Former Congressman Joe Garcia, who lost his seat to Rep. Carlos Curbelo first in 2014 and again in last year’s bid to regain it, has joined his former campaign consultant, Juan Peñalosa, at the the mostly Democrat consulting and lobbying firm Mercury LLC, which will open an office in Miami. Garcia’s addition as co-chairman of Mercury was […]
Well, what do you know? Pushed into a corner by a majority of Miami-Dade County commissioners and an army of activists and angry residents to restore the funding cuts he proposed for transit services (bus routes and Metrorail hours), Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez suddenly found at least $16.2 million we didn’t have before. More found […]
Former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz is nothing if not a formidable fundraiser. Everyone expected the Senate District 40 race to be expensive and Ladra even suggested it could be the most expensive Senate race in Florida history. We’ll have to wait until the final campaign finance reports are submitted weeks from now, but […]
Proving that tenacity and good old stubborn persistence can pay off, perennial candidate Annette Taddeo finally won an election Tuesday. And against a “titan” like former State Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, who spent at least twice as much money (more on that later), too. Taddeo beat Diaz by a comfortable edge, 50.95 to 47.21 percent for Diaz. […]
Don’t be fooled by the name, people. The Keep Government Accountable Coalition is not really a “citizens watchdog group,” as it pretends to be. It is a political action committee hiding under another name and the secrecy of a 501c3 non-profit. That means we don’t know who is funding it. Thanks to Citizens United — whose […]
Two days after he crushed it in the GOP primary for the Senate Distrit 40 seat, former State Rep. Jose Felix Diaz is getting a head start on the general campaign with a mailer that calls him a “tax cutter” and a committment of $100K from fellow Republicans. The mailer arrived Thursday addressed to Ladra’s […]
So far and between the five of them, the candidates in the Senate 40 race last week spent close to $3 million to replace Frank Artiles, who was forced to resign in April after he was caught making racist remarks to black legislators in a public place. Key words: So far. The Republican primary paid […]
As always, it is not only the candidates with the most votes who win on Election night. While there were hopefuls who came out on top — or not — in the primaries for House District 116 and Senate District 30 Tuesday, there are others who didn’t necessarily share the ballot but share in the […]
In the contest for State House District 116, the lesser financed, lesser known, lesser backed candidate not only won, but won with a 10-point spread. And Republican Daniel Anthony Perez, a nobody from nowhere running for his first time, can basically celebrate becoming an elected today because everybody knows that whoever won this primary will […]
Former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz turned a 30-plus point deficit in early polls into a 32-point lead Tuesday when he won the special election for Senate District 40, beating former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla by a whopping 58 to 26 percent. Someone tell Ladra again how negative campaigns don’t work. Or how […]