Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez had his big fundraiser dinner shindig Saturday night and — while he was surrounded by friends and fans, including a contingency from the PBA — did not announce anything about a highly anticipated potential run for county mayor. People left shaking their heads knowing only that Suarez might run someday for […]
Miami Beach campaign consultant and lobbyist David Custin is raking in the bucks representing vendors and developers with business deals before the very same people he helped get elected. It’s nice work if you can get it. It also smacks of influence. If you put people in office it stands to reason they owe you. […]
Immigration reform. The federal deficit. Isis and international terrorism. The Iran deal. U.S.-Cuba relations. Racism. Wage issues, unemployment and inflation. Taxes. Corporate corruption. Healthcare and medical research. The war on drugs and medical marijuana. Education. Poverty and hunger. Social Security. National security. The environment. Gun control, crime and violence. Whew. Our nation is facing some serious […]
Somehow, the rumor got started that Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez would make an announcement at his big annual fundraiser Saturday about whether or not he will run for mayor. Maybe it was the message sent to journalists on Friday by lobbyist Christopher Norwood that said Suarez was “seeking Re-Election to his County Commission Seat, but […]
Jeb Bush‘s once almost certain nomination as the GOP presidential choice seems farther and farther away each day and he seems increasingly desperate to gain that ground back. Maybe that’s why he felt the need to embellish his business experience in an interview Thursday on Fox News’ Happening Now. Asked to differentiate himself from his […]
There’s a mammoth Miami-Dade County Commission meeting on Tuesday with items on the agenda about the future of a parcel at the Port of Miami, a bunch of airport concessions and new rules for the luggage wrap services, a climate change status report, several bid wavers, a program to save the county’s avocado industry and […]
The first email from Carlos Gimenez the candidate arrived Monday morning and it gave Ladra the shivers. Just in time for Halloween. In the email, Gimenez, who filed his account paperwork to open his re-election campaign for Miami-Dade mayor last week, threatens to continue on the same destructive, self-serving path that he has been on shortly […]
UPDATED: David Custin wasn’t always so successful in Miami Beach. Before he played a crucial role in electing Mayor Philip Levine and Commissioners Joy Malakoff and Michael Grieco in 2013, Custin was really just a glorified mailboy-turned-campaign-consultant who dabbled sometimes as a lobbyist. He only had one client, the red light camera American Traffic Solutions, Miami Beach […]
Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine has become such a caricature, that there are now at least four parody profiles of him in social media. Maybe more by the time you read this, the way they are proliferating every day. The jokes started on twitter with Mayor Levine’s Ego @MayorEgo, which posts the alternative (read: funny […]
It’s an informal, unscientific and likely flawed survey, done online via email blasts through Survey Monkey, a free site that provides such services, but it gives us what could be the first glimpse of what will happen in Miami Beach Nov. 3. Despite all the bad press Mayor Philip Levine has gotten lately — what with the […]