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But I didn’t see the words “political committee”on the mailers that they sent from Pet’s Voice, Inc. The ad on my own page — which, I’m sorry I let them bully me into taking it off for a day while I sought legal opinions — has just the Pets Voice. As do the videos it links to.
The only materials with “political committee” in the disclosure are the posters that were being posted, 
against city ordinance, on tree trunks and utility poles by the unsuspecting and likely volunteer campaign worker.
Well, then, ahem, Diaz’s people said that furthermore, the Pet’s Voice should not be paying for any ads that advocate voting against a particular candidate. Voting for a particular candidate might just squeak by their issue driven cause if this is the candidate that best supports their issue.
But that was the issue for the PAC, which has since been disbanded. Besides, Rosenberg can always argue that it’s in the best interest of the issue to remove Diaz, who betrayed them and the majority vote.
Even state officials and the media admit that this is murky territory. At the very least, it doesn’t seem like it was a conspiracy against Diaz. In fact, it seems more like Goliath beating up on David with a convenient mountain they are making out of a molehill.
Diaz seemed downright offended by Ladra’s assessment when we spoke last week.
“They are hitting me left and right and you see them as a gnat in my eye,” he asked Ladra, pretty much spot on with what I said, which was that he was using an iron frying pan rather than a fly swatter to kill a gnat. “They’re running an illegal campaign,” Diaz said, exaggerating just a bit about what is essentially, at most, a campaign finance violation.
“I have to disclose everything, what I spend and raise, and these people don’t?” Yeah, but if you want to change the law, you will have to go a different route than a complaint.
“I always run a campaign like I’m last. And I don’t know who I’m facing. Could be a billionaire,” Diaz added. “Why should I trust them if my attorneys are telling me that everything they do is illegal.”
A better question might be why should you trust your attorneys?
Rosenberg — who doesn’t have a legal bully like JC Planas on his payroll, hired to chill challenges — told Ladra that the Political Committee words on the fliers were just a mistake, a carry over from when they did have to use such a disclaimer and a misunderstanding on a very complicated subject that his disorganized brain cannot fully digest. And it’s believable. Michael — who says he has since fixed the wording — is unfortunately more moron than mastermind when it comes to politics.
And Diaz’s people are taking advantage of that to spin their campaign on something other than his poor track record, which is an easy target because it includes voting on the controversial luggage wrap deal for the airport and hated Marlins Stadium financing package that puts us in debt for them for 30 years.
Diaz, who followed the aforementioned poor campaign worker down the street as he plastered the wrong posters in the wrong places in what looked like an effort to intimidate. Diaz told the man he was violating code enforcement. Does he work for the city of Doral now? Another day, three Doral Police officers showed up at the street where Rosenberg and Rita Schwartz were handing out flyers for Figueira.
“Every morning, I wonder what’s going to come next because every night when we go out, something seems to happen,” Rosenberg said. “It is obvious we are followed…Flyers can be dangerous. Paper cuts are serious.”
“They feel like they have to watch everything I do,” Figueira told me. “Here is a big man with 10 years of experience and one little woman with very little money and backing and they are afraid of me.
“If he’s done so well and so much for the community and he’s so entrenched for the past 12 years, then let them campaign on why doesn’t he focus on that?”
Well, like we said, the record is not that stellar.
Ladra told some of Diaz’s people (she likes to give free media advice) that they shouldn’t have given her so much attention. Here is a woman who failed to establish cause for a sexual harassment claim she made against the Miami-Dade School system when she was forced to retire for performance issues. Diaz, Planas et al have inadvertently elevated Figueira and her campaign — and her once far-fetched chances of winning — by validating her candidacy, making her more relevant and/or, at the very least, giving her more name recognition and earned media if nothing else.
The Goliath beating up David thing could be seen as bully tactics and now Figueira could do better than before. Which is not a good thing for Diaz.
After all, 25% of the voters already disliked Diaz enough to vote against him in 2010 and for someone far less known and with far less money.
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