A new third party poll by some independent business interest group has Miami-Dade Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava leading in the mayoral race by a very small margin. And number two on her heels, according to sources 
who got the exact same poll results, is Commissioner Esteban Bovo.
So we may actually be looking at a hyper-partisan runoff in November between the Democratic Party darling and the only Republican in the race.
God help us all.
According to three unrelated political sources, Levine Cava got 20% of the support in the telephone poll of 400 people that started July 30 and ended 
Monday. Bovo got 19%. Former Mayor Alex Penelas got 15% and Commissioner Xavier Suarez got 10%.
Sucks for Ladra. And goes against the earlier polls that had Penelas on top and Suarez right behind him with DLC and Bovo switching for three and four. This is upside down!
But it’s not out of the question. Why? Well, for several reasons.
Bovo has been bleeding that conservative angle for a weeks now, and that base is wide open for him as the only Republican in the race. This is a state primary with partisan races on the ballot. Primaries already typically have a bigger Republican turnout. Anyone who is going to vote in one of those GOP primaries, will vote for Bovo. And he recently released a radio spot with an endorsement from Republican Miami’s beloved Sen. Marco Rubio.
Read related: Alex Penelas bashes Bovo, wins first Spanish-language mayoral debate
Meanwhile, the other three candidates will divide the Democrats and the NPAs, which should all go to the only NPA candidate, Suarez, but nobody on his team is really chasing them.
Suarez is the best candidate but he is hurt by the fact that he doesn’t have party machinery to help him and he doesn’t have a real campaign. Jose Mallea is a nice guy but he lost his own bid for state rep in a 
special election in 2017 to a lesser known guy with less money, fewer endorsements and less experience. What should have been a lightning rod movement has been stalling and puttering like a classic car that needs a tune up. What’s most memorable from the Suarez platform is that his son is Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and that he voted against the county budget and the misuse of the half cent tax dollars. There’s no real message. And there’s no momentum.
Daniella is all momentum. She is everywhere, all the time. And she is having a blast. While we can picture Penelas biting his nails, she doesn’t seem worried at all. Here she is yucking it up with poll workers and early voters at the Coral Reef Library on Wednesday. She has every single Democrat 
legislator and every single progressive group behind her, and more being announced almost daily. The Women’s March Miami endorsement was announced Wednesday. She may stumble in Spanish, but she has the cojones to try her ass off. And she has the best campaign of the big four. Christian Ulvert may not be as lovable as Mallea, and he also lost his own run for office, but he’s far more experienced and he has a more professional, cohesive team.
Levine Cava and Culvert — because this has been all him — also have more money. Almost $3.5 million between her campaign account and her Our Democracy political action committee, according to the last campaign reports filed July 31. That we know of. There’s been some dark money in this race and a mysterious 501c4 that could be helping her.
But money is not necessarily helping Penelas, who has the most of it — with $4.5 million (that we know of) raised between his campaign account and his Bold Vision PAC — and who, las malas lenguas say, has been on a downward spiral for weeks. He seems to be coming apart at the seams.
“I’m running for mayor of the county,” he told Ladra last week after his debate battle with Bovo on Cuban radio. “I’m not going to get into a little tit for tat with Steve Bovo,” Penelas said, even though he just did. “There are much more relevant and pressing issues. I’m running for mayor of the county,” he repeated, as if there was still some question.
For Miami-Dade mayor, it’s Alex Penelas vs Esteban Bovo for most corrupt award
It’s like he knows about these numbers. Ladra thought it was weird when he did a press conference to 
boast his endorsement from loan shark and corrupt Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez. But now we know Penelas was just desperate to peel some votes off Bovo, which may be why he’s gone after him and basically ignored Suarez.
It didn’t work, dude. Instead, tracking shows that move may have hurt Penelas in Kendall and Westchester. So has the “defund the police” narrative. While none of the candidates has said they were in favor of taking any funding away from the police department — a false narrative brought into the Black Lives Matter protests to muddy the issue and create a distraction — only Bovo has made not doing it a focal point of his campaign. Ladra bets Bovo is gaining in Westchester, which should be Villa Suarez.
Trends in some of the county commission and house races, according to multiple consultants, also show that a bunch of new and/or atypical voters — those who don’t regularly vote in the primary and who didn’t vote in the presidential in 2016 — are returning vote-by-mail ballots at almost the same rate as high-performing voters that cast ballots every time. That could also be helping DLC while it hurts Suarez, who is running out of money, and Penelas, who could muster a last minute rally because he has the most cash on hand (more on that later).
Read related: Highlights on issues from two online, virtual Miami-Dade mayoral forums
This “independent business group” poll, which Ladra has not seen herself, also indicates that more than 
29% of the voters were still undecided. That, too, is plausible. It’s not like any one single person stands out above the rest. Notice that nobody got more than 20%. But that would also mean that the two black women — Monique Barley and Ludmilla Dommond — would take a total of only 7% or so. That seems low just by demographics. Even Fredrick Bryant, who came in fourth in 2016, got almost 9% on his own. And the ladies have run better campaigns. Ladra hopes they run again.
We will know for sure in less than two weeks, but if it turns out to be a battle between Bovo and DLC in November — which is basically Ulvert taking on the GOP — it could be a historic moment after all, with our first female mayor of Miami-Dade. Why?
Because the same thing that’s helping Bovo now could hurt him in the general election. It’s a whole different universe of voters in November — and they tend to lean blue. After all, Senator Rubio — who should perform better than Bovo any day of the week — lost Miami-Dade in 2016 by 10 points to someone named Patrick Murphy. Remember him?
Yeah. Wonder what those polls said.
Of course, this is Miami, where all politics are ethnic. And while things are getting more partisan in local races, there won’t be a D or an R next to the mayoral candidates’ names. Sometimes a surname is more important than the letter anyway. Cuban Republicans turned on Art Teele to elect Penelas the first time because they chose to vote for one of their own.
Will Cuban Democrats (los cuatro gatos) do the same thing? We’ll know in a days.
Poll has Daniella Levine Cava vs Steve Bovo in Miami-Dade mayoral runoff added by Ladra on
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