The first email from Carlos Gimenez 
the candidate arrived Monday morning and it gave Ladra the shivers. Just in time for Halloween.
In the email, Gimenez, who filed his account paperwork to open his re-election campaign for Miami-Dade mayor last week, threatens to continue on the same destructive, self-serving path that he has been on shortly since being elected in 2011.
“It’s about finishing what we started,” Gimenez writes, and Ladra winced, wondering what, specifically, he was talking about.
Does Gimenez want to finish giving the county away, piece by piece? A golf course here. A public park there. A museum in between.
Does he want to finish financing the present with our future, deferring more payments and incentives until long after he’s left the 29th floor? What better way to ensure that folks miss you than to calculatedly cause economic chaos right after you’re out?
Does he mean finish traveling around the world with his wife on the public dime? He’s been to Spain, Denver, LA, D.C. Rome and Paris twice. We know he wants to go to Brazil. What are his travel plans like through 2020?
Maybe Gimenez wants to finish decimating the police department.
More likely, the mayor wants to finish setting up his friends and family with juicy accounts and contracts before he exits. I mean, how is CJ going to get any clients once his dad’s no longer the mayor? Is poor Ralph Garcia-Toledo going to have to drive for Uber?
The email reminds people of the kind of candidate Gimenez was in 2011.
Expect him and the campaign to bring up that year often, to try to focus on the image of a kinder, humbler, less arrogant Gimenez, unimpressed by the lobbyists’ guise. Ladra doesn’t have to poll to realize that the mayor’s number one problem is people now know he’s not who we thought he was.
“We campaigned on reforming County Hall and on restoring the trust and confidence of our residents in their government,” he wrote or his campaign manager Jesse Manzano wrote for him.
“Four years later, I believe we have turned the corner.” Check off the second message. And we know he’s talking economically, taking credit for increased property values and the upturn in the economy, because people think he’s too comfy close to lobbyists and special interests. No confidence has been restored there.
“Today, I look forward to continuing this fundamental shift and laying down the groundwork to meet the challenges our community will face in the future. It’s about finishing what we’ve started and I look forward to running on my record and sharing my vision on the issues that matter to you, the residents of Miami-Dade County,” he says.
The bold letter are the mayor’s, not Ladra’s.
Shiver. Am I the only one who finds that threatening?
The reality is that someone always will finish whatever is worth finishing. That is sort of how our democracy has worked for more than a hundred years. Someone eventually takes over and finishes and starts new things.
Hopefully, next year, it will be somebody new in the mayor’s office. Even though he already thinks he’s keeping the job.
“With the election set for August 30th, 2016, I remain committed to working for you as County Mayor, providing services without raising taxes and finding solutions to our communities most pressing challenges.”
Check off message number three. And look how he talked about meeting challenges twice. Comforting buzz words without giving any real details.
The email ends with a pitch for a contribution and a link to the mayor’s website. But both the email and the website are paid for by the Gimenez for Mayor campaign, not either of his two PACs, so he’s already got some funds.
Look out! Carlos Gimenez wants to finish what he started added by Ladra on
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