Re-elected Hialeah Mayor gloats with plane banner

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Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane.

Yeah, it’s a plane. A political plane with a message.

It wasn’t enough for Hialeah Mayor Carlos “Castro” Hernandez to win with 81 percent of the vote Tuesday. It wasn’t enough to usher in two of his lackeys on the Seguro Que Yes Council.

Nooooooo. Hernandez had to take it to the schoolyard Thursday — a la nya-na, nya-na, boo boo — with a plane towing a banner over the City of Progress, poking fun at former Mayor Julio Martinez, who lost badly Tuesday, and former Mayor Raul Martinez, who also lost since he had supported The Other Martinez’s bid and who Hernandez thinks is the architect of everything.

“Raul y Julio – Los Miserables Se Entienden,” is what it said. Or what we think it said, because the letters seemed to get smaller or eaten up toward the end of the banner. “Raul and Julio — The Miserable Ones Understand Each Other.”

See? The very paranoid Hernandez and his campaign crusader Sasha Tirador, who apparently lives in the past, always blame Raul Martinez for everything and think he was behind not just Julio Martinez’s challenge but every single opponent of the mayor’s rubber-stamp council. Ladra really doubts that Raul — who is said to be trying to reinvent himself for possible state or higher office — had much to do with the campaign, but Hernandez and Tirador will take every chance they can to spit in his face.

Even with a silly, immature banner towed behind a yellow plane for $599 an hour. That’s how much it cost at Aerial Banners at North Perry Airport, which has the yellow planes like the one in Hialeah’s sky Thursday. And I guess this is the best thing the mayor could think of doing two days after being elected in one of the lowest turnouts in Hialeah’s history.

Neither Hernandez nor Tirador nor the mayor’s chief of staff, Arnie Alonso, returned my calls Thursday to not only chide them on their childishness, but also ask some more serious questions, like:

Is this a legal campaign expense? And if it is, was there a legally required disclaimer?

And if there was, what is the point if you can’t read it?

  Carlos Hernandez, Hialeah politics, Raul Martinez