GOP gets desperate in Hialeah Senate race against David Perez

Voters in Hialeah and Miami Lakes have been barraged by a deluge of mailers that call Coral Gables firefighter and Democratic candidate for Senate a weak, tax-happy, socialist, communist puppet.

Yes, the Republicans, are very afraid.

They hand picked State Rep. Manny Diaz Jr. for the seat vacated by termed-out Rene Garcia, and are now finding it too steep of an uphill climb.

They poll, too, and their results must be the same as the two other polls that have Perez leading, if only by a little bit. A Public Policy Polling survey done from Sept. 26 through Oct. 1 has Perez, a one-time aide to former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas — who supports and has campaigned with him — beating Diaz by 3 points. This is the same company that has gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum leading. An internal poll shows the same thing. Sure, it’s within the margin of error, but 21% were still undecided and the trend seems to lean blue. Hillary Clinton won the district by 12 points in 2016 and Barrack Obama and Bill Nelson each won the district by 4 points in their last elections.

“I feel really good for a first time candidate running against someone who’s been in office six years,” Perez told Ladra.

And it is pretty obvious that Diaz does not feel so good.

The no-show charter school administrator has sent at least nine negative mailers about Diaz, calling him weak on schools because he doesn’t support guns in the classroom and would rather see a ban on assault weapons and saying that he cozies up to Cuba’s Raul Castro and Venezula’s Nicolas Maduro. You know, because Hialeah.

And that’s what Miami Republicans do when they’re desperate.

The Diaz campaign has only spent about $45,000 on mailers, but most of them have been paid for by the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.

That has left Diaz, who has far outraised Perez, with a lot of cash for TV — he’s bought at least $180,000 worth of time since Sept. 28 — and other get out the vote efforts, like maybe some of the same absentee ballot fraud we know he committed in 2012.

According to the latest campaign reports through Oct. 12, Diaz had raised $613,345 for his campaign. That doesn’t include the $366,810 given to him in staff, rent, polling and data by the Republican Party of Florida. He’s spent $565,938 so far, mostly falsely attacking Perez out of desperation.

And that doesn’t include his political action committee, Better Florida Education — which has raised $607,800 all by itself — and two other PACs he’s affiliated with, which have been funded by Big Sugar, private prison companies and the charter school industry, among others.

All the mailers are ridiculous but the one that says Perez is weak on schools is hilarious, too, considering that the PTA dad has the all the teachers’ union endorsements. All of them. He also has, naturally, all the firefighter unions.

That has helped him raise $136,323 to supplement about $75,000 from the Democratic Party for staff and other in-kind services. He spent a little more than $92,000, but he had a primary to go through while Diaz has spent his time name-calling and dodging debates, just like he did two years ago against the last challenge, Ivette Gonzalez Petkovich, who he only beat with 52% (and she had less money and support than Perez). So it’s not like he’s got a huge base to begin with.

Diaz doesn’t want to debate Perez because he knows his record is going to come into question and he’ll lose more of that. Republican’s aren’t super excited to vote for him already.

Perez is also affiliated with The Floridians For Change PAC, which raised another $351,000, which ain’t peanuts. For a newbie, he’s done pretty well fundraising.

Which may be another reason why Diaz is running scared.

David Perez, Manny Diaz Jr

GOP gets desperate in Hialeah Senate race against David Perez added by Ladra on October 23, 2018
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