Miami-Dade Commission Vice Chair Lynda Bell, in the race for her political life, raked in nearly $84,000 in campaign contributions i
n June — the most she’s gotten in a single 30-day period since February, the biggest month in her re-election bid, when she collected $133,000.
In total, Bell now has $533,780 from her own campaign account to spend on what looks more and more each day like the roughest race she’s ever had. Her PAC, Good Government Now, raised $20,00 more last month for a total of $152,000 — meaning she will spend at least $685,000 to keep her seat, which paid her just over $50,000 in salary and expenses last year.
Her opponent, social service agency director Daniella Levine Cava, has about half of that, raising a total $350,000 for her campaign as of the last report filed at the end of June, which had a monthly total of $20,700. It could be the most that any non-incumbent has raised in county commission history. At the very least, it is a very respectable amount for a relatively newbie candidate who is, apparently, making Bell sweat.
In addition, Levine Cava has the support of the local PBA, which has a PAC that gave $1,000 to her campaign but has another $320,000 available for attack ads or robocalls attacking Bell or what not.
Good Government Now has already produced two video attacking Levine — one calls her a carpetbagger ad the other inexplicably criticizes her $50,000 average annual salary and role at Catalyst Miami, also known as Human Services Coalition of Dade County, which gets government grants and spends some of its multi-million budget on lobbyists and consultants.
Related story: Attacks on in heated District 8 Miami-Dade Commission race
“Not very much,” said Levine Cava, who said that she mostly lobbied Tallahassee or trained regular citizens to. She said 
that there were some consultants, like for Human Resources or strategy planning that helped the organization be more efficient.
And it’s not like Bell doesn’t vote yes to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of consultants at the county for work on the taxpayer dime that may be done cheaper in-house — or aren’t even needed.
Many of the usual suspect lobbyists and consultants still give to Bell — and their names are on the finance reports, only don’t look for the word lobbyist; look for attorney or government affairs. She’s got gifts from Albert Dotson, Al Maloof, Brian May, former State Rep. Marcelo Llorente, Jose “El Chino” Fuentes and Richard Candia, but that was before he was arrested for his role in the FBI bogus grant kick-back that netted both Sweetwater Mayor Manuel “Marana” Marono and Miami Lakes Mayor Michael Pizzi, whose trial starts this week (more on that later). Even Jesse Manzano, formerly of the Carlos Gimenez 2012 campaign.
South Dade developer Wayne Rosen, who everyone tells Ladra practically owns Lynda Bell, is one of her top donors.
As the Miami Herald noted in a great story last month by Doug Hanks and Patty Mazzei about the Top 25 contributors to incumbents’ war chests, Bell gets the most love from these folks — all people who do business with the county or want to do business with the 
county or hope to get some piece of some contract or some property up-zoned.
Bell doesn’t respond to my calls and her campaign manager, lobbyist Jose Luis Castillo, did not return a call and text over the weekend. She told Hanks of the Herald that the donations don’t buy influence her — and a couple of days later she voted against the Miami Dolphins stadium scam, which she knew would pass anyway, to prove her point.
But she didn’t say that contributions don’t buy access. In fact, she said, donors are “taking a risk.” A risk would imply an investment.
And while her opponent has been able to rake in more money than any challenger ever, and will likely hit the half million mark by the end of the campaign, not many of the usual suspects give to Levine Cava. In fact, we don’t know what many of her donors do for a living, because they give $100 or less, which doesn’t require the campaign to note their occupation. Many of those are symbolic $20.14 cent contributions.
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