Alex Diaz DLP tops $200K mark in Miami campaign despite AB fraud

It doesn’t seem that the news about absentee ballot fraud in last year’s county commission campaign has hurt Alex Diaz de la Portilla‘s fundraising for this year’s city of Miami District 1 race.

Dean DLP hit and slightly surpassed the $200,000 mark in May, according to the latest campaign finance report, showing he raised $38,250 just last month, more than he raised in April. And the bulk of it came after the story broke that ADLP’s campaign to replace Bruno Barreiro on the county commission was marred by absentee ballot shenanigans that were recorded on a whatsapp chat.

Defenders close to him say Diaz de la Portilla cannot control nor be held responsible for what every vendor did and that he had no knowledge of the message exchange, in which a group of chatty campaign workers seemingly discuss destroying ballots marked for a different candidate. The race between DLP, Zoraida Barreiro (the former commissioner’s wife) and newcomer gringa Eileen Higgins ended in the election of Higgins in a runoff with Barreiro.

Alex came in third. That means that the shenanigans did not work, which is more telling than anything else that Alex had no real hand in it. No knowledge? That’s far harder to believe.

Adriana Moyano, a one-time candidate for Doral council, has been identified as the woman who ran the DLP street team. She is also front and center on the chat, which appears to have been created by her. Her company, Ennovaco Corp., was paid $4,980 by the campaign for “marketing.”

But she’s no political genius. She is a newby who lost her own 2016 race to Councilwoman Claudia Mariaca with 44% of the vote.

Chances are she was groomed by Diaz de la Portilla — who has traditionally been intimately involved in every minutia of his campaign — or by Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador, who said she only worked on media buys for ADLP last year. Still, Tirador ran Moyano’s Doral campaign in 2016. Maybe Adriana learned something there.

What we do know from the 150-page WhatsApp convo is that Moyano may have used her husband’s tow yard as a ballot boiler room central. Ladra fully expects the State Attorney’s Office to be investigating.

Because we also know that this is not the first time ADLP or his campaigns run afoul of the right way to do things. In 2001, the Florida Division of Elections fined him a record $311,000, voting 4-3 to increase the amount recommended by a judge after he “willfully” showed a “reckless disregard” for the election laws with more than 300 contributions. In 2012, after he lost first attempt at re-election (to the state house), Diaz de la Portilla was was arrested at a Boston hotel with the daughter-in-law of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez after they refused to stop smoking cigarettes inside the non-smoking room and became belligerent with staff.

All the while, he apparently stopped paying his mortgage and lost his house, at which he reportedly had illegal work done, according to another blogger (more on that later). ADLP’s attorney for the code enforcement violation? Humberto Hernandez, the former city commissioner who was jailed for mortgage fraud and threw the 1998 election via absentee ballot fraud.

Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres.

And while Moyano and her girls disappeared absentee ballots, Diaz de la Portilla had his buddy, Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo, used city funds and staff to throw a Paella party for the ADLP campaign at senior housing facilities, which are hubs for absentee ballots. PaellaGate is reportedly already under investigation as well.

Meanwhile, ADLP keeps raking it in. People like lobbyists Niesen Kasdin and Jose Bermudez seemingly have no qualms giving him maximum $1,000 donations to get into office, even if a few ballots could disappear along the way.

Also and by the way, Diaz de la Portilla has spent more than $18,000 on campaign expenses so far — but none of it went to Moyano or her firm.

Alex Diaz DLP tops $200K mark in Miami campaign despite AB fraud added by Ladra on June 12, 2019
View all posts by Ladra →