Three DLPs could be headed to Tally… imagine the road trips!

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Looks like the three-headed DLP monster is trying to get back to Tallahassee after all.

Former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla filed at the last minute — okay, with 20 minutes left til the cutoff — to run for state house in district 112. Dean DLP, who served 10 years in the Senate and six in the House, was one of the last candidates to file qualifying papers by Friday’s noon deadline and became the third — albeit the most recognized — Republican to seek that seat, vacated by termed out Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera.

Diaz de la Portilla had threatened to challenge Sen. Gwen Margolis (Dem., District 35) but only if he could force the redistricting to include more Hispanic voters, which he was not able to get done in this election cycle (he may still sue, but first he’s got an election to win… or two or three). He’s naturally seen as the primary front-runner against fellow Republicans former Rep. Gustavo Barreiro and Eric Padron for the August primary. He’s already beating them in fundraising, with $8,600 compared to $8,500 for Barreiro and $3,000 for Padron, who is one of the gazillion hosts for a Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez fundraiser tomorrow. Since Margolis was also at the Gimenez campaign kick-off (more on that later), Ladra wonders, did Gimenez and Dean DLP have a falling out?

Both the other DLP brothers also qualified Friday. Guess it was too much of a temptation not to jump in the bandwagon with them. Imagine the road trips!

School Board Member Renier Diaz de la Portilla will face school teacher Manny Diaz, who has been campaigning for more than a year for a house seat (just not this house seat). The two have been in an endorsement war for the past few weeks and Baby DLP scored a big one with former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, considered the holy grail of all endorsements, who also had a fundraiser for him. Manny “Just Diaz” Diaz, who counts with the nods of Sen. Rene Garcia, Reps. Eddy Gonzalez and Jose Oliva and Attorney General Pam Bondi (whose scrapped nuptuals late last month has everybody buzzing), had to follow with a little bit of a smaller fish when he issued a press release about getting the endorsement of Hialeah Councilwoman Vivian “I’ll Notarize That” Casals-Muñoz, who does anything Gonzalez, Oliva and Garcia want. Ooooooh. Well, she does tap into that big Hialeah absentee voter base.

For Ladra, this has always been one of the more promising (read: fun and potentially controversial) races.

Not like the snoozefest of a coast into re-election we will see by Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla (Rep., District 40) who is one of four South Florida senators who got no challenge, along with Oscar Braynon (Dem., District 36), Rene Garcia (Rep. District 38) and Anitere Flores (Rep., District 37), who for a little bit might have been sweating that Miguel DLP was going to jump into a race against her. The eldest of the DLP’s, who this week was named Best Lobbyist by Miami New Times, had his name in that seat for five days on the website and — while Ladra, jaded as she is, thought it was a possible musical chair move to make room for Alex to run for his old Senate seat — Diaz de la Portilla has said it was a mistake made by his staff. A typo? Yeah. Uh huh. But he stayed put in the end and both he and Anitere can coast together.

But what is Miguel DLP going to do with the $164,000 he has in his campaign account for his non-campaign? Ladra asked in an email and, while he promptly responded to my congratulations on his immediate victory, he has yet to reply to the question about his campaign funds. So, I am left to surmise on my own… Mmmm… Well, how might he help his brothers with it? He can’t legally just directly transfer it into either one of the other DLP campaign accounts? But maybe he can do a lot of “thank you” advertising with, you know, the first name real tiny small and the last name big and bold. Not that they need any more name recognition. But just for sport, how many “thank you for your support” postcards can $160,000 buy?

Meanwhile, Margolis — who I suspect will not get one single Cuban vote after what she said about how we are not minorities because we speak English, did get a challenge anyway, though likely not much of one. Pediatrician John Daniel Couriel, who Ladra had never heard of until she googled him just now, may be a Republican but he’s no DLP. Yet while he may not have the name recognition that is the envy of any political wannabe, Couriel — who came out of the blue and filed the firt paperwork just in the last couple of days before the deadline — does have veteran political king-maker Pepe Riesco, an $800,000 house on Alton Road in Miami Beach and a net worth of $362,000. Ladra got those tidbits just from page one of his 75-page financial disclosure. La Gwen’s financial disclosure is shorter, at three pages, and richer, with a $5.3 million net worth.

But Alex — the brain on the three-headed DLP monster — was keeping everyone in suspense until the last minute. Or maybe just Ladra, who he told to wait ’til 11:59 a.m. (Yeah, he’s been incredibly evasive and tight-lipped lately about everything. Which probably means he has something good he doesn’t want to share). Well, noon came and went and the people in Tallahassee were slow updating the website and Ladra was having a heart attack thinking her favorite politician to love and hate at the same time was not going to be part of this colorful election cycle. But yay. He is. I mean they are.

Let the games begin.