“Here Comes Hialeah” Gonzalez sues Sasha Tirador

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The ugly war that Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador started to wage against State Rep. Eddy Gonzalez (R-102) has so far been relegated to the streets and airwaves.

But now it is headed to court.

Gonzalez has sued Tirador — who is characterized as an “odious” and uncivilized political consultant in the complaint — for violating campaign rules in advertising and is seeking at least $15,000 in damages from lost business he has suffered while trying to do damage control for her slander and libel. He is also seeking an emergency injunction so that the negative campaign attacks stop.

Attorney and former State Rep. Juan Carlos Planas filed the lawsuit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court Friday afternoon and it focuses on two things Sasha did. One is a TV ad paid for by the Citizens for a Reality Check — the same PAC Tirador used for her work for Hialeah Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez and former Mayor Julio Robaina, in his failed bid for the county seat — that urges viewers not to vote for Gonzalez because he endorsed former Mayor Raul Martinez in the Hialeah elections last year. Planas said Gonzalez never backed Martinez.

The other is a robocall in Tirador’s own voice telling voters that Gonzalez is involved in an absentee ballot investigation and that he is not endorsed by U.S. Sen. and potential vice presidential nominee Marco Rubio.

“Tirador has lied to the voters of District 111 in an attempt to falsely portray a rift between Senator Rubio and Gonzalez to make voters believe that Gonzalez is not a good member of the Republican Party,” the motion states, adding that the representative — who wants nothing more in the world than to run for mayor of Hialeah — “has always had and continues to have the support of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio.”

Ladra could not independently confirm that — or whether Rubio endorses State Rep. Jeanette Nuñez or backs School Board Member Renier Diaz de la Portilla in his bid for a House seat in 103 — because the senator’s office does not respond to queries about endorsements. Actually, he doesn’t respond to very much.

Planas further said that there were campaign finance violations in the two attacks. The TV ad says the word “vote” when EOCs — which are like PACs, except they can’t use the word “vote” — are prohibited from doing. And the robocall does not have a disclaimer telling listeners who paid for it.

What difference does it make, really, if it was Mykel “Miguel” Balboa — who I guess uses Miguel because the good Cubans of Hialeah hate that phonetic, Russian-like spelling of names — or one of the PACs. The money is Sasha’s. She’s using part of the nestegg she got last year — billing more than $1 million between Norman Braman, Julio Robaina, Esteban Bovo and her other clients — to fund this grudge match.

This battle in 111 is ludicrous because Mykel — not Miguel — is not a real candidate. He is one of Tirador’s employees and was put into the race by her for spite or revenge or just because the woman is plain crazy. I mean, really. She needs to up those meds because she is going to go from unstable to postal when she loses the mayoral bid for Commission Chairman Joe Martinez — who might have had a chance if he hadn’t hired her — and the delusional cop that is running against former State Rep. Juan Zapata for the chairman’s commission district seat.

She’s known for her negative attacks, usually in cahoots with Col. Matias “Tres Kilo” Farias, who she started her political career with on the air. Yes, that does speak volumes. But Planas said that her attacks against Gonzalez have gone too far and they have filed an emergency injunction to stop her from using them throughout the next 10 days before Election Day Aug. 14.

“Tirador’s conduct has been of an outrageous nature in accusing Gonzalez of both being investigated by the authorities and not being supported by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and her conduct has gone beyond the bounds of decency and is to be considered odious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community,” Planas wrote in the motion.

Well, uh, duh! This is not new, JC. That woman is always odious and uncivilized.

Planas said they had considered suing two weeks ago when the ECO started airing the ads. “We sent cease and desist letters to Channel 41 and they stopped running the ad and I had a conversation withe the attorney representing the ECO,” he told Ladra.

“But when all of a sudden Sasha is making a robocall herself, in her own voice, accusing Eddy of two things that are not true, that he is being investigated and that Marco doesn’t support him — well, enough was enough,” Planas said. “On top of the fact that the robocall is all lies, it has no disclaimer, which is illegal.”

It was not enough to file a campaign finance violation complaint, he said.

“The law is there to make sure people do things fairly and when people don’t follow the law in a civil issue like this you go to court to seek an injunction to ask them to stop,” Planas said. “When someone has shown a pattern that she is going to continue to break the law you have to seek recourse from the court to stop her from doing it.”

Well, truth be told, Ladra also thought that Gonzalez was being investigated for his role in the absentee ballot fraud that was discovered last month in Hialeah and for which a friend and campaign worker from his past bids was charged yesterday. His name comes up over and over again. Someone told me they saw him at the SAO, even, and it made sense to me. But Planas told Ladra that Gonzalez had not even been called by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office to be questioned about Daisy Cabrera, the boletera caught red-handed last week who is now charged with felony forgery in the case of one ballot, and what he knows about her operations.

But if he hasn’t yet, he will be. Or he sure as hell should be.

By his own admission, Cabrera and Matilde Martinez, the other woman caught with up to 31 ballots in total between them, are “friends” of his who have helped him campaign in the past. Gonzalez told me this last week, the same day the women were stopped and questioned by Miami-Dade Police public corruption detectives.

“They’ve always helped with my campaigns. But as far as I know, they are not working for me. We are not paying them. When it comes to AB operations, I always stay away from that kind of thing. We do phone banking,” Gonzalez told Ladra on July 25, adding that he returned the favor with a Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey now and then. But that was before Cabrera was charged with the felony of forging the signature of an elderly voter with Alzheimer’s whose vote she stole for her turkey-doling candidates. Ladra can’t help but wonder if Gonzalez would have been so quick to defend Cabrera, who has obvious issues with ethics if that had come out sooner.

Ladra also can’t help but wonder if Zulema Gomez voted — or, rather, Cabrera voted for Zulema Gomez when Gonzalez last ran for office.

And I can’t help but wonder when Gonzalez will be summoned to the SAO — to talk turkey.