From reformer to operator? Miguel Gabela starts to look like the old boss

Questions abound about Bayfront Park, PR costs

If Miami voters thought they were getting a reformer when they elected city commissioner Miguel Angel Gabela in District 1, they might want to check the fine print.

Honestly, they really had no choice. His opponent, incumbent Alex Diaz de la Portilla, was facing public corruption charges including bribery and money laundering in a scheme where he had given away a city park for hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions. The case was eventually dropped, but not because it didn’t happen, and not before the election.

Now, Gabela, who ran as the antidote to insider politics, is starting to look, well, uncomfortably familiar.

Not the same. Not yet, anyway. But familiar enough to raise an eyebrow — and in Miami, that’s step one.

First, let’s give credit where it’s due. Gabela’s early tenure had some bite. Despite an ill-advised and ill-fated move to grant himself a lifetime pension — eventually dropped — he had some early Ws:

He went after the long-criticized Bayfront Park Management Trust
Backed an audit that exposed questionable practices
Took on then-Commissioner Joe Carollo and the entrenched interests around him
Demanded a stop to the money pouring out of city coffers for Carollo’s and ADLP’s legal fees

That wasn’t window dressing. That was disruption. For a minute there, it looked like District 1 had actually elected someone who meant it. The gruff-voiced, bellowing mafioso persona was just a bonus. It was like he was the people’s enforcer.

But just for a minute. Because once Gabela got control of the Bayfront Park Trust, the script flipped from reform to “under new management.”

Almost immediately, he appointed Raul Miro, a consultant who also gets paid through two of Gabela’s political action committees, as executive director managing the Bayfront Trust.

Last month, the commission made the position permanent after having approved — two months earlier in February — a salary increase from $150,000 to $255,000, roughly 70% salary jump.

That’s not a raise. That’s a glow-up.

And Miro is raking it in. Public records show that his firm Allegis Aviation Services was paid $16,000 from Gabela’s Miamians for Truth and Fairness and Justice PAC in March—$6,000 on March 13 and $10,000 on March 23 — and another $13,663 from Miamians for Fairness, a different Gabela PAC, including a $10,000 check in March, again. That’s the same month his salary went up 70%. We won’t know what Allegis Aviation got paid last month or this month until July, when the new campaign finance reports are due.

Ladra doesn’t know why an aviation company would be paid by a political committee, but it is where the conversation shifts from “bold hire” to, “Wait, what the f…?” No smoking gun. But definitely smoke.

Local government watchdog podcaster MiamiDadeTodayMercy posted a video of the last meeting where she questioned Miro’s appointment and salary raise. Gabela got very defensive and said that everybody at the Trust had gotten a raise because Carollo had never given them one. “Even Juanita who’s been working there for 20-somthing years who never voted. raise, we got her a raise,” Gabela said. How much you wanna bet it wasn’t 70%?

Gabela also said “I chose him,” referring to Miro, because he knew that Carollo had sent spies among the 20-something applicants for the job. “I feared we were going to be infiltrated by the people who were here before,” the commissioner said, giving off that Carollo level of paranoia.

And he might not be wrong.

But the salary is not the only thing in question. Gabela’s former campaign manager Emilio Antuñez has filed a public records request for the line item expenses of the Bayfront Management Trust. He hasn’t gotten them so, last Wednesday he filed a lawsuit demanding their production. Ladra will admit, she is salivating. Although it’s yet another needless lawsuit the city is going to lose because there is no way they do not have itemized spending documents.

Gabela did not respond to repeated texts and calls. Neither did Miro. But the commission District 1 Office Counsel, Jose Sanchez-Gronlier, told Ladra that, “from what I understand,” the documents that Antuñez wants do not exist. “Bayfront cannot create documents it does not have,” Sanchez-Gronlier, seen here some 40 years ago, said. “Bayfront Trust does not have that log.”

He really expects us all to believe that more than a year after the audit into the Bayfront Park Trust’s spending under Carollo — an audit that isn’t yet finished, by the way — the same agency doesn’t have a monthly payables and receivables list or document that shows what’s being spent and on what in real time? How is that even possible?

In fact, how is it possible that we still haven’t gotten a full accounting of the alleged misspending after Gabela promised us he would expose it all a year ago next week?

It’s very complicated, Sanchez-Gronlier said, adding that lots of documents are missing. You mean, besides the monthly reports that should have been started since then?

Translation: Ahora todo el mundo esta en el jueguito. So they don’t care anymore.

It’s not like there’s no need to worry. Just look at Gabela’s high-dollar District 1 PR apparatus — reportedly running in the ballpark of $30,000 a month between two shady companies. One is Atlantis Solutions, operating out of an apartment in Edgewater. As of February, they had been paid nearly $250,000 by the District 1 office, as Political Cortadito already reported.

The other is Elandor, which formed in June of last year but has been paid at least $6,000 a month since May of last year for an app — which can’t be a staffing or communication app because that costs hundreds a month, not $6,000.

Elandor operates out of a townhouse at the Apex Park complex in Doral, and is owned by Mary Carmen Paez who appears to live in the 7815 Nw 104 Street building, next to the 7805 building that is the address of Agustin Claret Canonico Saravia, the chair of Gabela’s Serve and Protect PAC. Las malas lenguas say they may be related.

Neither business has a website, a client list or any kind of verifiable track record.

Helloooo, Antonio Diaz? Ladra sure hopes Miami’s new inspector general reads Political Cortadito.

Sure, other commissioners have outside PR costs as well, as Ladra has reported before. But the District 1 costs seem like an inordinate amount to some shady outfits for an unknown scope of work and has sparked whispers about kick-backs. Who is getting all those 15% finders fees, now? Huh?

It certainly does not give off transparency vibes. It screams questions: What are taxpayers getting in return? What’s campaign vs. official business? Was there a competitive process? Or is this just the cousin of an in-law? You know? Miami style.

And now this same commissioner, the one who won’t answer simple questions about the Trust’s finances, wants to handle millions of dollars with a brand new Allapattah CRA? He wants to siphon funds from the rest of the city to spend how he sees fit. How accountable will he be with that?

Those are the kinds of questions that tend to get asked even faster when the messaging from the commissioner starts to look more like image management than public service.

Take, as a perfect example, that slick, glossy Vogue-style magazine that was mailed to every resident touting Gabela’s accomplishments and with Gabela’s touched-up face on the cover. Not a flyer. Not a newsletter. Not an email, like Miami-Dade Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez sends almost every day on every little thing. No, this is a 120-page magazine. On good heavy paper. The kind of magazine that costs real money to design, print, and distribute.

And now we have a new nickname for the commissioner: “Cover Boy Gabela.”

Sanchez-Gronlier said that the District 1 constituency is not email proficient and that the magazine is the best way to reach them.

Every single article has a story about what Gabela has done for the city, including some real efforts and then some things that the city might have done anyway with parks and such. There are resources for residents and a list of his staff, to justify its usefulness. But one article glared out in particular: a puff piece on Mariela Gabela, who, let’s be honest, is the brains behind the brawl. Mrs. Gabela is such a presence in the district operations that she attends almost all the city meetings and often loudly defends her husband from any critics.

Some say she is the real district commissioner.

“Behind every leader committed to their community stands a family that shares their vocation for service,” the puff piece starts. “In the case of Commissioner Gabela, his wife, Mariela Gabela, is a key figure — not only as his life partner but also as a constant source of support in the work the commissioner carries out for the benefit of District 1.”

Key word: Constant. That’s Mrs. Gabela behind the cellphone taking video of the activist asking questions of her husband at the last Bayfront Park Trust meeting. Ladra is sorta surprised she didn’t spring up and confront her. Mrs. Gabela is painted as Saint Mary in the glossy mag. But anyone who has run into her (ask Billy Corben) can testify that she is a not too saintly.

Commissioner Gabela may come off as the macho mafioso guy with his gruff voice and quick temper, but his wife wears the pants in the family. And in his office. Ask anybody on his staff.

That’s not our problem, however. Our problem is that this 120-page propaganda magazine was paid for by city taxpayers. And we’re not talking about simple communication with constituents, here. We’re talking about government-funded branding.

Sanchez Groniel told Ladra that everybody has a magazine. Ladra has never seen one like this. Then he said that Gabela used a model used by former Miami Commissioner and now Miami-Dade Commissioner Keon Hardemon.

So, now Gabela wants to be like Pay-to-Play Hardemon?

More and more, Gabela is starting to look like the same kind of politician he fought. Like ADLP and Carollo, and Hardemon for that matter, he refuses to call Ladra back. Except for once, when he insisted on recoding the conversation, which is better for me because later he can’t say, “I didn’t say that.” Because I would say “Play the tape.”

Not this time. Several calls and texts to Gabela went unanswered. Then on Saturday, Ladra finally got a call back from District 1 Counsel Sanchez-Gronlier, who also acts like Gabela’s gatekeeper. We spoke for 56 minutes about how Gabela still doesn’t trust me basically because Ladra didn’t publish every single word he said the last time we spoke and he recorded the conversation. He later texted Ladra to say Gabela feels that I “twist what you are told in whatever way you want to fit whatever agenda you have.

“He will talk to you again when you start reporting accurately facts and quotes instead of creating content that distorts the responses into false light, innuendos and unfair inferences from the responses,” Sanchez-Gronlier texted. (How was that, Jose?)

Sounds very Carollo-ish.

In my nearly hour-long conversation with Sanchez-Gronlier — an attorney for 34 years who specializes in criminal defense — he besmirched my journalistic motives and said these questions are being asked because Antuñez is out to get the commissioner because he was cut out of printing work.

Frankly, the fact that this stuff is on the radar is indeed because Antuñez made a public records request and filed a lawsuit last week because those public records were not provided, a lawsuit that was brought to Ladra’s attention by someone else, by the way. Not Antuñez. Emiliano, a grumpy old man who fights with everyone (even Ladra) did not pay for this story — or any story. He never paid for a story even when Political Cortadito supported Gabela, who was his bud back then, in his 2023 campaign.

The commissioner and his wife, who fights all his battles, will say that Antuñez paid for this story. That’s another thing that Carollo and Marjorie Carollo used to do. ADLP used to claim pay-to-play, too. It’s just deflection.

It is common knowledge that there was a serious rift created between Antuñez and Gabela after the commissioner basically poached a printer vendor from him, taking the 15% finder’s fee that most consultants get paid by the printer. Who is getting the 15% finder’s fee (read: kickback) now? Sanchez-Gronlier told Ladra he doesn’t know. But Ladra will bet it didn’t just disappear into thin air.

Still, as much as Gabela and his wife and his criminal defense attorney will argue that it is, Antuñez is not the story here. Whatever his motives for asking for the records are, we just want to see the records, now.

Because the real story is the shift we start to see when we put it all together:

Self-proclaimed reformer takes over powerful trust. Check. Said reformer installs his own leadership. Check. He approves a massive salary increase for his handpicked guard. Check. He hires several contractors for a high-level PR operation to send out polished messaging to the masses that include a posh magazine with his face on the cover. Check, check.

That’s not disruption anymore. That’s infrastructure.

Miami didn’t elect a machine politician in Gabela. But the machine might be building one anyway.

This is how it often starts. You challenge the system. You take control of the system. And then, slowly, the system starts looking a lot like you. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

No one is accusing Gabela of a crime. But people are starting to ask a more uncomfortable question: Is he still the reformer he ran as — or just the next guy learning how to run things the Miami way?

Because between the Bayfront Trust moves, the Miro raise and PAC connections, the mystery PR shop, and the glossy self-promotion District 1 may be realizing something.

The campaign was about change. The governance? Still very much about the same ol’, same ol.

No wonder Gabela recently moved to name a street after former Miami Commissioner Angel Gonzalez, who pleaded guilty to using his position to get his daughter a no-show job with a city contractor. The current commissioner, the once self-proclaimed reformer, obviously doesn’t think it’s so wrong to abuse your office.

This kind of independent, government watchdog reporting is crucial to transparency and democracy. And more so every day. Help shine a light on the darker corners of our community with a contribution to Political Cortadito. Click here. Ladra thanks you for your support.

Emiliano Antuñez public records lawsuit by Political Cortadito

From reformer to operator? Miguel Gabela starts to look like the old boss added by Ladra on May 11, 2026
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