Signs signal Hialeah’s role in mayoral bout

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There are more than three months until the Miami-Dade mayoral primary leaves us with the only race there ever was, even now, between incumbent Carlos Gimenez, who won the recall-emptied seat in a narrow victory almost a year ago, and County Commission Chairman Joe Martinez, who is apparently going after the area Gimenez lost the biggest.

Martinez signs started popping up all over Hialeah about a month ago. City Clerk David Concepcion, who has already shot off a warning to the campaign about the signs being illegal until 90 days before the election, said he knows of more than 30. Ladra recently counted 11 within a 26-block stretch of West 8th Avenue.

I haven’t seen that many blue Martinez signs in his own district.

Two of the signs I spotted were at ALFs, or assisted living facilities, which became the new feeding pattern for absentee ballots and the drive-you-in-your-Pampers-to-the-polls tactics of the Hialeah political mafia. Hey, everybody has to multitask. Ladra can’t help but wonder how many absentee ballot requests from Hialeah have been made to the county elections department already (naturally, more on that later).

In any case, Martinez did not answer Ladra’s call about the signs earlier this week. Then his campaign manager, Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador— whose employees drive the Pamper-clad to the polls — was quoted in El Nuevo Herald saying that they may have misinterpreted the law and unknowingly placed the signs before they were allowed. Yeah, riiiight. Tirador cut her shark’s teeth in Hialeah. Ladra doesn’t buy her ignorance act. Concepcion would not say how much the fine was for the sign ordinance violation, but I imagine it could be hundreds per sign, per day. Tirador also told El Nuevo Herald that she would seek all the necessary permits and pay any costs — if her attorney said she needed to — in order to have the signs out there. (Note to self: When does the AB campaign begin again?)

But what’s important here is the underlying desperation. Martinez, a long shot, really needs Hialeah, which he can easily get. After all, Gimenez lost 3 to 1 in the much more dramatic and, dare I say, epic battle last year with former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina. Joe ain’t Julio. But with Robaina’s machinery, the chairman can count on a large support base there.

Ladra says let him. Because,even more so than Robaina, his increase in Hialeah is going to be met with a direct decrease across the rest of the county, which sees what Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez and his cohorts are doing over there, the rights that are being violated and the power being abused, a little more clearly every day. You’re getting bad advice, Joe. You pretty much had Hialeah at “Hello.” And now you are risking alienating the rest of the county by becoming the “new Hialeah candidate”? That would have worked on a starry-eyed, newby municipal pretender like Robaina, and nearly did. But you, Joe, are a veteran county commissioner with a little more savvy, one would think. You can’t possibly be fooled by the hype.

So, does that mean you are in on it?