Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez filed to run for re-election Thursday
and it was treated like news.
Didn’t everybody know this was coming? He’s been running for mayor practically since he was elected mayor in 2011 after the recall of Carlos Alvarez. For at least two months, the campaign has stepped it up with ads paid by some non-profit Business Advisory Council, which is a secret group that nobody really knows and whose funding is not publicly disclosed. Ladra has heard at least two different radio ads talking about what a great mayor Gimenez is.
He’s polled several times through his two PACs and even had a street canvassing team hit Little Havana homes in July, a full 13-months before the election.
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez starts early street campaign — in Miami
What he really did Thursday was open another campaign account. Qualifying isn’t for another nine months anyway. This is really all about a bundle of joy. A big bundle of green joy.
The mayor’s PAC, Miami Dade Residents First, has already amassed 
$1.4 million. And we have no idea how many millions are behind the Business Council group. But a brand new account allows the mayor’s rainmaker, Brian Goldmeier, to call every single one of the 454 contributors to the PAC and hit them up for another $1,000 check. Oh, and one from your wife/husband/sister. Oh, and one from your business entity.
Oh, and before anybody else does.
Ladra fully expects Gimenez to report at least $300,000 by his first report in November. Goldmeier needs more spending money for the holidays. And it has to blow Miami-Dade School Board Member Raquel Regalado‘s 
$205,000 in the past three months out of the water.
Not like he needs it. It’s not like the PAC is slowing down. August, the last month reported, was the best month since March, with $160,000 collected. Yeah, during budget season.
The mayor said he chose the first day of the new miracle budget to reapply for his job because it was the least contentious budget passed in his tenure and maybe ever. Well, that says more about the past three years than it says about this year, don’t it? Again, it’s that classic tactic used by underachievers everywhere: Set the bar real low. Or mess things up so you can clean them up and become the hero.
Read related story: Carlos Gimenez saves us — from himself
Anyway, everybody knew the mayor was going to file for re-election eventually. He has openly said he will be mayor through 2020. He can’t give up a job that feeds so many in his friends and family plan.
The real news here is that some guy named Robert Ingram Burke also filed. In June. Where were the stories about that?
Ladra doesn ‘t think its the former mayor of Opa-Locka Robert Ingram. That would have been news. But there was a Robert Ingram Burke who had filed to run for mayor of Miami in 2013 and then withdrew.
We know that Commission Mayor Sir Xavier Suarez is expected
to make his decision known after his big Oct. 10 shindig and people close to him say former Chairman Joe Martinez won’t rule out a rematch (if someone promises to raise him lots of money).
Democrats were also trying to get Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine to run, seeing as how it’s expected to be a heavy D year. But that may have been before he tied his political future to Commissioner Jonah Wolfson and that shady PAC, which will haunt him forever.
Maybe they’ll go back to former Congressman Joe Garcia and beg harder this time.
Now that would be news.
Carlos Gimenez opens second warchest for re-election added by Ladra on
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