This is not the way it was supposed to happen.
As expected, State Rep. Eddy “Here Comes Hialeah” Gonzalez heads into the runoff for the Miami-Dade Property 
Appraiser’s position after Tuesday’s election, but he is going into Round 2 with the second highest number of votes, trailing former Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia by a whole 10 points.
That’s a double digit lead for someone who was supposed to, according to political observers, come in at number two.
Even though he was the defacto incumbent — having lost his seat in 2012 to former State Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who was later tapped to be Lt. Gov. — Garcia was the underdog next to Gonzalez, who had more than twice as much money and a whole sophisticated political machinery supported by his Hialeah hoodlums and the state legislators who serves with him in the Miami-Dade delegation.
Even Garcia was surprised by his 35% finish, while Gonzalez got 25% of the votes.
“I always knew it would be close and that we would be going into a runoff with him, but I didn’t expect to have such a big advantage,” Garcia told Ladra.
He was surprised that even in some Hialeah precincts, Gonzalez’s lead was not that wide. Where the state rep had an edge was places like Miami Gardens. But Gonzalez did get on that fraudulent Tim Milton slate card with Obama, of all people, and sent out a mailer to black voters that was different from his mailer to white voters because it replaced an endorsement from Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez with endorsements from three black legislators.
Read related story: Eddy Gonzalez — a tale of two mailers, black and Hispanic
Garcia said he will have to work harder in the black community. For the primary, he focused on the West Dade and South Dade districts that overlap with the Republican Congressional primary in District 26. He did not have as much money as Gonzalez, and knew these voters were already going to be motivated to cast their ballots after candidates in the congressional race spent hundreds of thousands on advertising and mailers and phone banks.
That helped Garcia beat Gonzalez countywide in each of the voting methods: Election Day, early voting and absentee ballots, even though Gonzalez is said to have an AB machinery in Hialeah.
This doesn’t bode well for Eddy. Not only because the sheer numbers are awful — 55,416 for Garcia and 39,975 for him. Three out of every four voters voted against him. We haven’t done a geographic precinct by precinct breakdown yet, but Ladra is willing to bet that a good majority his votes were centered in Hialeah. Gonzalez would have to woo practically all of the 16,600 people who voted for 5th place finisher Carlos Gobel. And even so, we all know that the bulk of the 22,900 votes for the 3rd place finisher Albert Armada are going to Garcia. Armada will endorse Garcia this week, Garcia told me, and Ladra finds it hard to believe that Gonzalez will be able to peel off too many voters from the other candidates, Gobel or Alex Dominguez.
And not only because of another set of numbers: The money spent. Gonzalez — who is termed out of the House this year and is looking for a place to crash while he waits out the Hialeah mayor’s seat — spent at least $240,000 just out of his own campaign account, not counting PACs. Again that’s more than twice as much as Garcia raised.
Read related story: Eddy Gonzalez has quick cash in property appraiser’s race
But no, while that’s bad enough, the biggest reason this is bad news is because this is the best Gonzalez could do with all that Tallahassee money — which may not flow as freely now — and the support of not only the Hialeah hoodlums but his Miami-Dade delegation of legislators who were all helping him behind the scenes.
And he can’t pull off a better second place even than 25%? David Custin, his campaign consultant, must still be fuming.
What’s Gonzalez gonna do when he loses this contest in the primary? Maybe he’ll run for something in Hialeah sooner than he planned to, after all, since he can probably win something there.
Maybe he’ll have to go work for another elected. Wouldn’t that be something.
Que paso? Eddy Gonzalez heads into runoff as numero dos added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
