Money in mayoral race is incumbent’s 3-1 plus

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As if we needed another reason (and justification) to say that Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez is going to wipe the floor with Commission Chairman Joe Martinez, we get a glimpse of the latest campaign finance reports in the wee hours this morning and find our Golden Boy Gimenez practically at the million dollar mark. Less than $32,000 out, actually.

The reports posted online after midnight just now and Ladra was pacing and, okay, no, I couldn’t sleep until I saw them and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! In fact, how could you sleep?

Because there’s more.

If you add the total $1.3 mil raised by his PAC, Common Sense Now, since the election last year, Mr. Mayor is cleaning up. Of his total $2.3 million or almost $2.4 or so raised — ya a este nivel, what’s $100K? — Gimenez added just over $650,000 in new contributions from April 1 to July 6 (in a minute… hang on). During the same period, Martinez added just under $227,000 between both his campaign and his Get It Done PAC. In fact, the chairman’s total so far into the campaign is $640,000, less than the mayor’s quarterly total.

That’s not just bad. That’s embarrassing. Ask anybody.

But that’s not the worst of it for Martinez. With a month until Election Day and ABs hitting the street on Wednesday, he’s got precious little of his treasure chest left. I think he’s getting ripped off (more on that later) and have told him so, but he is not listening to Ladra. The chairman has spent about half of his haul already, a little more than $300,000. Again, less than half what the mayor spent in this last reporting period. Makes me wince. So, between both his campaign account and the PAC, Martinez has a little more than $330,000 left. As of July 6, of course. There could be stacks of checks held off until closer to the election. It does happen. Not saying it is now. But it sometimes does. And if Martinez is not holding, he doesn’t stand a chance.

Gimenez, on the other hand, is still awash in cash. He spent $640,000 in this last reporting period and has blown through a little more than $1 million in total — and it’s no wonder, with as many “consultants” as Snow White had little, helpful friends with beards. Guess he runs his campaign office like he runs County Hall. But it still means he still has about $1.5 million to seal the deal on Aug. 14 — which is something that could very well happen.

So, how do you go about collecting $2 million dollars? Well, you get your employees to contribute, for one. A lot of the consultants gave a little love back to the campaign as did county employees, though I am sure they all genuinely support Gimenez. A quick look through the contributions show that Gimenez has also refined his bundling skills some since last year’s post-recall mayoral race against former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina. arguably the most proficient bundler we’ve ever seen.  Gimenez has some of the former Robaina money, which Ladra always thinks is so strange but people smarter than me tell me it’s natural. People like to go with a winner.

And, this time, Gimenez is more obvious about it.

The going rate on this campaign finance report seems to be $5,000. That’s what Gimenez got from State Representative Carlos Lopez-Cantera and real estate developers Stephen Bittel, Ugo Colombo and Michael Adler, through their family members, companies and family members’ companies. Tourism and real estate investor Philip Levine gave $3,000. So did Raymond Kayal, a business associate of Christopher Korge‘s. But the big bubba of bundlers has got to be the hidden, secret people at Cornerstone Group, Inc., which gave 10 different $500 maximum checks (it’s maximum for a reason) for a total of $10,000 from different DBAs and subsidiaries or whatnot.

Robaina would be proud.

To be sure, Martinez pulled in a bit of bundling of his own. Key word: bit. Businessmen Antonio Gestido, Jr., and Luis Machado gave $4,000 from eight firms and someone named Alfredo Xiques gave $4,500 from his companies. Ladra can’t help but wonder if it is the lawyer Alfredo Xiques who was accused once of having possibly notarized false signatures on a second mortgage, or so says The Straw Buyer, aka Mike Hatami, a fellow blogger Ladra highly respects. Further inspection reveals that he was publicly reprimanded by the Florida State Supreme Court when he notarized the signatures of the three people involved in the transaction, even though they were not present. So, hmmmmmm.

So, you say, money doesn’t win an election. Martinez says that. To everybody. Wonder if Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador, who is managing his doomed bid, thinks so. This is a woman who billed more than $1.5 million in consulting and placement services for all her work on the recall with million car mogul Norman Braman, Robaina and all his PACs, Hialeah Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez and his PACs, Miami-Dade Commissioner Esteban Bovo — who is thisclose to getting recalled (more on that later) — and who knows what other piddly stuff, like the Doral race she has now, which Ladra really has to get into more. No, Sasha, Ladra is not going away.

But don’t fret for that foul-mouthed, low-class, rip-off artist. She is laughing all the way to the bank. So far, she has billed Martinez more than $15,000, which might not seem like much but it doesn’t include her consulting fee, which is reported near or at the end. What it does include is cell phones, two payments in the same day totaling $590, almost $6,000 in door hangers and posters and palmcards and the like, $1,605 on hand fans and you can bet that Tirador skims a little off the top of everything. Well, maybe not the $90 on t-shirts. Maybe.

No, the big money is through the PAC, where G&R Strategies, Tirador’s company, has billed more than $160,000 worth of services to the relatively new Martinez campaign, mostly for “communications”  — which is designed to be vague but should say mailer, radio recording, robocall — and “grassroots communication,” which could be code for “absentee ballot operation.” Her total billing is way more than Gimenez’s seven consultants — ooooh, Ladra should start calling them the G-7 Men — and FIU Professor and pollster Dario Moreno, who is not so much a consultant as a “political scientist.” Combined.

Even though Martinez also paid Steve Marin $11,200 for a poll — share, Mr. Chairman, share — and $7,000 went to Pubic Concepts’ Randy Nielsen and Richard Johnston of last year’s failed Robaina campaign (but who haven’t been paid their retainer since April… ooooh), it looks like Martinez is riding a lot on this one slightly violent and ethically-challenged woman who keeps dodging electoral fraud investigators and has her hand even in a judicial race this year. She should be stopped.

But Martinez is the one who will be stopped first. Because this ride might be bumpier than Martinez thought — because the Chairman doesn’t have the cash cushion Robaina enjoyed.

And a queen, after all, needs her cushion.