Before he got the freebie Super Bowl LIV tickets from Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium owner Stephen Ross, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez may have used his influence or his position to score more tix to an exclusive host committee reception Thursday night.
According to the daily schedule that his office sends out to the media early every morning, the mayor was set to attend a Super Bowl host committee reception at Bay Harbor Shops at 7 p.m. Thursday. But at 2:45 p.m., we got an update with the event crossed off and the words “mayor 
will not be attending” added. Then, a little more than two hours later, the party was back on for Gimenez and we got another update that he would be attending the VIP party, headlined by the Pointer Sisters, after all.
His spokeswoman Patty Abril told Ladra in an email that “The Mayor had a scheduling conflict, but it was resolved.” However, the revised schedule with the party scratched off did not have a replacement event listed instead. Subsequent emails to Abril on Thursday and Friday asking what the scheduling conflict was — the scheduling conflict they didn’t know about at 8:15 a.m. when they first sent out his schedule — were not answered.
Ladra suggests there was no scheduling conflict.
Read related: Quid pro quo Carlos Gimenez gets Super Bowl tickets as reward
Perhaps he used those two hours to pressure and get extra tickets to the reception for his son Julio Gimenez and his daughter in-law Barby Rodriguez-Gimenez, who, a source said, flanked the mayor as he arrived to the exclusive affair late Thursday, where elected invited guests were allowed to bring only a plus one. I can’t imagine he would not have taken his wife Lourdes, que no se pierde una fiesta and is usually the life of it. But nobody Ladra knows saw her there.
Someone did see Gimenez buddy and former-driver-turned-costly-consultant Raph Garcia Toledo was also there thanks to Carlitos, that means he got a plus four, at the very least, from the host committee, which includes Rodney Barretto, who is a registered lobbyist.
Wouldn’t these reception invites also be gifts to report, like Or not because they have no monetary value? Shouldn’t it matter that it still has influential value?
Carlos Gimenez almost skips Super Bowl party — then takes his fam added by Ladra on
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