State Rep. Ashley Gantt has a new television ad in her campaign for state senate. And if you didn’t know any better, you’d think she was already running in November. Against Ron DeSantis. Not because the governor is suddenly seeking a seat in the Florida Senate. But because Gantt’s latest campaign commercial spends its time […]
Bring ideas. Just don’t expect to rewrite the budget. It’s that magical time of year again. The time when Miami-Dade County packs up the PowerPoint presentation, loads the pie charts into the county SUV and heads out on its annual neighborhood listening tour to ask residents what they’d like to see in next year’s budget. […]
For Democrats dreaming of finally knocking off Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar next November, the first order of business is getting through what has quietly become one of South Florida’s most interesting Democratic primaries. Forget the national cable chatter. The real drama is happening right here in Congressional District 27, where two very different Democrats […]
Well. After more than 30 years of covering South Florida politics, countless investigations, thousands of stories, angry phone calls, screaming matches, threats, dozens of cease-and-desist letters and promises that “you’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” it finally happened. An elected official sued me. Miami Commissioner Miguel Gabela has filed a defamation lawsuit over one Political […]
Will Mayor Eileen Higgins veto by Monday’s deadline? Well, Miami finally found the cure for homelessness. Not housing. Not treatment. Not more shelter beds. Not mental-health services. Not rent relief in one of the least affordable housing markets in the country. Nope. It’s a verbal warning followed by handcuffs. That’s it. Problem solved. The Miami […]
There are five candidates fighting in two primaries for the open Florida House District 113 seat — and, for once, voters on both sides of the aisle actually have a choice. Imagine that. The Aug. 18 primary has two Democrats and three Republicans hoping to replace former State Rep. Vicki Lopez, who left the seat […]
Ladra has spent months asking one question: How did Miami-Dade County end up contemplating spending $400 million to buy an old industrial property it could have purchased a couple of years earlier for so much less? The answer may not begin at County Hall. It may begin behind the gates of Fisher Island. Long before […]
For a while there, it looked like Miami-Dade Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins was going to coast to another four years. The fundraising was humming. The endorsements kept coming. The social media was polished. The labor unions were happy. The police unions were happy. Even the progressive groups were happy. In Miami politics, getting all those […]
Ah, Miami-Dade elections. Where every race comes with baggage. Sometimes it’s carry-on. Sometimes it’s oversized. And sometimes it needs its own baggage carousel. The race for Miami-Dade County Commission District 5 has all three. On one side is incumbent Commissioner Vicki Lopez, the former state representative appointed by the other commissioners after Eileen Higgins was […]
There are policy debates. And then there are reality checks. Miami-Dade may be about to get one of the latter, based on the former. By Friday, thousands of Haitian immigrants in South Florida who have lived and worked here legally under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) could begin losing authorization to work if Congress and the […]