In a sick plot twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan, Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez flipped the script on the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust Tuesday and announced that his city had been investigating the agency’s possible expenditure of public taxpayer dollars on a seminar this past March about doing business in and with Cuba. […]
Voters in Miami Beach could change the character of the city’s most famous and celebrated street with a ban on outdoor alcohol sales after 2 a.m. if a referendum on the Nov. 7 ballot is passed. But they have no information from the city about the impact of such a measure — which would change the […]
Ladra dares Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez to put his committee vote into action and resign his seat now The open congressional seat thanks to the announced retirement of U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has attracted almost a dozen hopefuls who want to represent us in Washington, D.C.: A whopping 11 candidates have either declared their intentions […]
We’ve been robbed. Cheated! The four biggest cities in Miami-Dade have elections next month without a single mayoral race. Not really anyway. The four frontrunners have zero or marginal opposition. That means there will be no debates, no conversation about the direction of these cities, no real choice for the voters of Miami, Miami Beach, […]
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 […]