The mayoral race in Doral between incumbent Mayor Luigi Boria and former founding Mayor J.C. Bermudez has only gotten 
more heated now in the weeks and days before the runoff Dec. 13.
And Boria — whose 33 percent Nov. 8 was dwarfed Bermudez’s 46 percent vote — has been the one on full attack in what seem like a desperate attempt to keep his seat.
Boria, who bought his last election, loaned himself $260,000 for the campaign within the last two months — $35,000 on Nov. 2 and then $200,000 on Nov. 15 and $25,000 on Dec. 5 (that’s after Bermudez beat him up with a 13-point lead in the first round). It makes up almost half of his campaign account total of $530,000. He had earlier given $20,000 to his political action committee, Doral United, which has raised and spent about $230,000.
Yes, by Tuesday night, Ladra fully expects Boria to have spent at least $1 million – on paper. Who knows how much money is being spent under the table? But, hey, it is expensive to attack your opponent.
There have been video ads about “shady deals” and mailers calling Bermudez corrupt, phone calls promoting ethnic division, fake social media profiles and fake news sites with stories about yard signs getting stolen.
A 30-second video spot with a movie trailer-like voiceover says “This November, a storm named JC Bermudez threatens Doral. Bermudez wants to take Doral back to the past of shady deals, where his friends would benefit from our taxpayer dollars… shady deals for his shady developer friends.”
The whole tack is pretty laughable — if Doral’s future wasn’t in the balance. It’s also pure projection. Guess Boria is hoping people forgot about the zoning changes requested for high density residential for his children and their business partner right after he was elected the first time — a shady deal Ladra believes is still being investigated. Maybe he is mentally blocking all the memories about Joe Carollo and the many allegations that he was in bed with the Venezuelan government.
But there’s more.
Stealing the script from the national campaigns, Boria — or, more likely, his political guru, Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador — has also fashioned a fake news website called Real Doral News, complete with a tagline that reads “Real Doral News is a web Newspaper specialize in Braking News About City of Doral Fl.” I kid you not. It really does say “specialize” in “braking” news. Maybe Boria, whose English is obviously limited, did write it himself.
A recent post on the website claims that someone with the Bermudez campaign stole a Boria yard sign. The post comes complete with multiple time lapse photos of a blond woman taking a Boria sign into a gray van. But there’s no way to know that Boria (or Sasha) didn’t make that happen, too. There is no way to know that blond woman isn’t with Boria’s campaign. It’s easy to tell someone to steal your own sign so you can capture it with blurry phone pics.
Most recently, Bermudez accused Boria of creating fake social media accounts with the former mayor’s name. “And posting lies about me,” Bermudez told supporters in an email blast last week.
“These dirty tactics do not reflect the values on which we founded our city. We ask Mr. Boria’s campaign to please respect our community and not offend the intelligence of our residents,” Bermudez wrote, urging residents to “focus on the issues that are really important to our community.”
And that can be summed up in three things: Development, traffic caused by development and government accountability and transparency.
While he has blasted Boria on these issues in a couple of email blasts, Bermudez has basically centered his campaign around putting Doral “back on track.” It is basically a referendum on the incumbent — without naming him. Bermudez characterizes it as a rescue.
In his video commercial, he tells us himself that he decided to run after many people told him “things are not like it used to be.”
“People asked me to run,” Bermudez told Ladra recently. “They don’t like what they are seeing, the direction that the city is going in. It is not what we thought of when we incorporated Doral.”
As expected with a message like that, Bermudez has gotten the support of Doral’s founding father, Morgan Levy and founding former Councilwoman Sandra Ruiz — who came in third on Nov. 8. Their message is that Bermudez can better represent the ideals and quiet, residential community goals on which Doral was founded.
Less expected is the endorsement from several leaders in the Venezuelan community, like Jose Colina and the members of VEPPEX, Venezolanos Perseguidos Politicos en el Exilio.
Bermudez says getting Doral “back on track” means going back to the city’s master plan and advocating for smart and planned develoment. He claims that Boria has granted 29 zoning variations during his years in office. Boria’s campaign, on the other hand, claims that Bermudez approved 89% of the projects that came before him. But wouldn’t that make sense in Doral’s infancy? And what’s important is the upzoning changes, no?
Bermudez is also concerned about what he says is an effort by Boria to silence dissent by putting limits on public speaking and having emergency meetings during the day. There’s also the high turnover and the multiple stains on the young city’s image during Boria’s tenure. The firing of city attorneys and multiple city managers.
Boria, who is Venezuelan, has been telling people that getting Doral “back on track” means getting rid of the Venezuelans and putting it back into the hands of Cubans. Boy, did that backfire.
Nasty Doral mayoral race tops $1 mil approaching runoff added by Ladra on
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