Joe Carollo files late campaign report, with $60K to mayor’s daughter in law

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Authorities need to investigate the latest campaign finance report filed Monday by Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo, and not because it’s several months late, for which the commissioner should be fined.

One expenditure on the campaign termination report — which closes out the account for the 2017 campaign — smells questionable and should raise eyebrows in law enforcement circles: A $59,820.47 payment for mailers to Tania Cruz on November 20.

Tania Cruz is not a campaign consultant who does mailers, even though she billed almost $100,000 total to Carollo’s campaign for just that. She is an attorney who also got $1,300 paid in the same Carollo report for legal fees, and, more importantly, the daughter-in-law of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. She is married to the mayor’s lobbyist son, CJ Gimenez, who has become nearly a fixture in Carollo’s office. She was emailed by Carollo’s attorney against the strong mayor referendum two minutes after he received confirmation the case was filed.

Read related: Mayor Carlos Gimenez clan involved in Joe Carollo lawsuit vs strong mayor

She is also, however, the rumored girlfriend of Alex Diaz de la Portilla, (remember that Boston Police caught them smoking in a hotel room together?) who is said to be the real author behind some of Carollo’s more hateful mailers calling Tommy Regalado a communist and  Zoraida Barreiro a whore.

But those mailers would have been sent weeks earlier, like when Tania Cruz (photographed here talking to Carollo’s wife on the campaign trail) got $3,382 on October 13 or $5,640 on October 23 or $5,880.60 on October 25. At the very  least, they would have been covered by the $17,998 paid on November 6, which was when both Regalado and Barreiro were eliminated anyway.

That’s a total of $39,900 to Tania Cruz (aka Alex Diaz de la Portilla) for the first round.

But another $60K would have covered, more or less, 10 mailers, according to sources who are legitimate vendors and do this kind of thing for real. Ten mailers sent between November 6 and the runoff Nov. 20 against Alfie Leon? Seems unusual, at best, a complete fabrication at worst, that there were 10 negative mailers sent.

Read related: Gimenez family hit in Senate campaign… ADLP’s wag the dog?

“It seems calculated, like that was exactly what was left over at the end of the campaign,” said one legitimate campaign consultant who knows what he’s talking about.

“It’s a shell game. No way they sent 10 mailers at the end like that,” said another.

So what did that money really pay for? Or who did it really go to?

Mail is pretty easy to track down and prove. Even the United States Postal Service should have records. This should not be a difficult thing for the State Attorney’s Office to look into.

Or maybe it can be the 18th complaint against Joe Carollo at the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust?

  Alex Diaz de la Portilla, Carlos Gimenez, CJ Gimenez, Joe Carollo, Tania Cruz