And the Democratic presidential candidate to open the first office in Miami is — drumroll, please — former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, whose surrogates celebrated the event with a salsa band outside — where else? — in the heart of Little Havana.
This is where Bloomberg will likely get his 305 base, among the old Cuban exiles and the newly-naturalized Central and South 
Americans who want to live a success story like his.
“Mike’s grandparents are immigrants,” said former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, who spoke after Congresswoman Donna Shalala (District 27), who didn’t hang around.
“He’s never forgotten his roots and the obligation to help others,” said Diaz, who is the Bloomberg campaign’s National Political Co-Chair and State Co-Chair of Florida.
“So many states are controlled by the Republican legislature, including ours,” he said, crediting Bloomberg with being an “integral part” of flipping 21 seats and the Virginia legislature.
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“We have a candidate who isn’t just running for president, he wants to carry others with him,” Diaz said, sounding very
much like a candidate himself — could he be planning a comeback? — or someone who wants a choice cabinet seat in a Bloomberg White House.
Standing in front of a mural of palm trees and the words “Miami will get it done” — a take on the campaign slogan — Diaz said the Little Havana opening was one of 1,300 events across the country Saturday. He gave multiple TV interviews afterwards, in English and Spanish, saying how proud he was that that the first Bloomberg campaign office to open in Miami was in the neighborhood he grew up in and three blocks from where his own first campaign office used to be.
“It is the heart of our community, especially the Cuban-American community,” Diaz told one of many TV reporters there. “That indicated the kind of person we are talking about… Mike is a decent person. His priority is the people who elect him, not necessarily a party.”
Diaz also talked about Bloomberg adding more than a million people to insurance rolls when he was mayor of New York City. “That is a
model that can be taken to a national level and it doesn’t necessarily represent that everything is free for everyone,” he said.
More than 50 events were planned across the Sunshine State for “a weekend of action” as the campaign continues to make Florida — where around 500 volunteers have signed up to make phone calls and canvas — a top priority.
Little Havana is Bloomberg’s third office opening in Florida – the most by any Democratic candidate, so far – following the openings of an office in Orlando and one in St. Petersburg two days apart last week. The campaign has plans to open close to 20 field offices in the state over the next couple of weeks, in advance of the March 17 primary, and there are already more than 100 troops on the ground.
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More than a dozen of them were in Little Havana Saturday, 
wearing Ganamos! t-shirts, at 1756 SW 8th Street, in a gray, smallish L-shaped shopping plaza with an accounting firm, an insurance office and an age defying clinic upstairs. You can do your taxes, sign up for Obamacare, get botox and volunteer all in the same place. You can’g get your nails done, tho. The Glam Style Bar next door to the campaign office is out of business. So that space is available, Biden people.
Bloomberg — who was in Alabama and Virginia Saturday — has already been to Florida twice since he announced he’d join the softball team running for Democratic presidential nomination in November, and a number of local and state Dems have already endorsed him, including former State Rep. Robert Asencio, who is now running for Miami-Dade County Commission, Aventura Mayor Enid Weisman, former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and the mayors of West Palm Beach and Coral Springs, Keith James and Scott Brook, respectively.
Team Boomberg has been flooding the Sunshine State with local TV commercials — including, reportedly, more Spanish-language ads than any other candidate — and chose la Florida to launch its first bus tour focused on gun violence.
As the other Democrats have concentrated, basically, on the early caucus and primary states, Diaz said, Bloomberg is focusing on Florida, where he could emerge as a possible dark horse in the March 17 primary.
“We continue to have incredibly enthusiastic support from the Florida voters – from the amount of volunteers signed up to the robust turnout we have had at our office openings,” Mike Bloomberg 2020 Florida State Director Scott Kosanovich said. “We are building the infrastructure here in Florida needed to defeat Donald Trump in November.”
Miami is key to that.
“Little Havana is an important location, also centric to the county,” said Helena Poleo, Hispanic media director for Florida.
“We thought it was important because it is the heart of the city,” Poleo said, adding that this was only the first of several campaign offices Bloomberg will open in Miami-Dade county.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is apparently opening her campaign office in Miami next weekend.
Manny Diaz opens Mike Bloomberg Miami campaign shop in Little Havana added by Ladra on
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