Eddy Gonzalez’s ‘$400,000’ attack ad is a desperate last stab

Eddy Gonzalez’s ‘$400,000’ attack ad is a desperate last stab
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He must be desperate. And it’s not like State Rep. Eddy “Here Comes Hialeah” Gonzalez can actuallyelection2014 run on his own track record in his bold (read: WTF?) attempt to become the most unqualified ever Miami-Dade Property Appraiser.

So Gonzalez — who came in 10 points behind former Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia in the August primary — is doing what most desperate politicos do when they see defeat coming at the 11th hour: He is making stuff up or taking truth wildly out of context.

Gonzalez is hinging his campaign on an attack video ad against the front runner for allegedly having a $400,000 no-show employee when he was in the property appraiser’s office from 2008 to 2012.

Well ain’t that the pot calling the cafetera black. Nobody knows what Gonzalez does at his own and latest no-show job, which he will likely lose as soon as he is termed-out in November, if he doesn’t find another elected position of influence to cling to, and pronto. Hence the countywide race.

This  honorary member of the Hialeah Hoodlums has almost no choice but to launch a TV attack ad that says Garcia looked the other way while one of his employees made $400,000 without coming into the office. But that’s not really true. And if Garcia looked the other way, so did countless of other department heads at the county and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez himself, who, by the way, is endorsing Gonzalez.

In fact, Gimenez might be the most responsible for that “no-show” employee. That’s because the worker, on of 370 in the appraiser’s office, was the union representative who — because of the contract negotiated by the administration — is paid a salary while working union duty.

Not that it’s going to have much effect on the campaign, but earlier this month, Garcia filed a complaint with the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust.

Read related story: Marco Rubio comes out for Eddy Gonzalez in prop app race

The reference in the ad was to one employee who made somewhere around eddypedro$86,000-a-year (the $400K calculates benefits) and whose job was protected. In other words, Garcia could not fire the worker, even if he had wanted to. He could not demand that the worker devote himself to county duties. The employee is one of what we now know is around 40-some county employees who do union work on the taxpayer dime, again, as per the contract that the administration negotiated with the 10 unions that represent Miami-Dade’s 25,000 workers.

And he did not pay the worker. They are all on the county payroll.

“It is a big, fat lie,” Garcia told Ladra about the attack ad, in which former candidate Alex Dominguez — who came in fourth in August’s five-way primary — urges voters to support the candidate he used to call a corrupt career politician during the primary.

“Pedro Garcia had his chance before, and he failed us,” Dominguez says in the 30-second spots in both English and Spanish. The Spanish-language one sounds worse, because Dominguez says Garcia paid the worker a $400,000 salary. That’s just not true. The salary was $86,000.

Where is PolitiFact when you need it?

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