After losing the county mayoral race, Steve Bovo se tira for mayor en Hialeah

Isis Garcia-Martinez: ‘He just needs a new job‘

As expected, former Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban “Steve” Bovo — fresh from his loss in the county mayoral race last year — is running for Hialeah mayor, returning to the city where he got his political roots as a councilman and Council President before going to the Florida House.

This pretty much sets up a race between Bovo and former Council President Isis Garcia-Martinez. Former Councilwoman Vivian Casals-Muñoz has also filed paperwork, but she will likely withdraw, as she is a Bovo ally.

Or will she? Casals-Muñoz, who did not immediately return a call for comment, was curiously not there when Bovo announced his candidacy at a press conference in front of Hialeah City Hall with family and friends.

These include political consultant Ana Carbonell taking pictures, Mr. Cool refrigerator man Modesto Perez — the political godfather of Hialeah and founder of a business and neighborhood association — and Julio Ponce, executive director of the Hialeah Housing Authority, which is also a known network for absentee ballot fraud.

Not there: Miami-Dade Commissioner Rene Garcia, who replaced Bovo in District 13. Garcia did, however, say on Cuban radio Monday morning that he would support Bovo. “It’s important to have good Republicans in charge in Hialeah,” Garcia, who is also chair of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, said on Actualidad 1040 AM.

Um, isn’t Garcia-Martinez a “good Republican?”

She is likely to be supported by current Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez, who did not support Bovo’s county mayoral run.

Perennial candidate Juan Santana has also filed paperwork, but he won’t be much of a blip on the screen. There could be more candidates; qualifying isn’t until July. But this is really going to be El Bobo vs. Oh Mighty Isis.

Garcia-Martinez has been getting ready for this for months. She’s been knocking on doors and has raised $190,400 already. She knew she would get this challenge. Even while Bovo campaigned for county mayor against Daniella Levine Cava, las malas lenguas said it was a pre-run for the mayoral race in Hialeah this year. This is not a surprise.

“I welcome the democratic process offered to us by this great nation that gives us the opportunity to choose those that will represent us,” Garcia-Martinez said in a statement, which noted Bovo had been “recently defeated” and took a dig at his new-found unemployment status.

“Hialeah residents deserve to have a mayor who thinks of them first and not as a backup plan because he is out of options and needs a job,” she said.

“My work platform is and has always been, Hialeah first.”

Bovo first hung up on Ladra when we called early Monday afternoon. Then he did not return the call or text messages seeking more information about his campaign.

“Over the years, one of my greatest honors in public service has been to serve the hard-working families of Hialeah, as their city councilman, council president, state representative and county commissioner,” Bovo said in a statement.

Naturally, Bovo did better in Hialeah for the county mayoral race than anywhere else, with 70% of the vote in the second largest city in Miami-Dade. But he spent close to $4 million and he was running against a progressive liberal who couldn’t find Gus Machado Ford without a GPS to save her life. Perhaps he should have done better.

And Isis is not DLC. In Hialeah, she’s virtual royalty.

In an Instagram post at Hialeah City Hall Monday, recorded seconds before he filed his paperwork, Bovo called the City of Progress a “blue collar town” with “a lot of family values and principles that I am going to defend as your mayor.”

It looks like he’s been campaigning on social media for weeks, posting videos from COVID food distributions and an event with Gov. Ron DeSantis, the most popular Republican in the country after Donald Trump, who encouraged Bovo to run for Hialeah mayor.

Councilman Oscar de la Rosa, Bovo’s stepson who was elected in 2019, was quoted as saying that he would resign if his stepdad was elected.

Hialeah politics, Isis Garcia-Martinez, Steve Bovo

After losing the county mayoral race, Steve Bovo se tira for mayor en Hialeah added by Ladra on March 1, 2021
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