Miami political pals of Javier Baños attack Alex Bucelo in Coral Gables race

The mailer that landed in mailboxes Saturday calling Coral Gables Commission Group 3 candidate Alex Bucelo a puppet was paid for by former Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff.

What does Miami have to do with the Gables?

Well, while he denies it to the end, Javier Baños, who is also running in Group 3, is the candidate pushed by Commissioner Joe Carollo, who Baños worked for as an accountant. The candidate was also Crazy Joe’s appointment to the Bayfront Park Trust.

Baños feigned ignorance when Ladra called him Sunday on the hit piece.

“He’s the former city commissioner?” He asked the question like he doesn’t know who Marc Sarnoff is. Like he didn’t know Sarnoff gave $40,000 to Carollo’s PAC and then it disappeared days before he loaned himself $40K. This smells like political money laundering.

“Carollo was a client. I was surprised as was everybody else in the city of Miami that he won,” Baños told Ladra. “I don’t have a PAC that I control.”

You don’t? Well then, why does the 2019 filing papers for Citizens for a Better Miami-Dade Government have his office address and his email and cellphone number as an alternate contact?

“It could be a setup as well,” Baños told Ladra on Sunday. “I am not sending any negative mailers. I don’t need to do that to win.”

He said his office address was the mailing address for more than 3,000 “businesses and entities,” without going into detail. That’s a lot of people using his mailing address and he doesn’t know who they are?

Oh, he knows Bradley Cassel, the chair of Citizens for a Better Miami-Dade. They served on the South Miami pension board together. And Cassel also chaired another PAC in South Miami, SM First, with Baños as treasurer. It’s true, Baños also ran for office in South Miami, but this was in 2017, waaaaay after he moved to Coral Gables in 2011.

Also, Baños “interviewed” Cassel, his “good friend and…mentor,” on the Community Newspapers Facebook page. This is much more than a coincidence. It feels more like a conspiracy.

By the way, at least 10 of those “business and entities” with his Coral Way office address have contributed almost $8,000 to his campaign. Happy clients? A pass through? One of them is another PAC, Good Government Foundation, that Baños is listed as an alternate contact for. Except they have no expenses reflected in their October campaign report, which is when Baños reflects getting $500 from them. Did he really?

Citizens for a Better Miami-Dade Government has had zero activity since it was created in 2019 — until last month. The first and only contributions it got were $25,000 from Sarnoff’s PAC, Truth is the Daughter of Time — which hasn’t collected a contribution since last Fall — and $5,000 from attorney Ben Alvarez, another Carollo ally.

Then the PAC sends this hit piece. The expenditure is not reflected in the latest expense report ending in February, but we’ll see if it comes up in this month’s report.

The mailer portrays Bucelo as a puppet propped up by his father, longtime Gables resident Armando Bucelo — and something about some 10-year-old lawsuit at a firm he worked for — and former Miami city manager Joe Arriola, who resigned due to a “developer scandal.”

Really? And here Ladra thought it was the fire fee fiasco. Guess developer scandals play better in the Gables. Or is it just because he funded the recall against Carollo last year?

It also lists two dozen contributors to Bucelo’s campaign from the construction and development industry. But what it doesn’t say is that Baños also has many contributions from developers, including more than two dozen that are described as “real estate investors” or “real estate holdings.” Including some with the same address as his own on Coral Way.

He also has bundled maximum donations from six companies owned by real estate developer Evelio Garcia — divided in two: six $600 checks last year and six $400 checks from the same six companies last month. Why would they do that if not to hide the amount of money he’s getting from that one source?

“It’s disgusting,” Bucelo told Ladra Sunday. “Personal attacks on family? It’s very city of Miami politics. I don’t think that has a place in Coral Gables.”

He won’t return the favor, he said.

“I’ve been focusing on the residents. I don’t do attacking,” Bucelo said. “I don’t do negative campaigns. I’m focusing on walking and getting the message out there and being a representative for them.”

Bucelo may not have to be worried. The last candidates Sarnoff supported were Esteban Bovo for county mayor and Elvis Maldonado and Renier Diaz de la Portilla for county commission. All three of them lost.

“We can’t afford a commissioner with strings attached,” the attack mailer says. And that’s true.

But the candidate with strings attached to city of Miami politicos and their special interests is Javier Baños.