And a $40,000 loan may have come via Joe Carollo
Two of the commission candidates running in the Coral Gables April election have close ties to Miami politics.
Claudia Miro, who is running in Group 2, once worked for former Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff. President of the Miami Republican Women’s Club Federated, she is now a marketing specialist for Miami-Dade County Libraries, making $72,600 a year.
But Miro is a long shot underdog in her race — which will be dominated by Rhonda Anderson, Tania Cruz-Gimenez and Jose Valdes-Fauli.
In Group 3, however, Javier Baños has a far greater chance of getting elected because he’s been campaigning for a year — and the options aren’t great. And he has even closer ties to current Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo.
In fact, they’re family: Crazy Joe is his mother-in-law’s cousin.
Baños said he has been Carollo’s friend and accountant for more than 10 years. He has been the treasurer of Carollo’s campaign accounts and political action committees, including the Miami First PAC that could have been used as a conduit for a $40,000 campaign contribution disguised as a loan to himself.
“I’m just a bean counter, a bookkeeper,” Baños told Ladra. “I’m just the guy who added the dollars and cents. I wrote the checks.
“We don’t go have dinner together. He’s just a client,” he said, adding that he didn’t expect Carollo to win in 2017.
Read related: New candidates in Coral Gables Commission races rake in contributions
But Baños is also Carollo’s appointee on the Bayfront Park Management Trust, where his resignation isn’t effective until Election Day. Meanwhile, he’s still the board member who signs those checks (and, yes, Ladra made a public records request).
“Joe doesn’t care a thing about Coral Gables,” Baños said. “Not even a little bit.”
Other sources, including malas lenguas in the city of Miami, say Crazy Joe is running out of allies and Commissioner Manolo Reyes can only help so much (they both drink at the same pond). So, they figure, having an elected ally in Coral Gables who can help Crazy Joe raise money for his own re-election in November would definitely be a strategic move.
And a worthy investment. There’s some speculation that $40,000 of the $60K Baños loaned himself came from Carollo. Blogger Al Crespo wrote about it last June in Crespogram Report.
Records showed that Sarnoff’s PAC, Truth is the Daughter of Time, recorded an expense of a $40,000 donation — a $25,000 check and a $15,000 check — to Miami First on Dec. 11 of 2019. Those donations — which later disappeared from the PAC campaign report (thank the Orishas that Crespo took a screen shot) — were never recorded as contributions on Miami First, though.
And then, lo and behold, Baños — who had already loaned himself $10,000 when he opened his campaign account in January of 2020 — found $40,000 laying around on Feb. 12, just three days after Crespo’s story.
So he just happened to have $40K lying around , unencumbered?
“Yes,” he said, point blank. “I asked my wife if I could use our money for the campaign. I didn’t want to use developer money.”
Must be nice to have that money lying around. But why wouldn’t he have loaned it to himself two months earlier when he loaned himself $10K?
Baños — who calls women he doesn’t know “sweetheart” and “mi amor” — told Ladra he is his own man and that he doesn’t owe anyone anything. He says he’s been blessed with success. “People are going to talk,” he said. “I happen to be successful.”
In addition to his practice, Baños owns a number of investment properties, houses and condos, around Miami-Dade. Three in Miami, two in Hialeah, one in Miami Beach and one in Sunny Isles Beach. Ladra can’t wait to see his financial disclosure.
He’s also investing his time. Baños is really working the campaign, knocking on doors, talking to groups, doing online video interviews. People have come away impressed with his knowledge and grasp on the issues.
Read related: 7 candidates so far line up for 2 Coral Gables commission seat races in April
He has the support of longtime Gables activists Ariel Fernandez and Juan Carlos Diaz Padron — but they are also his paid campaign consultants.
“He’s doing it for the right reasons, plain and simple,” Fernandez said, adding that he respects Baños work ethic.
“He doesn’t need to do this, but he really wants to do it to help the city. It’s the city he’s chosen to raise his family in.”
And, with more campaign cash than anyone in the race as of the last campaign finance report through January, Baños — who, again, has been campaigning for a year — is considered by some a frontrunner against a 28-year-old unknown son of a respected attorney and the well known Gables soccer coach church dad who supported the Crafts Section upzoning that could triple the value of his properties there (more on that later).
Baños told Ladra he did not have a PAC. It should be noted, however, that only 25 of the 159 contributions on his campaign report — for a total of $131,620, so far — have a Coral Gables address.
“Most of them are my clients,” he said.
“I genuinely think I have something to offer,” Baños said. “I like to do the work nobody else wants to do. I’m into the numbers.”
He’s also into public service, Baños said. That much seems true. Before moving to the Gables — he bought his house on Casilla for $400,000 in 2011 — Baños ran for commission in neighboring South Miami in a special election in 2009 after serving on the city’s pension board (he’s also served on the Gables pension board).
He didn’t loan himself $60K that time around. And he lost to Valerie Newman.
So is this just a matter of him wanting to be an elected somewhere, anywhere?
At the same time, Baños talks like the race is not that important to him. “I’m doing this once in my life,” he told Ladra. “I’m not doing it again.
“And if I don’t win, I’ll just go to Hawaii.”
Or maybe he will move to Miami Beach or Hialeah and run for office there.
Miami politics creep into Coral Gables election via Javier Baños, Claudia Miro added by Ladra on
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