If people thought Miami-Dade Commissioner Lynda Bell was in trouble before, they are really hearing the bells toll now.
Daniella Levine Cava, the longtime social worker and Democratic Party darling that was recruited to run against Bell, has raised almost $145,000 (counting in-kind) in the four short weeks since she started to raise campaign funds, according to campaign reports made available online today. While that is still less than Bell’s total $205,000 it is still a huge amount for a relative nobody who is going against an incumbent that has had the sitting mayor host a fundraiser for her.
Furthermore, Levine was able to raise her $138,958 — $5,300 came in in-kind donations — in one month. And she got an assist by a change in state law that allows maximum gifts of $1,000 — twice the $500 maximum allowed last year. Levine got 67 of those maximum $1K donations (the first time we’ve seen them but not the last). And many of her contributors look like friends and relatives and longtime Democrat boosters, like Joe Falk of SaveDADE and Ira Kurzban, who is Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro’s attorney in the U.S.
She also got support from the Miami-Dade PBA — which was predictable after Bell’s votes on the 5% — and two other PBAs. And she was able to get financial commitments from some Democrat past and present electeds like Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner and former County 
Commissioner Katy Sorenson — who retired in 2010 and left the seat open for Bell — as well as State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez (D-Little Havana) and former Florida CFO and congressional candidate Alex Sink. Both Sorenson, pictured above with Levine, and Lerner were at the newby candidate’s campaign announcement last month.
“Maybe people are surprised but I’m not,” said Miami-Dade Democratic Chairwoman Annette Taddeo, who recruited Levine to run for the seat she lost to Bell in 2010. “Daniella’s been in the community for so long. She knows so many people.”
Bell — whose total comes after almost nine months of campaigning — got $21,000 in the same time period. So it’s not just the big numbers that have Levine’s people all giddy — and Bell’s people a little shaky, las malas lenguas say. It’s how the gravy train in the Bell campaign has seemed to dry up after a viable challenger showed up on the scene. It is possible people are not willing to bet on a losing horse.
“Maybe they’ve seen the polls,” Taddeo said, adding that she had heard of polling but had not seen the poll numbers herself.
Either way, this is not good news for the commissioner, whose vulnerability may have been shown when her husband failed his bid to follow in her footsteps and become the mayor of Homestead.
Calls to Bell and to her campaign consultant, lobbyist Jose Luis Castillo, who also ran Mark Bell‘s campaign, were not returned Monday. But Bell told the Miami Herald that she had not yet started to raise funds. Not in earnest. Not until this month.
Really? Really?
So the $200,000 was without trying? And having professional fundraiser Brian Goldmeier, one of the G-Men from the previous campaigns for Mayor Carlos Gimenez, working for you for months now is just a fluke?
And the two Gimenez fundraisers were what? Practice?
I guess she can prove it in the next campaign reports, which will be after she reportedly started raising funds for real.
Daniella Levine raises tons of cash against Lynda Bell added by Ladra on
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