Looks like the third time is the charm for former Coral Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera. Even if it’s just through the process of elimination. Cabrera, an insurance consultant, has tried to get back on the dais twice since he left office in 2013. But both times he ran for mayor against Jim Cason. This time he is […]
Voters might not be sure if Carmen Olazabal is running for a commission seat against three other candidate — or if she is running against activist Maria Cruz and little ol’ Ladra. The girl has gone off on Maria and I, wasting precious campaign ink on our distaste for her unethical behavior and her role […]
Coral Gables voters got a mailer this week that attacks Ralph Cabrera on development, calling him a “career politician” and saying he approved 40% of the tallest buildings in the city. But nobody is taking the credit. Not only is the figure pulled out of the sky, with no reference to any research or parameters — are […]
Maybe nobody had heard of him in Coral Gables before Jorge Fors, Jr., decided to run for city commission. But they may have heard of him at the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. The city commission candidate has gotten 31 traffic tickets in 18 years. He was also arrested three times in his indiscriminate […]
In a desperate attempt to get votes in North Gables, commission candidate Jorge Fors is stirring up annexation fears. Fors — who is running for the seat vacated by Commissioner Frank Quesada — walked North Gables streets last week, passing out petitions to stop the annexation of Little Gables, an unincorporated Miami-Dade enclave just south […]
There were completely polar opposite reactions to the performance of two commission candidates after the first Coral Gables candidate forum last week. Former commissioner Ralph Cabrera, who spoke with authority and experience, got the endorsement of the Coral Gables Police union. Former interim city manager Carmen Olazabal lost a key supporter. “I walked out and […]
Former Coral Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera had his best two weeks of fundraising this cycle, with $46,275 collected over the last two weeks of February. According to the last campaign finance reports filed at City Hall this week, that accounts for more than half of Cabrera’s total of $83,545. With a fundraiser hosted next week by former Sen. Miguel Diaz […]
Carmen Olazabal wants you to forget that she’s an unethical opportunist who put her career above the very safety and lives of Coral Gables residents. As Olazabal, a former interim city manager, runs for a city commission seat, she wants you to forget that she doctored documents and focus on her gender and her degrees […]
With the qualifying deadline upon us and the Coral Gables Election only 46 days away, candidates continue to raise funds for their campaigns — and spend it, at an alarming rate in some cases. Sometimes what’s more important isn’t how much a candidate has raised but how quickly it gets spent and how much is […]
Maria Cruz is a Coral Gables activist who is not afraid to speak. She does so quite often at commission meetings, letting the mayor, commissioners and city administrators know exactly what she thinks. She has no hair on her tongue. She asks for more public records than Ladra and keeps her neighbors and friends informed […]