Talk about being stuck between an evil rock and an evil hard place.
Voters in Miami-Dade commission district five have a short time to come to terms with the limited and poor choices they have to 
replace former Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, who abruptly resigned last month to run for Congress — with the intent to open the door wide for his wife to step into his shoes.
Barreiro didn’t have to make his resignation, required by the new amendment to Florida’s “resign to run” law, effective immediately. He could have made it so that it was effective later, like in August when there is already a primary planned, but that would have meant giving other potential candidates a fair shot. Doing it this way gives the missus, fresh off a loss in a city of Miami commission race, an advantage. Everybody knows Bruno resigned the way he did to help Zoraida Barreiro get a leg up, with an election machine already up and running from last year’s campaign. Notice, already, that she hits the ground with a bigger campaign account (more on that later).
Little did Bruno know, however, that former State Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla would be the evil dwarf wizard to ruin his plan for an easy peasy gimme seat.
And abra cadabra presto! It suddenly becomes a promisingly entertaining race between these two family dynasties, which have battled it out before, because, let’s face it, as awesome a candidate as Eileen Higgins may be — and the activist has an impressive first campaign report with $25,000 (more than ADLP) — she would need everybody and their mothers in Miami Beach, the Roads and Brickell to vote for her in order to make up for the high performance voters in Little Havana who are going to go with one of the Cuban Republicans, pero por supuesto.
Yeah, sure, okay, keep telling yourself this is a non-partisan race. It’s a non-partisan seat. This is Little Havana. Every race is partisan. You know somebody is going to get called a communist. My pesos convertibles are on la gringa Democrata.
So, yes, the two Hispanic Republicans with enviable name recognition have a huge lead against anybody else here. Unless Higgins can keep the ka-ching coming and gets big Dem machinery to reel in the aforementioned Brickell-South Beach sweep. It’s not an unreasonable 
request. Local Democrats, which outnumber Republicans in Miami-Dade but have lagged behind in municipal races, have made no secret about the fact that they have been recruiting for county and city seats, including the county mayoral race. Couldn’t they at least find a Hispanic Dem for this? Former Congressman Joe Garcia‘s name was floated but Ladra suspects he’s holding out for the 2020 mayoral matrix (more on that later).
Dean DLP has beaten a Barreiro before. In 2012, he won the Republican primary to go back to the Florida House against Gus Barreiro, Bruno’s estranged brother. But then he lost the general election to Jose Javier Rodriguez, who beat his bigger and better brother Miguel just last year to become a Senator. Then Alex lost a Senate primary out in Kendall against Jose Felix Diaz — 58% to 26%, beating Lorenzo Palomares by less than 10 points — who ultimately lost to Annette Taddeo in the general.
In between, he helped both brothers lose elections of their own, got on board a medical marijuana advocacy group and started to write legislation, flirted with running for Miami commission — or maybe he was just threatening us — and now he has landed in this commission race. God help us. While Ladra still thinks ADLP has a brilliant political mind, it is a brilliant and evil political mind, full of paranoid conspiracy theories and sinister plot twists. And his grudges are legendary. If he is elected, se van a pagar muchas cuentas. And the American Nightmare Mall, for which is brother is a lobbyist, will get whatever it wants.
Read related: Alex Diaz de la Portilla will tell us how we can smoke pot
But it could happen, ladies and gentlemen. This could be the comeback story of the decade. Even without the backing from the likes of Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez — ADLP is part of the mayor’s friends and extended family plan now — he was already a formidable candidate. The Dean loves to campaign and he’s good at it. Better than most people Ladra knows. Better ‘an anybody, maybe. It’s scary good. Did I mention he loves it?
God help us.
On the other hand, Zoraida Barreiro is said to be the smartest Barreiro — though that’s not saying a lot. She’s also a woman, but that 
can play against her in the misogynistic Cubano viejo crowd, believe it or not. The best thing she’s got going is the political machinery, still oily and warm from recent use and contacts with the bulk of Cuban American absentee voters through her home health care business. High performance Miami voters saw her at their homes just a few months ago — while ADLP was knocking on 17 doors, y cuidado con eso, in Westchester, of all places — and they’ll remember her. Him? Didn’t his brother just lose a Senate seat to some Harvard arrepentido amigo de Obama?
Zoraida has also been able to garner the most early financial support. Do donors, usually the government insiders, know something we don’t?
But, while I try not to judge a person by their spouse, she’s going to have to do more than base her campaign almost entirely on her marital status, which she did last time. That’s not healthy. And it’s for nothing, because it didn’t help her even get to second place in the District 4 city commission race, where she landed third behind someone named Alfie Leon. Exactly. Now she’s going up against a real name. And while Alex may not attack her directly — because se ve mal for a caballero, which he pretends to be, to attack a female and old Cuban voters don’t like that — you can bet he’ll beat up on Bruno. And the missus gets the muck by marriage.
The fourth candidate is a La Poderosa radio show host who hasn’t raised any money and is the third Republican behind the two big names anyway, so he’s not getting blue votes or red votes. Carlos Garin is wasting his time and getting himself a headache for no good reason. At least Higgins has a tiny sliver chance if the two families split the GOP votes and every single registered Democrat votes for her.
One can hope, can’t one? Lo ultimo que se pierde es la esperanza.
Special Miami-Dade commission race has us entre un rock y un hard place added by Ladra on
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