Xavier Suarez TV ad campaign smells like a mayoral race

Looking ever more like a would-be mayoral candidate, Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez released the second TV video ad this week in which he attacks Mayor Carlos Gimenez on a number of issues.

Last week, it was transportation and the fact that Gimenez uses funds from the People’s Transportation Trust bond to subsidize transit operating expenses. This week, it’s the Pets’ Trust and the fact that the mayor has ignored a mandate from nearly 500,000 voters to fully fund an aggressive spay and neutering program in order to reach a no-kill status.

And Political Cortadito got a cameo! It’s thrilling to see our little Ladra on the silver screen.

Next week, we can look for ads that will blast Gimenez on the $9 million gift to the private Skyrise development. And, en espanol, there is already two: A translation of the transportation ad and one that calls Gimenez out on his failure to hire police officers in a department that is facing a shortfall of between 350-600 officers.

Timed more for budget season than for the mayoral campaign, the ads are still the surest sign yet that Suarez — who has been on the fence about a mayoral challenge in 2016 — is leaning toward giving Gimenez a run for his money.

Otherwise, why else would he be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars from his Imagine Miami PAC for this blitz? To help Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado in her bid to unseat Gimenez?

“Maybe to get the mayor and some of my colleagues to rethink things,” Suarez told Ladra, staying non committal. “The other logical inference if I do not run is what will I do with the PAC money?”

Um, I dunno, keep it? You know, for your own re-election bid? Or to help your block chip, Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez, become the mayor of that city some day?

Nah. While I may have once thought that Commissioner Mayor Sir Suarez might concede his own political ambitions for those of his son, I’m not certain that is the case any more. Ladra has come a full 180 degrees to say that X is running for county mayor next year, making it at least a three-way race. He sees the writing on the wall that says Gimenez’s support is neither deep nor wide. This is just a smart and stealth way to attack the incumbent — as a frustrated elected legislator, almost a colleague or equal, rather than as an early-and-often oppositionist (read: Regalado).

“It is clear that for four years, I’ve been trying to change business as usual here,” Suarez said. “It is clear from the mayor’s budget that I have not been successful in making great improvements in the way business is done here.

“Does that bring me to the conclusion that being one of 13 legislators is not the way to reform our county government?”

He never answered his own prophetic question, but he said he would be making the decision between his huge dinner event Oct. 10 and the end of the year.

“I’m a reformer,” Suarez told me, reminding me of his plan in 2011 to go down to 10 departments with 10 billing codes each instead of the 33,000 billing codes we have now — which both he and I are certain exist solely so that nobody understands the budget and they can hide money in drawers to find later.

“It is true that my level of frustration is close to the breaking point,” Suarez told me. “We don’t have the same priorities,” he added, referring to Gimenez.

X wants the mayor to stop using the People’s Transportation Plan half-penny sales tax money to pay bus drivers and keep the transit department afloat. In fact, he wants the mayor to refund the money back to the PTP for use in rapid transit solutions, including the four new lines of Metrorail expansion that he has proposed and have been backed by a Miami Herald editorial.

He also thinks that the budget could accommodate the desires of 483,000 voters who overwhelmingly approved the Pets’ Trust initiative, which calls for increased funding to lower the number of animals killed in Miami-Dade with massive spay and neutering vis-a-vis low cost neighborhood clinics.

“For three years the mayor has refused to fund the voter-approved program,” Suarez said in his ad. “I have introduced a resolution to do exactly what voters approved without increasing the millage rate.”

His resolution died in committee last month, but he told Ladra that he can bring the issue back up again during in the budget process.

“It costs about $8 million to do what the voters approved in 2012, less than the increase in benefits that the mayor wants to give to 1,000 employees who report to him,” Suarez said in the TV spot.

“Send a message to Mayor Gimenez: Save the pets and stop funding the bureaucrats.”

Well, there’s a word that is going to be part of any X mayoral campaign: Bureaucrat. Because painting Gimenez as a professional bureaucrat who protects other bureaucrats is easy. Suarez did it already in the debut TV ad about transportation dollars.