Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s maternal Grandparents were Sephardic Jews who fled what is now present-day Turkey because of the fallout of the Balkan War. They settled in Cuba, where Ros-Lehtinen would be born, but at seven-years-old her family fled the Communist dictatorship of Fidel Castro for America. Which is say Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s entire…
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, his face contorted in a scowl, doesn’t get up to greet Alex Villalobos when the big-eyed 42-year-old state senator enters the dimly lit office connected to the executive suite of Tallahassee’s Capitol building. It’s early May 2006, shortly after the last day of the legislative session,…
Like the rest of the world, Miami spent the weekend in grief and shock over the brutal terrorist attacks that killed 129 in Paris. Our two native sons who are currently jousting for a chance to lead the free world went quite a bit further, however. Jeb Bush and Marco…
For months leading up to the District Two commission race, Ken Russell’s fundraising lagged far behind his chief rival, Teresa Sarnoff. By election day, he’d hauled in just $158,560 compared to Sarnoff’s $747,000 war chest. But hours after the shock results of the Nov. 3 ballot — in which Russell…
The final details on a soccer stadium in Little Havana — owned by the Miami-Dade School Board and built and operated by David Beckham and his partners — may have just been hammered out at the SoHo Beach House in South Beach last night. That’s where Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and…
Last night on MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews stumbled into the tricky issue of Cuban identity and completely fumbled on the issue. Naturally, the host and his panel were discussing Tuesday’s Republican Primary debate, and while talking about an interaction between Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Matthews just decided…
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez only filed his official paperwork to run for his second full term on October 1st, but the incumbent has already amassed a campaign war chest of nearly $2.5 million. Meanwhile, his biggest declared competition, School Board member Raquel Regaldo has collected $512,000 this year. Although the…
Florida had one of the highest rates of people living without health insure before President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was passed, and now five years after it initially passed, Florida still ranks third in the nation for those left uninsured. The good news however is that that still means there’s now…
People who are cynical about American democracy claim that your votes don’t matter and that elections are actually determined by the moneyed elite. Yet, Ken Russell, who just last year was merely a citizen concerned about toxic soil in his local park, will be Miami’s next District 2 commissioner. He…
When Florida considered whether to legalize medical marijuana back in 2014, one of the its loudest detractors was state Attorney General Pam Bondi. She tried everything in her power to try and block the proposed amendment from appearing on the ballot then. As it turned out, the amendment did make…
Laura Pierre postponed college to work full-time at Chipotle, hoping to save up for higher education. But the 18-year-old Miamian says she’s realized that’s an impossible dream with Florida’s $8.05 per hour minimum wage. Her mother, a healthcare worker who also makes less than $10 an hour, relies on Pierre to…
We have it on good word that Carlos Hernandez is a 54-year-old male who has graduated from college and spent ten years as either a commissioner or mayor for the city of Hialeah. “Wow, sounds like that guy has it together? He probably wouldn’t try to pull any juvenile stunts…
Conventional wisdom is that Republican primary voters are having a little fun now with their support off outsider oddball candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson, but when it comes times to actually buckle down and start voting they’ll shift towards a more “electable candidate.” Well, if the latest poll…
Yesterday, Teresa Sarnoff ended a runoff with city commission opponent Ken Russell in the most dramatic way possible, by abruptly dropping a letter withdrawing from the race and blasting the dirty politics she says have dominated local elections. But is the race actually over? Russell certainly doesn’t think so. His…
Turns out that residents of Miami’s District 2 won’t need to head back to the polls later this month to decide a city commission runoff match between Teresa Sarnoff and Ken Russell. Sarnoff has now just up and dropped out and decided to do so with a message. Basically she…
Jeb Bush is desperately trying to reinvigorate his flailing campaign. He unleashed a new slogan, “Jeb Can Fix It,” took a short tour through the friendly lands of his home state of Florida, and is now back in New Hampshire trying to re-sell his message to the first in the…
Workplace conditions at a county office have come under scrutiny in recent months. An investigation by the federal government found that the executive director of CareerSource South Florida, a public agency that uses $70 million in state and federal funds to help local job seekers, had subjected female employees to…
If your dog bites someone, even if it hasn’t been previously declared a dangerous dog, and investigators declare the resulting wound “severe,” your dog will be put to death. That’s the law in Florida, but a case involving a black lab in Bradenton, Florida named Padi has caused so much outrage…
How bad can Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign get? The one-time frontrunner has spent this week trotting out a hashtag as custom-made for Internet mockery as “Hotline Bling” and putting all his hopes in a new book about how awesome he was at email in the early ’00s. Voters have just about…
Today’s election slate might not be the most jam-packed or exciting, but the results will have reverberations in some of Miami-Dade’s most important cities for years to come. Though, local elections (especially in these parts) are plagued by notoriously low turnout, that does mean that, hey, we could be in…
If you’re a Democratic primary voter chances are you’re either feeling the Bern or silly for Hillary, but not former mayor of Miami Manny Diaz. Nope. He’s a Martin O’Malley guy all the way. In fact, when it came time for O’Malley’s campaign to round up state leadership teams, Diaz…
In a small room inside the beachfront Days Inn Hotel in North Beach, a dozen business owners and condo heads sidled up to mics to support a plan to drastically change this neighborhood. Voters will decide today whether to allow developer Sandor Scher to build a 250-foot luxury condo and…
