Friday, February 06, 2015

The skinny on Carlos Gimenez and his uphill battle to stay in office. By Geniusofdespair

Gimenez and Regalado
Can't wait to see Mayor Gimenez's fundraising results for January? Here is the link to his PAC Miami Dade Residents First. Nothing on it yet.  He is trying to scare candidates from running against him with a big head start on funding. He is trying for $300,000. Will it matter? Maybe. Rick Scott was able to pull it off with a lot of money and absolutely no charisma so Gimenez is in the running as he has both. Can a brilliant candidate with a shitload of charisma unseat him?

Now we have Raquel Regalado teaming up with Norman Braman on a lawsuit to actually put "Residents First." City residents had a vote on the Nail Clipper building (Skyrise) that no City funds would be used. In a sleigh of hands, Gimenez proposed using County money, that City residents also have to pay for. Unsavory. Her dad Thomas, also feels used and abused over the county funding. Raquel Regalado said:

“It’s about transparency and accountability,” Regalado, a school board member, said in an interview Thursday. “At the end of the day, the ballot language said no public money should be utilized. Then no public money should be utilized.”
Raquel Regalado looks you in the eye when she listens and speaks (Miami New Times Photo).
 Her name is out there countywide between this suit and the courthouse bond issue she rallied against. Raquel has facial expressions.  She has the Cuban Vote hands down and and the frumpy Gimenez has alienated more whites and blacks with his eye-rolling and tart tongue at local meetings.  Not to mention his high salaries to cronies at County Hall and his attacks on unions and libraries. Gimenez endorsed and helped finance Lynda Bell's and Mark Bell's campaigns. I warned him about his relationship with Bell early on. He didn't listen. Now he is running an uphill battle, with money as his only crutch, to keep his seat if Regalado decides to run. She would be the FIRST WOMAN MAYOR, WOW!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wasn't the county staff suppose to be streamlined under Gimenez. Instead there are still too many at the top getting large salaries, consolidation only meant moving chairs around, not savings to the taxpayers.
I think the mayor has alienated more and more of his constituents. He will have trouble getting reelected.

Anonymous said...

Agree 100%. He is so smug at meetings. He seems like he just wants to leave. What is the story with Insom Kim? Did he just transfer her to get her salary off his books?

Anonymous said...

He also has a mighty slick Communications Director who knows how to muzzle his boss or when the "tart tongue" breaks through the muzzle, to just spin the outcomes.

Anonymous said...

I read that Raquel will give up her radio and her television show if elected Mayor. I woudl hope that she doesn't conisder losing such a valuable communication tool.

It would be refreshing to have an elected official who has such a forum. No sunshine laws are broken when the leader takes messages directly to the constituents.

Anonymous said...

Here's a death caused by cutbacks from our mayor's budget:

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015/02/02/warning-alarm-broken-on-runaway-bus-that-killed-driver/

Anonymous said...

Since first coming to office, Gimenez has alienated more well wishers than Attila the Hun. The promise to streamline county staff was a simple excuse to remove employees from their posts and put in place puppets who allow him to rip us off with highly controversial construction contracts that somehow most of the time end up with MCM Construction. Only a well organized campaign effort will derail Gimenez's outlandish plans. Surely hope Michael Putney and Miriam Marquez of The Herald and El Nuevo Herald don't sell their souls to Gimenez this time as they did last time around.

al crespo said...

Nice photo you have of Gimenez and Regalado at a swanky event. Want to bet that neither of them reported the tickets they got to go to that event as required by Florida Law?

Anonymous said...

Carlos Gimenez panders to his lobbyist and developer pals and he engineers "bailouts for billionaires". But he sure is rude to normal people. No way he wins another race.

Anonymous said...

A fat job awaits Carlos wherever he wants.

Anonymous said...

Gimenez will not deter Raquel with bundles of cash in his committees. No matter how much money he has, he has no record to run on, and no vision to stir the imagination of the voters. He is a petty fool in the embrace of Jorge Lopez, and Jorge will squeeze every contractor he can for retainer fees before Gimenez takes a walk or loses to Raquel. If he musters the gumption to run, his defeat should come as no surprise. His past victories were only because he had weak opponents. Raquel is no weak sister.

At the end of his term, Gimenez will disappear from the political scene and go back to being the nebbish he is, taking orders from his wife and being rude to the citizens he encounters. There are sales people at the Dadeland Mall who avoid the guy because he is such a prick. Let us start counting down the days until Gimenez is nothing but a bad memory.

Anonymous said...

No one should feel sorry for Carlos Gimenez. He gets a fat pension from his days as a City of Miami fireman and he gets 1-2 other pensions as well. Disgraced ex-Mayor Manny Diaz now gets paid (directly) by billboard companies and Walmart.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Raquelita can bridge the gulf and separate her name from the baggage that comes with her father and mother as commodore senior center politicians and media folk who are so closely associated with single issue viejito voters. will anglo small business owners and professionals and middle class suburbanites who are worlds away from the calle ocho and elderly housing ballot warehouses be able to disassociate her from what they and the rest of the county sees as a circus --Miami politics? inotherwords, will they not want to see themselves in the same bandwagon as pastelito voters and reject her on that basis? I like her as a person and as a mom and dcps bd member but I don't know if the county is ready until another generation passes on first

Anonymous said...

White, suburbanite (or part of the wine & cheese set per Souto) here! I have met her and would vote for her in a nano second. Gimenez has shown his disdain for the County residents over and over again. He'll never get my vote again. She will most certainly carry the anglo vote over Gimenez and his crony crowd in county hall.

Anonymous said...

Carlos Gimenez loves whoever lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez and his son lobbyist Carlos Gimenez, Jr. get paid to represent. The residents get screwed, again. Oh, and Ralph, the driver/lobbyist bends Gimenez's ear re contracts.

T said...

You hate the high salaries of the executives but you love the high salaries of the union employees. Why not advocate for a salary survey to align ALL salaries with local government norms?

Fact: There were 4,700 Miami-Dade County employees who received more than $100,000 in salary in 2014. No other local government comes close. It's obscene.