Watch out, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos “Cry Wolf” Gimenez.
The results of the enormous poll commissioned by auto mogul and political meddler Norman Braman are out and indicate very good news for not only Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado, who now knows she can, indeed, take on the current county mayor. The poll bodes well also for any other credible candidate who wants to challenge Gimenez.
Why? Quite simply, because an incumbent should have at least a double digit lead 17 months from Election Day. Period.
No matter what else the Gimenez apologists and supporters say about this being a push poll and the sampling being manipulated, there is one thing they cannot deny or avoid: This poll, done by Bendixen Amandi & Associates in late January, still has Regalado within six points of the incumbent mayor.
That’s rare if not unheard of with almost a year and half to go to nick at him some more.
Read related story: Raquel Regalado hints louder on 2016 mayoral run
In the “if the election were today” question, between Regalado, the mayor and Commissioner “Mayor Sir” Xavier Suarez, the mayor
got only 30 percent of the support. Regalado got 24% and Suarez got 15%, which is about the only surprising thing in the poll. Suarez, by all accounts, should have done better.
“Polls done by candidates don’t get a lot of credence,” Suarez told Ladra, though one wonders if he’d agree after he does his own internal poll later this year.
“It’s never strange when a poll commissioned by a particular candidate is favorable to that candidate,” adding that he had been called at home by a pollster and that the survey ended when he chose himself on the “if voting today” question.
Read related story: Xavier Suarez petition, barbs keep him in mayoral mix
Braman commissioned the poll but it seems pretty obvious to everyone that he likes Regalado, who apparently helped in the formulation of and who we assume gets to see the whole poll and not just the parts that have been shared with the media. Does anybody else find it ironic that the man who is most responsible — through his funding of the 2011 mayoral recall — for putting Gimenez in office is now equally invested in taking him out? Like the rest of us, he seems severely disappointed.
But the headline here is that such a, well, tiny gap between 
any challenger and the incumbent this far out from Election Day is, well, huge. Gimenez should have done better even in a push poll. And that is more than a little encouraging for Regalado, who is thisclose to making an announcement.
“I have to make the decision soon. I can’t keep drawing it out,” Regalado told Ladra.
Gimenez’s campaign finance chief, onetime driver-turned-successful-lobbyist Ralph Garcia-Toledo, did not answer the phone or return Ladra’s texts. But his response to the poll was to tell the Miami Herald that the mayor’s first campaign finance report would show he collected $500,000 — which could be considered a different kind of poll (more on that later). Other members of the Gimenez team tried to make little of the Braman poll, which they said was way early and exaggerated.
They say it was a push poll with more women polled and more elderly, but Regalado said the language on the push questions was written so that it would be balanced. On the question about Gimenez’s support for stadiums, for example, it notes that advocates cite the economic impact. She also told Ladra
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