Cuban voters impact Gables races

There will be two new faces on the Coral Gables Commission starting Friday after voters in the City Beautiful sent a 10-year mayor incumbent packing and welcomed a fresh face that may have broken the record for a candidate's absentee votes in the city's storied history.

Best thing to happen Tuesday is that the Cuban vote became apparently important again in Coral Gables. It certainly had an impact in the election of a first-time Belen boy with no real name recognition and a man known only as a onetime chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana.

But that's only one of the reasons why Jim Cason beat Mayor Don Slesnick by a scant 335 votes. Another was onetime friend and candidate Tom Korge, the city's longtime planning and zoning board chairman, for whom brother Christopher Korge called in fundraising favors from across the country. Korge may have picked up a few supporters in recent weeks after the Miami Herald endorsed him and heavy promotion of a YouTube video of Slesnick in a commission meeting switching his vote on a waste pick-up deal. (Ladra is no card-carrying member of the "Slesnick Happy Government" fan club, but he also flipped on his vote to hire City Manager Pat Salerno because he just wants everyone to get along and for the city to run smoothly. He really thinks it's right. He isn't beholden to anyone but Don. Not that that is okay.).

Slesnick, who didn't seem to take the blow too hard gathered with supporters at the Marriott on LeJeune Road, put the blame squarely on his old friend. They both live and breathe Coral Gables, run in the same circles and sound the same when they say the same things. Ladra likes to call them TomDon or The DonTom. But she doubts there will ever be a mending of the riff.

"Tom Korge just handed this city over," Slesnick said, no apologies, as he greeted a procession of friends, many of whom hugged him informally. That included former Miami Commissioner Johnny Winton, who is known more for his drunken arrest after an altercation at Miami International Airport than anything he did on the dais. Winton told Ladra there was no race in his future. "I'm not running for anything," he said smiling.

Slesnick said he had no intention to run, either. He told Ladra he really was going to retire on a positive note. He and Jeannett Slesnick put a deposit on a cruise that would have them at sea right now. In fact, Korge's treasurer is Charlie Johnson, the mayor's longtime treasurer, who probably would have stayed with Slesnick's campaign had anyone thought back then there was a Slesnick campaign. When Cason jumped into the race out of nowhere, Slesnick said he again approached Korge about helping him get support. Korge politely turned it down. As the weeks turned to months, and Vice Mayor Bill Kerdyk (who 78 percent of the vote Tuesday is no landslide for the man who should be king) stalled on making a decision, which meant he was not going to run against Korge (what do these guys have on everyone? Ladra wants to know.), Slesnick said he jumped in because he just didn't know what Korge was thinking and he didn't know anything about Cason, except that the diplomat had politely declined to serve on any city board or committee after he moved into his $870,000 house two years ago. Slesnick said he did not see a clearly superior candidate and that Korge likely diverted as many as 600 votes from him. He said Korge should have seen the writing on the wall (or at least in the polls) and could have stepped aside when the numbers showed him below Cason still.

"I'm not going to tell another candidate he should withdraw," Slesnick said (but we believe someone did get the message to Korge). "It would have been better for Coral Gables and good for his future. Coming in third is not good for his future. Cason staked claim to a solid set of voters out in North Gables, older Cuban American voters who wanted to honor him for his service. There was no way to get any of those votes away from him."

So, he said, Korge took votes from the mayor's base and also sent votes to Cason. "They were never going to catch up with him. And Tom took away my ability to catch up," Slesnick said, adding that the Herald endorsement gave him "new life" and new funding.

If we can trust the poll numbers leaked to Ladra, which definitely come from interested parties but are consistent no matter who's talking, Korge climbed quite a bit in recent weeks. Those alleged polls show Slesnick dropped about six points to 34.6 percent and Korge went up probably 10 or so points. But so did Cason. And Ladra credits at least some of that to Frank Quesada and his quest to become the record breaker in Coral Gables for collecting absentee ballots. Somebody call the Guiness people.

Quesada was very nice and polite to Ladra outside City Hall Tuesday night even though I had written that he was the Cuban Kerdyk and a pretty boy, pretty much. I hope he stays so nice and polite. He had the highest number of absentee votes, 1,448, and also made no apologies for such an aggressive AB campaign. "We worked on absentees. My thinking is you should make it easier for someone to vote," Quesada said, adding that he would work, as he said during the campaign, to move the Gables general elections from April to November in order to get a better turnout (it was about 26.6 percent Tuesday). But whether they were coordinating campaigns or it was just serendipity, Ladra bets that a bunch of those ABs overlap with the 1,124 absentee votes for Cason, who was seen as the "other Cuban candidate," and we suppose he is more Cuban at least than The DonTom. Slesnick's decent 1,043 AB votes must have surprised both Cason and Korge, who got 645 AB votes in his favor on his first campaign.

Ladra was not surprised to find that Gonzalo Sanabria, one of the six (though it should really say three) candidates to replace Chip Withers, trailed in both absentee votes and nods at the polls. His 466 absentee votes made up 37 percent of his total and more than half the number that came out to vote for him live. Brad Rosenblatt, limping from an attack campaign that outed a 2000 embezzlement arrest, beat Sanabria in both AB votes and at the polls for a solid 500+ vote lead and a respectable second place showing after such insurmountable bad press. But no matter how many AB votes Quesada's team may or may not have swiped (and I use that term loosely) from either Sanabria or Rosenblatt campaigns (because anyone can find out who requested absentee ballots at the elections department), the two were trounced at the polls with the Cuban Kerdyk getting almost a 50 percent mandate in a the three way race (because the non-candidates together got a combined 11.6 percent of the vote. Number 3 Sanabria got more than 16 percent.

So Ladra got her first ever predictions right, because I was wrong when I said Slesnick would eek it out again, but I was right when I said Quesada's bilingual charm would benefit from the dirty campaign against Rosenblatt that everyone linked to Sanabria. (The Kerdyk win doesn't count. And, again, more on that later.)

Well, maybe I should get extra points since I also said that Sanabria would come in third. Which reminds me... Oh, Maaaaattheeeewww?

No matter what happens in the Coral Gables elections Tuesday, there will be new face for the first time in 10 years in the seat where Commissioner Chip Withers, who is not seeking another term, has sat for a quarter of a century. Ladra predicts the two incumbents, as usual, win the other two races (more on that later), but this crazy, obnoxious, six-man race to replace Papa Chip has been the most difficult to call. But we are going to go with the least recognizable name of the three candidates who are legitimate: Frank Quesada. Frank Que Que? That's right.

One can't entirely blame the negative ads and attacks against one of the front runners, Brad Rosneblatt, who should have been smart enough to know they were coming and head them off. Still, there is no excuse for candidates who made Rosenblatt's longtime relationship with fashion designer Rene Ruiz part of the campaign crap. First there was a push poll linked to the FOP or the Accountability Project, but either way on behalf of Gonzalo Sanabria, who also plays the same issue fiscal responsibility issue over and over again (money burning or being poured out the faucet). Last week there were email blasts from Miracle Mile property owner Jackson Rip Holmes calling Rosenblatt the "gay candidate" (um, duh) because he got the Equality Florida endorsement. Not that Equality, or SaveDade who also gave Rosenblatt the endorsement, as expected -- has much juice in Coral Gables, but this shows Holmes has been asleep at the wheel. He seems surprised. Rosenblatt deserves to win if only to send a message to the creepy people who thought this kind of lame crap would work. And it would be a great dramatic finish if he did. But Ladra thinks he's going to come in a close second to...

Frank Quesada, who we like to call the Cuban Kerdyk (and we only mean it in the best way), will become the first newcomer to join the 2001 slate elected in a landslide vote that showed major discontent in the city and Vice Mayor Billy Kerdyk, his former boss and mentor who should have run for mayor (but more on that later). It says on his website that he was an aide for Kerdyk (but I have never known the commissioners to have aides). He also served on the city's traffic advisory board and is on the board of directors of the Coral Gables Community Foundation, where the mayor and his wife Jeannett have both served as chair of the board. Quesada is young, 31, and tall and gorgeous and his wife and family are beautiful. He has the blessings of Kerdyk, Withers -- who gave his endorsement just a couple of weeks ago -- and former mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli, in whose law firm the young Cuban Kerdyk worked. In his first campaign for office, Quesada -- who promised to stay clean and has, but keeps reminding us that he has -- raised $104,000. In addition to financial support from Valdes-Fauli, he has $500 donations from Miami Commissioner Francis Suarez, Carlos Lacasa, Carlos Trujillo. That is a very respectable amount for a freshman and more than Gonzalo Sanabria, who lost to Maria Anderson in 2009 and raised a total of $63,400 reported as of Friday. But if you look closely, Sanabria -- who more transparently loaned himself $100,000 for his bid two years ago -- padded that last report with $23,000 in four contributions from himself. Perhaps he did not want to be seen as someone who only got $40,000 in donations, especially if he could not pull in another $10,000 in that last quarter after so much negative press for his main opponent. Sanabria, who and spent at least $124,000 in the election two years ago, is not going to be able to get that kind of traction and would have needed it even more (people still hold a grudge from 2009) and that is why we have him at a solid three. He could go down, but not up.

None of the other three are worth worrying about. Richard Martin, III, a real estate professional who went up against Commissioner Ralph Cabrera in 2009, should have been doing better on his second bid. He raised $3,370, enough to buy some buttons. Holmes should have stayed home if he was going to use his excuse for a candidacy to pull out the gay card. Hey, wait, didn't he mail order a bride? He should talk. No wonder he practically had to loan himself all but $50 of his $1,400 treasure chest. Rene Alvarez is no better. Widely considered a plant by another campaign to dilute votes, Alvarez loaned himself $1,000 and got a $200 from one single contributor. He already spent all but about $80 of it so he won't be paying himself back. Hope whoever nudged him into the race will at least cover his costs. Ladra has no idea how Alvarez got the Miami Herald endorsement and, frankly, thinks that the board was just dazed and confused from all the county recall/mayoral mumbo jumbo.

So that leaves Quesada and Rosenblatt in the end and Ladra thinks that Quesada will take it. Not necessarily even because of anything he said or did right, but because of the train wreck that became the Rosneblatt campaign after he had to admit to 10-year-old charges of embezzlement. No matter how good the explanation is, coupled with tax liens and bankruptcies the whole sordid affair makes the skittish Gables voter think twice even when they may have supported him.

Bad news: Gables misses its opportunity to elect its first openly gay commissioner (and, yes, Rip, that would be a good thing). Good news: La Bella Ciudad gets a Hispanic majority commission for the first time.

Gables PAC funds smear campaign

A four-page mailer received by some Coral Gables residents in the past few days calls commission candidate Brad Rosenbalatt a deadbeat over stock photos of $100 bills and records of a 2000 arrest for embezzlement.

The disclaimer says it is a paid political advertisement by The Accountability Project, a political action committee formed by Keith Donner, who is also a political consultant who (surprise, surprise) would not tell Ladra today who had paid for the mailer.

But we traced some of it to Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina and the United Teachers of Dade, a union which Donner has represented in the past (and might now).

Donner, who started his business with a mass mailing company and ran the 2009 campaigns for Gables Commissioner Ralph Cabrera (won) and Miami Beach candidate Fredric Karlton (lost), said he was not working for any of the candidates in the Coral Gables election. But he would not say who paid for the mailer when Ladra asked him directly and repeatedly.

"It's right there in all the public disclosures. We will be filing disclosures throughout the campaign cycle," Donner said. "All contributions and expenditures have been disclosed and will be disclosed in a timely accurate manner."

To his credit, Donner, a pro-annexation activist who we met in a previous life when we covered Coral Gables for the daily paper, was suspicious of me. First, he asked if I lived and voted in the Gables (I do not; unincorporated Miami-Dade and proud of it!). And then he expressed concern I might be working for another candidate. "Are you getting compensation from anyone for writing this?" is a fair question. And I answered it. Truth is, as I've publicly disclosed before, I did dip my feet in political media consulting before I decided it wasn't for me. But, no, I am not getting paid by anyone to raise these questions (same lame deflection defense the Miami Voice recall backers use when I ask who funds them, which means they are hiding something,which they still have not disclosed). Yet, after I explained that to Mr. Donner, and to give him further comfort told him I was currently overdrawn at the bank and living with my parents (the truth shall set you free), he still did not tell me where the Accountability Project got its money.

Doesn't accountability mean transparency?

Instead, he laughed. "You can ask me that four times or five times and you will get the same answer. We disclose all contributions and expenditures in a timely manner. All our filings are public records. I file all the time." (And, for different PACs. More on that later).

Well, public records show that the Unaccountability Project raised $96,000 so far. That's more than most of the candidates in the Gables election have put together. The money came in gifts of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 (Ron Book gave $2,500) from unions and associations and corporations whose owners are more corporations, making it harder to trace. But we were able to link the first $10,000 gift made by the "Informing Our Community," which is not listed in Florida corporate records,by its Miami Lakes address. That property is divided into 10 parcels owned by different corporations. But two of them came back to Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, who is running for the county mayor's seat, and his chief of staff, Alex Ruiz.

Donner said he was not working on any county mayoral campaign, either. When asked what interest Robaina and his people might have in the Gables race, he only warned Ladra not to make "false inferences" and that the timing of the contribution, a day after the PAC was formed in August, made the reference "stale." Really? Okay. To clarify, because context is nothing if it is not clear: I am not inferring anything. I found, through a lengthy search of public records, that the owners of the property listed as a $10,000 contributor to the Gables PAC are tied to the mayor of Hialeah. I asked why (because I don't infer, I ask, point out and connect the dots). I got no answer, really. But I will keep asking.

Others who contributed to the Non-Accountability Project were Arthur and Andrew Hertz, with two $5,000 donations from their media companies, and several unions (you can see them all here: http://doe.dos.state.fl.us/cgi-bin/TreFin.exe for yourselves, and infer whatever you like). The biggest gift came from the Teachers for Public School Excellence, a PAC of the United Teachers of Dade, which Donner has done work for in the past. He would not say if he continues to lobby or work on the union's behalf ("I just don't talk about my clients."), but I know a bunch of teachers who would be downright outraged if they knew that a whole $30,000 of their lobby and PR money was being spent on a smear campaign in a city of Coral Gables election.

"There are a number of people in town who are appalled at Brad Rosenblatt's felony arrest , personal bankruptcy and his tax lie. Call it old fashioned but it is truly amazing that he is running," said Donner, who, by the way, did talk to Brad as early as late 2009 about working on the campaign, but was eventually not chosen. So any amazement is feigned.

Reached at his office Wednesday, Rosenblatt told Ladra he was disgusted by the campaign, but was not going to worry much about it. He said those tactics do not work in Coral Gables.

"This is gross, and the people here will not be swayed by grossness," Rosenblatt said.

Donner maybe considers it an education campaign (making the teachers money appropriate?): "If a Brad Rosenblatt supporter truly believes that he is qualified to serve on the commission, then no matter what is said about Brad Rosenblatt, it can't hurt him," Donner, who lives in High Pines, just outside Coral Gables, said. "That is how it works. If on the other hand you are deeply troubled by his record of financial mismanagement, then you will look seriously at the records."

We are deeply troubled, Keith, by what appears to be a lack, or shortage, of transparency.

His answer: "The law requires disclosure of campaign expenditures and contributions on a schedule. We adhere to the schedule. If somehow that schedule does not suit the needs of certain people, then I suggest then change the law."

Well, apparently it is suiting his needs. This is why PACs and such groups like "electioneering communications organziations" (read: PACs in disguise) are dangerous. Because they can hide the money and the people who are really financing and driving their efforts.

And that's not very accountable at all.

Win/win/lose and some predictions

Just because a group of people get seemingly majority support, doesn't mean they are right. Remember slavery, Nazi Germany or, closer to home, Havana 1959?

But while I strongly opposed the recall efforts for both Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez and Commissioner Natacha Seijas, now that the political committees and special interest groups behind both efforts were successful (win), Ladra is wagging her tail, too. We realized on Election Eve that we would be happy either way because we could have a lot of fun blogging (win) in the next two months or so leading up to the special election to replace them. Campaigning had already started even before the votes were counted. And all the front running candidates are doing their best to capitalize on the recall fever. Ladra doesn't think the commission will dare appoint anyone, so there will be another chance to make changes as early as May 16.

Or not. Seijas' people had already said they were going to focus on the campaign for the office, since the recall was pretty much hijacked and out of control already. And Alvarez can also run again, but he might not. But I challenge anyone to tell me how the candidates that have jumped at the chance to ride the voter wave of outrage are any different. What really changes? Nothing (lose). Because the new people can do the same things that Alvarez did to earn the voters' wrath.

Nine people have filed to take the mayor's seat, including rap pioneer/music mogul Luther Campbell. While Marcelo Llorente may have started his campaign first, Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina and Miami-Dade Commissioner Carlos Gimenez are considered the frontrunners. State Rep. Esteban Bovo (Rep. District 110 and an old friend of Miami Voice PAC chair Vanessa Brito) has been reported to be fundraising and some people think he would be a shoe-in for Seijas' seat. But Ladra will watch for a few others to jump in and bets at least one has ties to the secretly funded PAC that drove the Yes vote with outright lies, attacks on Seijas' weight issues and unsubstantiated claims of personal attacks.

A few more predictions to watch for:

Miami Voice will continue to play a role in this election, supporting one of the candidates or candidates in both seats, because PACs can take larger contributions than candidates (and from unknown sources the candidate would not want to be connected to) and spend it on a slew of things like dirty campaigns without the candidate actually being the bad guy.

A bunch of candidates, five or six at least, will run in District 13, some even placed there intentionally to split votes among certain blocs. Seijas wins.

More commissioners will be seen as ripe for recall by thisPAC or other PACs funded by these special interests or new special interests. Commissioner Jose "Pepe" Diaz might be the weakest of the herd, after reports that the firm he consults for benefited from his votes on the dais. But nobody is immune. Commissioners may start voting to avoid recalls, not to do what's right.

Recalls pop up in municipalities, too, whether the electeds deserve it or not, because professional political consultants and business people (now "recall experts") whose livelihoods depend on campaigns will identify these opportunities and take them to well-funded palanca people who can't win on their own in a general election.

Norman Braman loses interest and does not pour the same resources and stamina into the campaign for "Step 2", the real reform that should have come before the cart. That was just something thrown in at the end to appease smart voters. Like dressing on salad. Ladra doubts he ever intended to follow up on those measures for term limits and countywide seats.

Now, Ladra is no Walter Mercado. But if this were a game in Vegas (which it should be), that's how I would bet.

Gables poll pushes buttons

With the Coral Gables general election a month away, the City Beautiful’s first gay candidate has been targeted by a push poll that makes his choice of life partner an election issue.

“Would it affect your vote if you knew that Brad Rosenblatt was in a longtime relationship with a man? Would it bother you if he went to the swearing in ceremony accompanied by his male partner?”

Longtime Gables gadfly Charlie Girtman isn't quoting directly but told Ladra this week that was the basic principle of the first two questions about Rosenbatt (hotographed here with his partner of more than 10 years, fashion designer Rene Ruiz, and Gables resident Cristy McClelland at a 2009 fundraiser for a state race). Girtman said he got the call Friday evening, March 3. And it didn’t bother him just because it came at dinner time.

“You’re going to call me at my house and ask me things like that? I didn’t answer,” said Girtman, still upset four days later.

And he isn't the only one, said Mayor Don Slesnick, who got complaints for a couple other people, including Larry Adams, the retired FP&L executive, who the mayor reports was equally incensed.

"He was furious," Slesnick said. "He hated the way it was done. He said 'If I never thought about voting for Brad before, I would think about it now.'"

The mayor said he himself was not polled. "But from the description of it, I am very distressed that Coral Gables politics has sunk to a new low."

The “push poll” – propaganda in disguise as a poll, intended to plant biased ideas in voters’ heads -- also asked questions about candidate Gonzalo Sanabria, 63, who ran against Commissioner Maria Anderson in 2009 and might have won, if not for the bombshell that he had never voted in the city. “Would it affect your vote/opinion if you knew Gonzalo Sanabria missed a big percent of the meetings as a member of the historic preservation board," recalled Girtman -- who has a Sanabria sign in his yard -- of one question.

He said the caller i.d. would not identify the caller and the "pollster" said the name so fast, something like Kirshner or Keebler (not the cookies, we are sure). So who is behind it?

Can we eliminate Gonzalo Sanabria, a real estate executive who ran unsuccessfully against Maria Anderson in 2009, because of those questios? Not so fast. They could be throwaway questions intended to deflect suspicion, since that argument about the meetings was made in 2009, and can't be compared to the personal nature of the questions about Rosenblatt. What about the rest of the crowded field vying to replace veteran Commissioner Wayne “Chip” Withers, who has been on the dais for half of my life: Frank Quesada, Rene Alvarez, Richard Martin II and Jackson “Rip” Holmes.

Ladra lets Holmes, a commercial real estate broker who owns property in the downtown, off the hook right away because this kind of strategy takes two things he lacks: focus and funds. No offense, Rip. You have energy and drive and even some brilliant ideas lost in there somewhere, but no Machiavellian instincts. So what about the other three?

Martin, 53, is a real estate and mortgage broker who ran unsuccessfully against Commissioner Ralph Cabrera last year. Now president of the Ponce Business Association, he is much more polished. You can tell he has been diligently working at this since the day after that election. It will be fun to watch him go head to head with Sanabria, who was sort of an ally two years ago. But Ladra doesn't think he would want to win this way.

Quesada, 31, who once worked for Gables poster boy Commissioner William Kerdyk, Jr. at his real estate firm, is an attorney with former Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli’s firm and on the board of directors at the Coral Gables Community Foundation. Ladra thinks he's one of the stronger candidates. He's a pretty boy with a Hispanic name, traffic adivsory board experience and all the right friendships.

But Alvarez, 42, an insurance executive and pharmaceutical sales representative who jumped into the pool last, might grab some of that Hispanic vote. He may not be as pretty as Quesada, but he has the same civic experience, serving on the city's public safety committee and the UM/Coral Gables Relations committee, as well as several county development and advisory boards.

So what Ladra wants to do is have a poll of our own. Our first Political Cortadito Poll. Who do you think is behind the push poll in Coral Gables?

Gables candidate's past rears up

Coral Gables commission candidate Brad Rosenblatt, president of the downtown Business Improvement District, has made business experience a staple of his platform and is the only one of six wannabes for Wayne “Chip” Withers seat to support a $16-million Miracle Mile makeover.

He’s also the only one once charged with embezzling $88,000.

That was in the fall of 2000, and records about his Miami Beach arrest, the lawsuits that followed and his 2002 bankruptcy were distributed to the media this past week by either his opponents or their supporters.

“False accusations,” says Rosenblatt, who promised to provide Ladra Thursday afternoon with other paperwork – like the recant from the main witness – that were conveniently not in the inch-thick package the media got.

“There was no wrongdoing,” Rosenblatt said, adding that it was a setup and that his mistake was to trust too much. He said he was 22 or 23 (he was 25) and naïve and he was misled and he didn’t know what he was doing. But he also said it made him a better businessman and makes him a better candidate for the commission.

“It made me more aware,” Rosenblatt told Ladra in a late telephone call Wednesday. “I regret the fact that it happened, but it made me a better person today. It’s made me more pay attention and made me more fiscally responsible.” (Of course, he couldn’t be less fiscally responsible).

Rosenblatt said he did not see this coming, which would make me think twice about voting for him much more than a 10-year-old charge that could be explained as a he said/she said thing and twisted by the right spin doctor to mean that Rosenblatt will, better than any other candidate, be able to spot thievery and fraud. Because, really. Come on. If you don’t know this kind of thing is going to come up, then you have no business running for office.

“It was a surprise to me. I thought that was 10 years behind me,” Rosenblatt told Ladra. “And I’m disappointed to hear that certain city commissioners have gone out of their way to distribute false accusations against me.”

That’s right. He blames one of the electeds already there is trying to block him from grabbing a neighboring seat on the dais. Through the elimination process of his fans (Anderson, the mayor and Chip Withers, who basically does whatever Anderson and the Mayor do), we came to a shortlist: Vice Mayor Billy Kerdyk and Commissioner Ralph Cabrera.

“Kerdyk would never do something like this,” Rosenblatt said.

Cabrera, who could not be reached for comment, is said to be discreetly supporting Sanabria.

Ladra got the package, too, but was suspicious of its origins, and with good reason. Adjudication was withheld and Rosenblatt, who pled not guilty and filed a lawsuit after he was arrested for breach of contract, had the record expunged. So, Ladra wants to know how does someone get an expunged record and isn’t that illegal to get and distribute? Did the person who wanted everyone to know that Rosenblatt was accused of a crime 11 years ago, commit a crime the other day to do it? Ladra whined and pleaded with me to post this, but I thought she wanted bacon. Now that Channel 10 aired it last night and we know Miami Herald’s Tania Valdemoro is working on a story, we can add a little context, as we often like to do.

This is classic smear campaign and even a dog like Ladra knows some people still hire muckrakers to dig up dirt – real and make believe – on the other candidates rather than focus on their own strengths and issues. We can see them jumping for joy when they found this Sept. 29, 2000 arrest report that says he transferred a total of $88,008.92 from the account of R & O Media, where he was president.

The company had formed that January by Rosenblatt and Richard Olsen, who may have been mayor once of Bay Harbor Islands, to publish and distribute Channels International Magazine. So that would mean Rosenblatt was skimming almost $10,000 a month. Since there was no money for bills, Rosenblatt – who is president of Rene Ruiz Inc. -- also wrote more than 120 rubber checks, little more than a dozen a month. He said on the Just News segment by Todd Tongen that he signed blank checks over to his partner because that’s what he was asked to do.

But while there is no criminal record in the Miami-Dade system, Rosenblatt apparently did agree to some kind of restitution or settlement: R & O Media, Christopher and Richard Olsen and Channels International Magazine were all on a list of creditors whose debts were discharged in his 2002 bankruptcy. The Chapter 7 also erased away $133,300 owed to American Express, $118,125 to a relative of the Olsen’s named John E. Downey (Rosenblatt lost that lawsuit the year before), $19,719 in what look like school loans, $9,760 to Bank of America and $1,160 to Enterprise Rent-A-Car, among others debts.

Olsen was interviewed by Tongen and said that Rosenblatt ended up paying about $20,000 in restitution. He said the candidate was deceiving people and called him “a thief” who “hasn’t changed his colors.” It’s not like they’re buds who hang out now, so I figure that last part he was just guessin’.And, apparently, the people who do know Rosenblatt now are standing by their man. Former Mayor Dorothy Thomson and Commissioner Maria Anderson, who has been the city’s liaison to the BID, both said they would continue to give Rosenblatt their support. Irela Bague, who helped him launch his campaign, told Ladra Wednesday that she would still vote for him on April 12.

“That kind of negative campaigning really doesn’t do very well in Coral Gables,” Bague said.

And she is right at least by recent memory. Gonzalo Sanabria tried to embroil Anderson two years ago in some scandals and tie her to business contracts awarded by the BID to her husband’s business partner. In the end, the negativity was what probably cost him the election. That and his voting record of 0.

I’m sure that is no longer true. He voted for himself at least once by now.