With the primary election less than a month away, Riptide is doing its civic duty by letting readers know about the five worst candidates running in local, state, and federal races. A vote for these jokers is just another leap toward Idiocracy, the made-up future world conjured by Beavis & Butt-Head creator Mike Judge where humans' favorite pastime is watching a guy get his balls smashed on television. In fact, if any of the politicians mentioned below get elected, it's pretty much a kick in the gonads.
• Rick Scott, the multimillionaire Republican who is leading the race for governor, ran and owned the company involved in the biggest Medicare fraud case in U.S. history. We have a hunch that in the dead of night, Scott shifts into a supernatural evil black cloud that sucks the souls out of defenseless sleeping babies of Hispanic and Haitian descent.
• David Rivera, the leading Republican contender in the U.S. congressional race to replace Mario Diaz-Balart, claims to be one of the biggest Cuban embargo advocates despite being pals with Ariel Pereda, a Miami businessman whose company facilitates trade with the communist country. Every time Rivera calls himself a Ronald Reagan Republican, the Gipper's corpse does a pirouette.
• Dorrin Rolle, a Miami-Dade County commissioner campaigning for re-election, ran into the ground a historic social services agency meant to help black youths, squandering hundreds of thousands of dollars in county and federal funding. The self-proclaimed ghetto governor is nothing more than a tool for lobbyists and companies vying for county contracts.
• Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, candidate for state Senate, makes a living as a lobbyist at county hall. We look away in disgust because when he was a county commissioner, he always bloviated about being a people's champion and attacked his rival, then-Mayor Alex Penelas, for surrounding himself with lobbyists. A vote for Diaz de la Portilla is a vote for Two-Face.
• Joe Celestin, who is running against Rolle, was once fined $10,000 for violating more than 20 state election laws in 2004. He hasn't held elected office since he was mayor of North Miami, where his despotic tendencies alienated Anglo constituents. His nickname should be Joey Doc.
