If it wasn’t decided already, former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas pretty much cinched his way into the mayoral race runoff Wednesday night when he totally aced the Spanish-language mayoral debate on 
Univision 23, providing viewers with some inkling as to why he is consistently on top in the polls, on the eve before absentee or mail-in ballots are sent to voters.
He was calm. He was cool. He has the best vocabulary and ease with the language, probably from his stint as a political commentator on the very same network.
And he was quick to strike back with a vengeance when Commissioner Esteban “Stevie” Bovo started in with the lame, tired rant about the half penny tax, which Penelas is the architect of and which has been misspent — without his involvement — since at least 2010. Bovo also took a swipe at Penelas’ penchant for making his lobbyist and vendor supporters rich, calling him the “godfather of corruption.”
“Not only did you lie to the community with your half-penny tax, Alex, the level of corruption that you 
created in the county was basically disgusting,” Bovo said.
“The corrupt one here is you,” Penelas barked back, bringing up two stains on Bovo’s record that are going to haunt him in this race: (1) The scandal where former Congressman David Rivera, a Bovo ally and friend, allegedly took $15 million from the Venezuelan government to lobby on their behalf (he is being sued for doing his job badly) and (2) That time when one of his county aides was arrested with a bunch of ballots in the trunk of her car because Bovo’s Hialeah district office was basically the headquarters for massive absentee ballot fraud in the 2012 election.
“Headquarters in your public office, where the boleteros of this city went in and out with manipulated ballots,” Penelas said.
Read related: David Rivera’s ‘Maduro money’ spred to Esteban Bovo, Alex Diaz de la Portilla
On Rivera, Penelas said that Bovo had returned a maximum $1,000 check but that one of his campaign operatives (he didn’t name Esther Nuhfer but he didn’t have to) got $3 million from Rivera. “Where is the rest of that money,” Penelas asked him.
It was clear that Penelas made Bovo his number one target at the debate, and perhaps deservingly so. Bovo might pick up votes as he moves further to the right, becoming the only choice for die-hard Republicans as he makes the race about socialist values and “leftist elements taking the movement over 
for their agenda.” Alex would rather go up against Suarez, perhaps, because Bovo will have more sympathy in November with Trump on the ballot. He praised Suarez for being “the consistent vote against” misspending the half-penny funds on the commission for so long.
“The other two colleagues have a clear record,” Penelas said, adding that Bovo and Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava — who struggled with her Spanish so maybe that’s why nothing she said stuck — have approved $1 billion and $500 million, respectively, in bad spending. Although, later, included Suarez in his closing.
“Here we have three people who have watched the misspending of those funds. They don’t want to take any blame. They want to blame me,” Penelas said.
Suarez, meanwhile, was a disappointment Wednesday. For someone who can so easily talk about almost anything, he seemed confused. He kept going off on tangents again. There’s really no time for an old, and mostly irrelevant but charming story about something that happened when you were mayor 100 years ago. It almost seemed like Penelas threw him off track with the compliments.
Read related: More mysterious dark money attacks on Miami-Dade’s mayoral candidates
And why on Earth does X insist on making his relationship with his son, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, 
a part of his campaign. Like it’s an asset! People are not comfortable with a Game of Thrones scenario and Suarez keeps throwing it in their faces with billboards and TV and references to “a city mayor who has the same last name.” That’s one of the things he has going against him and is either clueless or acted like it. “Didn’t know there were these criticisms,” he told moderator Ambrosio Hernandez.
In a debate that was dominated by COVID19 issues and questions, Suarez said his relationship with said “mayor with the same name” would have been a plus, referring to all the conflicts between the city of Miami and the county on the COVID19 response.
Other random observations from the rare live debate:
- Penelas is media trained, so he got more information and messaging out per question than any of the other four candidates did in the entire 90-minute event. He mentioned his role and experience in pre-kindergarden, homeless assistance, affordable housing, hurricanes, 9/11, creating jobs at the seaport and airport — he seriously said that — reducing crime. It’s like he was playing campaign bingo. It’s one of the reasons he won.
- Bovo continues the false narrative that the Black Lives Matter protesters drove the increase in COVID19 cases, which has been debunked by several studies and the fact that other cities with big demonstrations have not had spikes. “The businesses are the ones who pay,” he said. On that same day, more than 4,000 people in Florida had already died, according to the state’s skewed numbers.
- None of the candidates support “defunding the police” but Levine Cava, who boasts being the only social worker in the race, says she would like to consider spending more money on non-police responses that would help keep people out of jail and get them the services they need (which is what defunding the police is). You could almost hear Bovo scoff.
- Nobody wore masks and it looked like they were not, or maybe barely, six feet apart.
- Suarez was trying to catch his breath a lot. Ladra hopes he doesn’t have El Covid but it might explain his lackluster performance.
- Candidate Monique Nicole Barley, the only one who spoke in English, actually seemed very sincere and had good, and concise, answers to most questions. We do need more black officers in Miami Beach. She may not stand a chance to go past August but it would be great to see her run for a commission seat next.
- Both Barley and Levine Cava would like to see some kind of rent control measures to help keep the little affordable housing inventory we got.
- DLC used the word ‘compassion.’
- At one point, Suarez said CBD and then corrected himself. He meant CVS.
Penelas definitely won this round, just as a record number of absentee ballots arrive in the mail. And Bovo became a bigger threat for number two than originally thought, even if only through the vindication he got from Penelas.
But you know who else won? Univision. They sold a lot of political advertisement.
Alex Penelas bashes Bovo, wins first Spanish-language mayoral debate added by Ladra on
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