It was bound to happen. In fact, one might wonder what took Annette Taddeo so long to bring up Ana Rivas Logan‘s Republican stripes.
It happened this week, when Democrat voters received a mailer where Rivas Logan is pictured between President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who she only served in Tallahassee with for a year. “A history of voting Republican,” it says on one side. And that’s true. Because Rivas Logan only 
became a Democrat after she was beaten out of office by another candidate in the SD40 race, former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz (who happens to be running in the GOP primary).
The year was 2012 when Rivas Logan and Diaz were thrown into the same district via redistricting. Neither one would move out. The party backed Diaz, who went on a negative attack questioning her Cuban roots and calling her an unfit mother. One piece linked Rivas Logan, a former Miami-Dade School Board member to then Superintendent Rudy Crew, who was unpopular and hated by Cubans, in particular, for allowing communist books in the curriculum. Rivas Logan switched parties shortly after, citing the anti-immigrant sentiment in the GOP but everybody knows she felt abandoned by the party, even stabbed in the back.
Read related story: Outing non-Cubans in Miami politics
In this primary, it’s all about the fact that she was even in that contest.
“Once Republican, always Republican,” the mailer says. Well, wait a minute. Wouldn’t that also apply to former Gov. Charlie Crist, who ran as a Democrat with Taddeo as his running mate?
The mailer points out that Rivas Logan is still getting “Republican money” because 90% of her money is from the Lewin family of Davie, who own 411-Pain and other healthcare interests and are registered red. Of course, 90% equals $10,000 of the $12,925 she’s collected (and it’s actually more if you consider that she loaned herself $2,500), so big deal?
The piece is paid for by Fight Back Florida, Taddeo’s PAC, which is chaired by Raul Martinez Jr., who used to be former Congressman Joe Garcia‘s chief of staff a
nd who Taddeo ran against in the congressional primary last year. The PAC has reported raising $37,500 since May, including a $10,000 contribution last month from Diario Las Americas Multimedia.
But the piece seems late, landing more than two weeks after absentee ballots went out, and short, coming on the heels of not one but at least three anti Taddeo pieces put out by Floridians for Accountability, an election communications organization that has been inactive since 2008 and didn’t report any activity last month. One of the pieces also tries to compare Taddeo to Trump repeating false allegations from 2014 that she was under IRS investigation for not paying her employees. That simply isn’t true and the complaint that was filed was done so for political purposes. Two other hit pieces targeted where Taddeo invests her money — which includes Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, none of which are Dem darlings.
Read related story: Dade’s newest Dem, Ana Rivas Logan, hails First Lady
Ladra still thinks Democrats 
will have to hold their nose and vote for Rivas Logan if they want to get that seat back. They should have never lost it to former Sen. Frank Artiles, who was forced to resign in April after he was caught making racist remarks to black legislators in public. But their best chance to get it back is Rivas Logan, who came in second in the primary to former Sen. Dwight Bullard without spending very much or campaigning really. Because the very Republican background that is a liability for Rivas Logan in this primary is what is going to make her a better candidate for the general against Diaz, for a rematch, or former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who would enter the general limping from the full frontal attack campaign in his primary that has included allegations of violent outburstss and improriety with women.
Or maybe all this drama in both primaries gives the NPA candidate, Christian “He-Man” Schlearth, an advantage.
Both Democrats in SD40 race are compared to Donald Trump added by Ladra on
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