Alian Collazo, the Tampa transplantidate who registered to vote at a senator’s house to run for State House District 115 in Kendall, is not really that Republican. He once courted Joe Biden to speak at Florida International University and his social media posts are peppered with his travels to Cuba and other countries with repressive regimes and abysmal human rights records.
His GOP credentials are shaky.
Here he is, wearing a traditional Keffiyeh head wrap in Turkey, where the U.S. State Department has reported “arbitrary killings, suspicious deaths of persons in custody, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrest and continued detention of tens of thousands of persons, including opposition politicians and former members of parliament, lawyers, journalists, human rights activists, and an employee of the U.S. Mission, for purported ties to ‘terrorist’ groups or peaceful legitimate speech.”
Read related: Tampa transplant candidate for HD 115 is registered to vote at Senator’s home
There he is, waving the flag in Jordan, a monarchy in which the king appoints senators and where hundreds of journalists and activists were arrested in 2022 to prevent anti-corruption protests, according to Freedom House. The state department has gotten credible reports of torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment by authorities, arbitrary arrest and detention, political prisoners, restrictions on freedom of speech and media, including the arrests and prosecution of journalists and widespread censorship, substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, among other human rights abuses.
The one that’s really going to go over well with the predominantly rightwing Cuban-American voters of District 115 is the photo of him on vacation in Varadero, drink in his hand as he struts on the beach. It’s posted on his Instagram account with the hashtags #chilled and #relaxed. “Enjoying some very much needed time off,” he wrote from the exclusive luxury Blau Marina Resort.
Nevermind that it’s just hypocritical because Collazo also posts photos of him at protests of the Cuban government, it’s just not a good look if you want to be a Republican legislator. Or just a legislator from Miami.
Sure, the next house speaker did it. But his wife’s grandfather was dying. He wasn’t #chilling on the beach.
Also, as student government president at FIU in 2016, Collazo tried to bring then former Vice President Joe Biden to campus in September and sent what Republican students saw as an “anti-Trump holiday message” to everyone on campus after The Donald was elected in November of that year.
“It is because of leaders like Joe Biden and the hard work of communities dedicated to positive change that our country continues to prosper and move in a direction for the benefit of all,” he wrote in an Instagram post in September 2016, linking to a petition to bring Biden to the public university campus.
About two months later, he wrote a “holiday message of hope” in a campus-wide email.
“As we approach the holiday season and what should be a time of relaxation, rest, and comfort with loved ones, it may be a time of anxiety, questions, and uncertainty for you or members of our FIU family community. Due to the recent elections, you may be increasingly concerned about how potential federal policy changes may affect you or your peers, whether Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, (DACA) or others,” Collazo wrote and offered tips for illegal immigrants to get help, according to a critical 2017 story on the rightwing Campus Reform website.
Sounds sympathetic, caring, kind. Human, even. Not so Republican, though.
Collazo did not return several calls and a text to his phone.
But it seems the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Collazo’s mentor, BFF and roommate Alexis Calatayud — las malas lenguas say he really is living on her couch as he goes through a breakup — is also on unsteady GOP ground. Photos of her at a Black Lives Matter march would not go down well with her side of the aisle. And do they know she was a Democrat in 2012?
Calatayud must have been disillusioned with the GOP because she was originally registered as a Republican in June of 2012, according to the records provided to Political Cortadito by the Miami-Dade Elections Department. In October, she switched to the Democratic Party. Wonder if she voted for Barack Obama that November. She did vote, according to the election records.
She registered as a Republican again in May of 2014 but then switched to the blue party in June the same year — and then back to the red party that October.
The records also show she signed the petition last year for recreational marijuana use.
Calatayud also made contributions to federal Democrat candidates like Matt Haggman, who ran against Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar in 2018, Doug Jones for Alabama Senate and Ammar Campa-Najjar for Congress in California.
Read related: Miami-Dade Fire Captain Omar Blanco runs for office again, in FL House 115
So maybe that’s why she is pushing Collazo, her former chief of staff, to run for the seat vacated State Rep. Alina Garcia, who is running for county elections supervisor. Collazo registered to vote there on Feb. 28, changing his address from his Pinellas County home, less than two weeks before he filed paperwork March 11 to run for the House seat.
It’s not like she had to. There was already a perfectly good, real Republican in the race who had filed a month earlier: Miami-Dade Fire Capt. Omar Blanco, former president of the county’s firefighters’ union.
Blanco, who filed to run in mid February and has never been to Cuba, has been a Republican all his life, since he first registered at the age of 18. And he may have once challenged Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez — but he only did so because Gimenez endorsed and voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Whoever wins the Republican primary is likely to win the general in November against an unknown Dem in a pretty red district.
Tampa transplant HD 115 candidate Alian Collazo does not act Republican added by Ladra on
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