Misleading mailers and inferred endorsements abound as election nears

Several candidates try to fool voters with photos and fake ‘voter guides’

Every election sees candidates that try to identify with certain electeds or political parties, inferring their endorsement or support. But this year, it’s gotten a bit ridiculous as the absentee or mail-in ballots hit voters’ homes.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Florida Sen. Annette Taddeo both publicly disavowed any support to Sophia Lacayo for county commission after the former Sweetwater council member — who was removed from office after being charged with perjury because she lived outside the city — sent a mailer with photographs of both Democrat women.

They looked photoshopped in, which would be par for the course for Lacayo, who has an airbrushed doppelganger image of herself in her catfish campaign materials.

Taddeo tweeted that she was actually supporting Doral Mayor JC Bermudez in the Aug. 23 District 12 race. “It has come to my attention that my picture has been used WITHOUT my authorization in a mail piece sent to voters in the MD Dist. 12 Commission race to give the impression I have endorsed,” Taddeo posted. Caps hers, not Ladra’s.

“NOTHING could be further from the truth!”

La Alcaldesa had her attorney, JC Planas, write a “cease and desist” letter to Lacayo. “Recently, you sent the attached mail piece to voters that includes a picture of Mayor Levine Cava and yourself. The image is used in a manner that implies an endorsement from Mayor Levine Cava,” Planas writes before going all caps.

“THIS IS OBVIOUSLY NOT THE CASE AS THE MAYOR DOES NOT ENDORSE YOUR CAMPAIGN,” he writes plainly.

We don’t know if there’s going to be a similar cease and desist to former School Board Member and state rep. Renier Diaz de la Portilla, who is running for county judge and posted a photo with Levine Cava on his LinkedIn, even though people know what he says about her when she is not mugging for the cameras with him.

But there’s no misleading like the fiction going on in the District 6 commission race. And, no, Ladra is not talking about the mailer a political action committee sent this week with a photo of Coral Gables Commissioner Jorge Fors and Donald Trump, who has actually endorsed his opponent, Republican political operative and international lobbyist Kevin Marino Cabrera.

Ladra is talking about the two different mailers sent by the two-faced Cabrera, who in one is trying to portray a Democratic Party endorsement and in the other a GOP endorsement.

In the blue, “Democratic Voter Guide,” Democrat colors, he calls himself a “community leader and activist” who stands with organized labor and is not a career politician.

“He’s not technically lying, but the effect of what he’s doing is lying to the voters,” said Robert Dempster, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, which has not published or posted a guide yet. The blue and white mailer very cleverly mimics the guides the local Dems do distribute — only at general elections, not in non-partisan primary races.

This mailer went out to Democrats in the District. Republicans got an exact reverse copy in red with different platform points. There was no mention of the labor endorsements on the Republican guide. Just like the Democrats got no mention of the endorsements from Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo or Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar.

And he calls Commissioner Rebeca Sosa and the others who have endorsed Fors, RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).

In this one, Marino Cabrera is not a mere activist. He is a lifelong Republican “committed to limiting government overreach” and he led Trump’s reelection efforts in Florida in 2020. He doesn’t say it, but he’s a longtime political operative who was caught aggressively banging on the door of former Congresswoman Donna Shalala next to the Proud Boys in 2018.

Both were paid for Dade First, a political action committee that Marino Cabrera has registered to solicit contributions for. It has raised more than $408,000 since XXX, mostly from other conservative PACs but also $2,000 in June from lobbyist Carlos Lago, brother of Gables Mayor Vince Lago.

Awkward!

Fors, the only other candidate mentioned in the fake guides — which goes to show that this is really a two-way race — is also Republican. The misleading mailer with Trump that calls Fors the “only conservative” in the race was paid for by a PAC called Basic Principles that Fors made a $1,000 donation he made in March. He has not registered to solicit funds for this PAC, which is run by Planas and tied to former mayor and 2020 mayoral candidate Alex Penelas, a Democrat. It has a reported a total of just over $40,000 raised.

But the only Dem in the non-partisan four-way race is Miami Springs Councilman Victor Vazquez, a disabled Air Force veteran and lifelong educator who could get a bump in interest thanks to this gimmick. In fact, Dempster says Cabrera’s mailer motivated him to get involved in just this race locally.

“Whatever resources we can put toward it, we are going to lean into his race,” he told Ladra about Vazquez.

“Be honest about who you are and what you believe in. Be honest about the things you are going to do when elected. Don’t do this shit,” Dempster said.

Jorge Fors, Kevin Marino Cabrera, Sophia Lacayo

Misleading mailers and inferred endorsements abound as election nears added by Ladra on July 27, 2022
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