort to fire her is retaliatory for the gender discrimination suit she filed in 2009.
Well, duh! It almost makes one wonder if Cabrera — who cost the city about $30,000 with the settlement paid to Herrera in 2011 — is trying to give the city’s money away.
“In the past month, after being re-elected to the City Council after a two-year hiatus, Cabrera is now attempting to terminate Herrera in retaliation for the prior lawsuit against him and the city,” the complaint said. “It is Herrera’s belief that her employer discriminated and retaliated against her due to her gender and marital status in violation of Title VII and the Florida Civil Right Act.
“Mr. Cabrera specifically targets women and single mothers for his attacks at the city,” Herrera stated in the complaint.
That was on Wednesday.
So on Thursday, Cabrera’s front fired another shot. He filed an addendum to his agenda request to terminate the clerk, including even more reasons than the ludicrous generalities he stated the first time.
They include a resident’s complaint — show me a city clerk in any city that doesn’t have one complaint filed against him or her and I’ll show you someone who may need to be investigated — and a 2010 memo written by Herrera’s assistant who claimed that she verbally intimidated her and discriminated against her for being gay.
What he didn’t include in the addendum was that that employee, Christina Muñoz, was fired for insubordination under former City Manager Merritt Stierheim after a city investigation found the complaint unsubstantiated and that Muñoz withdrew her complaint — which would have gotten the same big, fat “nope” — from the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust after she was rehired by former City Manager Joe Carollo (she currently works in the building department).
Maybe she also remembered that Herrera was at her wedding to her wife in September 2012 or that the city clerk knew Muñoz was gay when she hired her from among a slew of qualified applicants. Las malas lenguas have told Ladra that Muñoz had gotten snared in a political vendetta, which is not so hard to imagine in the telenovela that is Doral city government. Really, can I get anyone interested in a reality show?
It looks a little too obvious that Cabrera — caught abusing his power in an overt personal grudge match — is grasping at straws and throwing everything he can at Herrera in his desperate attempt to get her fired tonight. If he fails, he will start his four-year term as a weak wannabe who flexed but did not have the political will at the dais to make anything happen. If he succeeds, he’ll swell to twice his size and be intolerable. Plus, he’ll owe favors.
And everyone is watching Mayor Luigi “Me, me, me!” Boria, who is looking like the swing vote on this.
Everyone expects that Cabrera has the support of Councilwoman Sandra Ruiz. The two are peas in a pod, er, I mean allies. And it is unlikely that he would have the support of Councilwomen Ana Maria Rodriguez and Cristy Fraga, who voted last year to give Herrera a 20% raise for what one would assume was a stellar performance record.
But if it depends on Boria, that might not bode well for Ms. Herrera.
That’s because Boria and Cabrera have a common denominator: Absentee Ballot Queen 
Sasha Tirador, who ran both men’s campaigns and could be pulling the puppet strings behind the scenes, as she is known to do from time to time.
Tirador was Boria’s campaign manager in 2012, when Cabrera came in third and then later switched sides unexpectedly and endorsed the Venezuelan businessman. And she also helped Cabrera win his seat this past November, over Councilwoman Bettina Rodriguez-Aguilera, for which she was paid $5,000 for consulting and whatever percentage she makes off the $63,000 or so worth of mailers and TV buys and radio spots she bought for the candidate.
Is Tirador trying to get her hooks in Doral after losing her grip on Sweetwater, where she has been unceremoniously dismissed as the mayor’s $1-a-year assistant? (And, yes, more on that later).
Or are there other forces at work here? Sources say that former city manager Sergio Purrinos, who is rumored to be wanting his job back, was at the swearing in last month. So were representatives from the Genovese Joblove law firm that las malas lenguas say want a piece of the city’s legal pie and/or represent business interests before the government boards.
Hmmmm… On second thought, maybe it’s better to sit in the back tonight.
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