Miami bromance breaks up as Joe Carollo and ADLP bicker and brawl

The bromance is over.

Miami Commissioners Joe Carollo and Alex Diaz de la Portilla — the power duo that’s been wreaking havoc on the city — are just not getting along like they used to.

Carollo is acting like a jilted lover. And while we don’t know what happens behind closed doors, Diaz de la Portilla was acting at the last meeting on Thursday like the lowlife, lying cheater who is falling all over himself to explain but can’t get a word in edgewise.

It’s like watching a trainwreck.

“I’m asking you to table this right now. I don’t want to be here all day on this,” Carollo practically yells at Diaz de la Portilla, trying to cut off his discussion item on the Virginia Key Marina and its future redevelopment (more on that later).

“I have as much right to speak on this dais as any other commissioner,” DLP responds. “But when you want to discuss an item, you go on and on and on.”

“You want to keep speaking and speaking,” Carollo says.

“Commissioner, that one who speaks and speaks is you,” Diaz de la Portilla retorts.

More is said in a five minute plus exchange that Chairman Ken Russell, for whatever reason, did nothing to stop (thank you, Ken!). But you can hardly make most of it out as they yell over each other like a married couple fighting about what to watch on TV. (Pssst, skip the TV and watch this clip of the meeting instead and please don’t miss Part II).

But this break up started months ago and the cracks were visibly noticeable at the Nov. 18 meeting, when the candidates for the District 5 vacancy auditioned for the part that was already, um, I mean ultimately and in a completely, ahem, unplanned manner given to Jeffrey Watson. During her pitch, however, Christine King, the early favorite and DLP’s pick, quoted something from the Bible about friendship.

“The Bible says, ‘Do not forsake your friends.’ I am proud to say Keon Hardemon has been my friend,” she says.

Carollo, as the hurt spouse, couldn’t miss the opportunity to mark those words. He asked King to repeat the phrase. “Do not forsake your friends,” she says. “Just wanted to make sure everybody up here heard it again,” Carollo says. But, really, everybody? Or just one particular politico?

Later, Carollo said that the former senator might be Tallahassee smart, but that he was Miami smart, which everyone knows is smarter. And he hinted that Alex Diaz de la Portilla was racist after DLP said he was “just against the concept of four white guys deciding what happens in District 5,” obviously repeating something he read on twitter.

“There nothing racial about this,” Carollo says. “You’re the wrong kind of guy to bring it up to begin with.” What? Wrong kind of guy? What does that mean?”

That’s the same meeting where Carollo and Commissioner Manolo Reyes shoved Watson down DLP’s throat, showing a rift in the Three Amigos. And Crazy Joe fights with him even more when Diaz de la Portilla wants to amend the resolution making it so that the Watson would not run in November, even though that’s unenforceable. Then he says he wants to make the appointment unanimous, but only if Watson pledges, again, not run in November (against his girl King).

“What we’re doing is, after we set the goal lines, we change the rules again,” Carollo complains. “We have to take him as we take everyone — at their word. My motion is as is, simply what it is — that we appoint Jeffrey Watson to the remaining term.”

The Dean says he can’t support that “without a specific commitment.”

“He did say it on the record,” Carollo shoots back. “You wanted the hurdle before, for us to jump, of putting it in the ordinance. We have. Now you want him to come up here. Do we have to bring 20 bibles out for him to swear on? And after that, what else are you going to want?”

It was hard even for Ladra to watch.

Carollo is not known to keep close friends for very long. In fact, Ladra can’t think of one person that’s been with him since the start. He was BFFs with former Doral Mayor Luigi Boria, even helping him get elected, then he called him a Chavista getting tainted Venezuelan government dollars, which is one of his favorite go-tos when he turns against someone.

He was buddy buddy with former Mayor Carlos Gimenez, getting paid $6,000 for nobody-really-knows-what during the 2016 election — probably opposition research he then subcontracted — and then talked crap about the new congressman recently during the COVID19 CARES money disagreement (more on that later).

But the love of Joe’s life was Alex Diaz de la Portilla. The Dean made Crazy Joe feel important, vindicated, like he had arrived. Here was a former senator looking to him for help. His mistake was thinking the feeling was mutual. Alex is in love with Alex. And he hooks up with whoever can help him get what he wants.

ADLP, who does love to be looked up to and that pool is growing smaller, was a fixture in Joe’s commission office even before Carollo helped get him elected to District 1 commissioner last year. He tried hard, but failed, to get Diaz de la Portilla elected to the county commission first, even going so far as to spend taxpayer funds on a paella campaign event at a city elderly housing complex. Diaz de la Portilla returned the favor when he used his political action committee to pay for TV ads against the Carollo recall.

And early on, the two forged an alliance that, with Commissioner Reyes, gave them a 3-vote majority to do whatever they wanted.

Fire the city manager. Check. Hire a lackey to replace him. Check, check. Settle the casino lawsuit. Check, check, check. Get control of the Omni CRA and the community NET offices (read: their funding). Checks, ka-ching.

But it looks like this lucrative partnership is over. Maybe it’s the marina project that is driving a wedge between them. At last week’s meeting, there was a hint that the two have different ideas for its future and/or there’s not enough graft to go around.

“Mr. Diaz de la Portilla, you didn’t listen to a word I said,” Carollo says and apparently they aren’t even on first name terms anymore. “You keep wanting to put your RFP like it was a fire sale…”

DLP cuts him off: “I have a different point of view than you, commissioner.”

“You definitely have a very different point of view than I do, and I know why,” Carollo shouts back.

“And I know why you do, too. I know why you do, too,” Alex says, repeating it. For effect maybe?

“You’ve been trying to personalize it… I have never cut you off,” Diaz de la Portilla complains.

“What you’re asking for now is for us to come back in February and push forward the RFP,” Carollo yells and chooses to ignore him, making a motion that each commissioner meet privately with the city manager and come back in the first week of February to discuss the marina.

Guess who seconds the motion? Yup. The guilt-ridden cheater. After all that, Diaz de la Portilla seconds his ex’s motion to pre-empt his discussion item.

So does that mean there could be a reconciliation in the works. Is it not too late for counseling?

Ladra suspects it is too late. And knowing DLP, he’s just keeping Crazy Joe quiet while he shops around for a new lover, someone he can run against the hurt, limping Carollo in November.

Alex Diaz de la Portilla, Joe Carollo, Miami politics

Miami bromance breaks up as Joe Carollo and ADLP bicker and brawl added by Ladra on December 13, 2020
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