After almost two years of nada, a political action committee for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez reported this month that it raised $5,000 in the last days of August, raising eyebrows across the county about what Gimenez, who is termed out in 2020, will do with it. Will he run for mayor of Miami in 2021 […]
Absentee voters in the special, shotgun wedding election for Miami-Dade Commission District 5 started getting ballots last week — and returning them, with 2,535 mailed back as of Monday. So, naturally, they’re also already getting campaign mailers in their mailbox. Every day. Sometimes three and four a day. Naturally, there are attack missiles against the […]
Andrew Vargas, the Republican candidate in the special election for House 114 to replace Daisy Baez, hasn’t confirmed to an invitation to the first debate for the seat, held by the League of Women Voters this coming Tuesday. He won’t. He can’t. Because it is much easier for Vargas to attack Democrat Javier Fernandez with […]
Don’t be fooled by the name, people. The Keep Government Accountable Coalition is not really a “citizens watchdog group,” as it pretends to be. It is a political action committee hiding under another name and the secrecy of a 501c3 non-profit. That means we don’t know who is funding it. Thanks to Citizens United — whose […]
Miami-Dade County commissioners gave preliminary approval Tuesday to an ordinance that would force elected officials and any candidates for elected office to disclose when they were soliciting funds for any political action committee. Hmmm. Doesn’t that sound familiar? Am I the only one having de ja vu? Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who sponsored the measure, said […]
UPDATED: David Custin wasn’t always so successful in Miami Beach. Before he played a crucial role in electing Mayor Philip Levine and Commissioners Joy Malakoff and Michael Grieco in 2013, Custin was really just a glorified mailboy-turned-campaign-consultant who dabbled sometimes as a lobbyist. He only had one client, the red light camera American Traffic Solutions, Miami Beach […]
Miami Beach Commissioner Jonah Wolfson announced Thursday that he was going to close down the shady Relentless for Progress political action committee he chairs and has been championing and defending for months. He says he will return whatever is left of the $1.4 million they had collected as of the end of July on a […]
Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and Commissioner Jonah “Pottymouth” Wolfson tried hard to quash a motion by Commissioner Deede Weithorn to have the Ethics Commission look into their brazen shakedown of vendors and developers who want to do business, or continue doing business, with the city. And they may have won at the dais, after the motion […]
The new, half million Miami Beach PAC funded by vendors and special interests and chaired by the termed-out Commissioner Jonah Wolfson has also had some interesting expenses. My bad for not mentioning before. Ladra got too caught up in the specter of a possible shakedown scenario. And it could be a war chest for Mayor Philip Levine‘s […]
With elections in November looming in four of Miami-Dade’s biggest cities, and eyes on the local and state elections in 2016, the political action committees are coming. Folks like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera have shown that you don’t need hefty personal accounts if you raise the heavy-lifting funds for […]