Predictable Joe Carollo calls challenger Chavista in Miami attack mailers

Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo is a one trick pony. He cannot get elected without calling his challenger a communist or a socialist or a Chavista.

Much of Carollo’s 2017 campaign targeted Zoraida Barreiro, the wife of former County Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, calling her… Another challenger, Tommy Regalado — son of former Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado — communists. But Carollo really meant the younger brother José because he once took a photograph with Sean Penn at an event.

Remember the recall effort against Carollo last year? Yeah, that was run by the Venezuelan government and financed by Chavistas, too, according to Loco Joe, who also swore that Chavistas ran him out of Doral, where he was fired as city manager, and Chavistas front some businesses on Calle Ocho that he has targeted because they supported another candidate in 2017.

Now, his main challenger — and that’s because Rodney Quinn Smith has been campaigning the longest and making the biggest impact — is also a Chavista. Or at least an “attorney for the murderous, narcotrafficking, Venezuelan dictatorship,” according to one of many mailers landing in District 3 last week.

To a certain extent, he’s right. Loco Joe is paranoid and most of the time he’s way off base. But Quinn Smith readily admits that he has represented the Venezuelan government. He doesn’t say that only that his firm represented the country in international arbitration cases — no human rights cases, no lobbying — but that he himself worked on them.

“I am very up front about it,” Quinn Smith told Ladra, adding that his first case was in 2013 and his last case this past November. “I understand this issue is important and I apologize for the concern it causes and I accept it. But a lawyer’s clients do not define him.”

Sorta refreshing that he would man up.

Furthermore, some of the people who have been opposing counsel on his cases — Venezuelan-Americans and Cuban-Americans — are among his earliest supporters, he said. “They know that, as lawyers, we do our job.”

Quinn Smith says that he nor his firm represent the Venezuelan government any more. But that doesn’t stop Carollo — who won’t debate his challengers and skipped out of the Miami Herald editorial board screening, telling the Miami paper that he didn’t want their endorsement — from using this gem with his Cuban viejitos and Latin American transplants.

“Quinn Smith has his hands stained with blood from the dirty money that the Chavista dictatorship has paid him,” it says in red letters with red ink splattered on someone’s hand and 100 dollar bills. Photos of former Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and his Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino Lopez are juxtaposed next to Smith’s smiling mug.

Another mailer has him wearing a red beret in front of Venezuelan soldiers and police abusing protesters.

“If candidate Quinn Smith, attorney defending the Chavista dictatorship doesn’t care that his client, the narco Venezuelan government, abuses it’s own people,” it says, “then how can we believe that we matter to him?”

Both ads are repeated in Spanish on the backside. A couple of District 3 voters told Ladra they’ve been getting four or five a week.

Quinn Smith told Ladra that nobody had thrown the door in his face and that, in fact, that 1 out of every 5 voters ask him about it and it became a way to engage. He explains that he was doing his job, acknowledges that it is a painful issue for some, and says he will do better to represent the community. And most people believe him, he said.

“I’ve only had one person say ‘This is impossible to get over.'”

He says a bigger issue “among high information voters” is the circus that City Hall has been the last few weeks as Carollo battled with the new police chief and got him fired after he was accused of misconduct. Former Chief Art Acevedo accused Carollo of interfering with police investigations and using the police department to go after political enemies he calls “agitators.”

_{Joe Carollo and David Rivera at the swearing in of Alex Diaz de la Portilla in 2017. The local Republican Party’s Ileana Ros is also there.}

This should be more important to Miami voters than whatever legal work Quinn Smith did for state-run businesses in Venezuela. After all, didn’t Carollo’s buddy, former Congressman David “Nine Lives” Rivera, also do business with the Venezuelan government? Far more nefarious business as a government lobbyist?

Is Carollo desperate? Does he really fear that Quinn Smith is going to beat him? After all, he only won last time by 252 votes in 2017. And fewer people like Carollo today than four years ago.

The 1,900+ voters who signed the recall petitions last year are going to be key. Quinn Smith said he has definitely reached out to them. “Some of them will vote for me and some will not, just because of the partisan nature of this environment.”

While the race is officially non-partisan, Carollo is Republican and plays to that base. Quinn Smith is getting help from the Miami-Dade Democrats.

“Of everything on the ballot, we consider one of the most critical races to be that of District 3,” says a message online about their endorsement. “Incumbent Joe Carollo has been documented and charged with cases of corruption and intimidation. His blatant abuse of power is dangerous to the city, and we hope that voters will recognize the importance of replacing him with a candidate who will fight for all residents of Miami, not just those who vote for him/her.”

The incumbent’s mailers — at least the two Ladra got sent to her — are paid for by Miami First, Carollo’s political action committee, which has raised about $1.3 million since earlier this year and spent only about $45,000, including about $26,000 for design, printing and postage for mailers, as of the last campaign finance report through Sept. 30.

So expect a bunch more before Nov. 2.

Joe Carollo, Miami elections, Rodney Quinn Smith

Predictable Joe Carollo calls challenger Chavista in Miami attack mailers added by Ladra on October 18, 2021
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