Esteban Bovo leads mayoral race, goes to runoff vs Daniella Levine Cava

After much hand-wringing and nasty, negative campaigns between the three front runners, the Miami-Dade mayoral runoff in November will see what could very well be the most negative and partisan mayoral race in our lifetime when two sitting commissioners and polar party opposites go head to head.

Esteban Bovo and Daniella Levine Cava were practically neck and neck Tuesday night with him gaining on her as results were rolled out, and with 827 of 860 precincts reporting, he grabbed the lead with 29.5% of the vote compared to her 28.6%.

DLC led at first, but as more precincts were counted after early voting and most of the mail-in ballots, the gap between them fell away to what looks like a last minute surge of Republican voters for Bovo — who got really lucky with the defund the police angle — who cast himself as the only conservative.

And steer clear of lobbyist Eric Zichella this week. The poll he commissioned, done by Sen. Marco Rubio‘s cousin, was the only one that had Bovo in the lead. He’s going to be a bigger diva than usual.

Commissioner Xavier Suarez was a distant fourth, barely breaking double digits with almost 11% of the vote but that has been expected for the past couple of weeks as X ran out of steam and out of money and started slipping in the polls. He’s a lover, not a fighter, and he could not compete in the nasty contest.

But what the %$#& happened to former mayor Alex Penelas? According to the latest campaign finance reports he had raised $5.1 million — that we know of — and the best he can do is third place with 25%? If the math is correct ($5,180,766 for 100,647 votes), Penelas spent more than $51 per vote. He was practically throwing money at people. That’s got to be embarrassing. Now what is he going to do. He might not even be able to go back to being a political pundit on Spanish-language TV.

Penelas said Tuesday morning on Radio Caracol’s Hoy Por Hoy that he “could see myself supporting” Bovo in a runoff. Let’s see how that holds. Because how much is Bovo going to want that endorsement after all the negative crap he threw at Alex about the half-penny promises and raising taxes and the attacks about the cronyism and inventing corruption?

These results may prove once and for all that money doesn’t necessarily win elections. Penelas, who had the fattest war chest of the four, paid far more per vote than anyone else and he still came up short. Bovo had $1.5 million less than Levine Cava and still edged over her.

This sets us up for the most partisan non-partisan race we’ve probably ever seen.

Hard right Bovo, the only Republican in the race, has been campaigning as the only conservative, with photographs of him and Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Sen. Rene Garcia, who is now his replacement as commissioner of District 13. The Black Lives Matter movement has actually been very good to him, giving him a boogieman to campaign against and the defund the police issue to scare voters with, even though none of the other candidates has explicitly supported defunding the police — which only promises to become a bigger, central issue between now and November, by the way.

Police supporters and GOP voters won’t care that his district office was used as a ballot fraud hub in 2012 and that he likes to shut down public speakers.

On the left, we have the only “social worker” in the race, who would make history by becoming the first female mayor of Miami-Dade. She is pro environment, pro workers rights, pro women, pro choice, pro equality, pro transparency, pro public healthcare and pro immigration reform, just for starters. It won’t matter to the masses of Dem voters swarming in November that she has no real experience and is going to be, as she has been on the dais, pretty much lost and wandering about the 29th floor like Mr. Magoo.

Does this mean that her consultant Christian Ulvert would be in charge if she wins in November? Or someone else?

Levine Cava does enter the runoff on an advantage, since an even more Democrat electorate is expected in November to stop Trump in his tracks. Then again, so will every abuelita in Hialeah who wants to defend the U.S. from the creeping socialism in the Democrat party.

Ladra would not be surprised if Miami-Dade becomes a sideshow for what’s happening on the national stage.

Alex Penelas, Daniella Levine Cava, Esteban Bovo, Xavier Suarez

Esteban Bovo leads mayoral race, goes to runoff vs Daniella Levine Cava added by Ladra on August 18, 2020
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