Polar opposite partisan caravans show mayoral votes are along blue/red lines

A pair of caravans in Miami-Dade on the last day of early voting show just how partisan and polemic our county mayoral race has become.

In Miami Beach, a blue stronghold with a Democrat mayor, the Miami Beach Democratic Club had a convoy Sunday to kick off the Democratic National Convention, which started Monday, and promote the new vice presidential pick of Kamala Harris to run alongside Joe Biden.

Of course, the caravan — which ended at the North Shore Branch Library where early voting was just ending — was also a campaign event for Miami-Dade Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, the party’s choice in what used to be a non partisan race. Joining her was District 5 Commissioner Eileen Higgins, a Democrat incumbent who has been cast as a communist by Republican challenger Renier Diaz de la Portilla, a former state rep and Miami-Dade School Board member. Both candidates’ campaigns is being handled by consultant Christian Ulvert. They posted a video together.

On the other side of town at about the same time, a Donald Trump lookalike led a caravan of Republican supporters through and around the West Dade Regional Library. At one point, about an hour before polls closed, fake Trump jumped out to pose for selfies with a few thrilled voters.

After all, this is Westchester, which has elected county Commissioner Javier Souto for decades and where even a Halloween-style Trump will be received like a boy band at a teenage sleepover. On Sunday, it looked like the Qanon headquarters in South Florida.

Trump’s bright yellow convertible — they couldn’t get red? — was draped with a “Police Lives Matter” banner on the hood and followed by more than a dozen cars and trucks. A couple had drivers or passengers with bullhorns who yelled support for Commissioner Esteban Bovo, the only Republican in the mayoral race, as well as congressional candidate Omar Blanco and State Rep. Daniel Perez, the future Speaker who, ironically, has a challenger in the primary financed by the current Speaker.

But, they went a bit further, calling some of their opponents — even Republican Mayor and congressional candidate Carlos Gimenez, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and then cooperated with Trump on holding illegal immigrants for deportation — communists. One of the trucks in the caravan carried multiple signs with big Xs across the communists that need to be taken down.