More than 200 Cuban protestors were arrested over the weekend as the island prepared for President Obama’s historic visit, which started yesterday. Dissidents of the human rights movement, #TodosMarchamos, including the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), and Unión Patriótica de Cuba (Cuban Patriotic Union, UNPACU), gathered at calle 26 and…
Everyone knows Cuban-Americans in Miami vote Republican. That’s been common knowledge for years. After all, 70 percent of that demographic voted for George W. Bush in 2000. Sure, Miami-Dade is, in most cases, a reliably blue county, but Democrats win here by margins slimmer than those in neighboring counties. If…
Following his crushing loss in the Florida primary on Tuesday, the press has been churning out lots of “What will Marco do next?” stories. Speculation that Marco Rubio could try to run for Florida governor in 2018 existed even before he dropped out. The one thing he promised at the…
Former Rep. David Rivera loves holding political office. He loves it so much he once, amongst other allegations, illegally funded a ringer candidate in a primary race against his Democratic opponent. Miami-Dade voters apparently no longer like having David Rivera in political office. After serving a single term in the…
It wasn’t an endorsement as much as a call for unity, but Florida Governor Rick Scott has finally thrown his chips in the Donald Trump pile. Sort of. In a message on Facebook today, Scott urged Republicans to basically just give up on any hope of anyone else winning the nomination…
Florida, it seemed, was never going to feel the Bern. Sure, young voters aged 18-29 came out in large numbers (they made up 16 percent of primary voters, compared to just 9 percent in 2008) and largely voted for Sanders, but Clinton won, well, almost everyone else across the board…
In the days leading up to yesterday’s vote on whether to build a massive new convention center and hotel in the middle of South Beach, skeptics voiced a number of concerns: The snarled traffic in the heart of SoBe, the outsized scale of the building, the environmental impact. But when…
Six years ago, Marco Rubio rode an wave of insurgent resentment at the Republican Party to become “the first Tea Party senator.” But in the years since, the rebel became the establishment. And tonight, the same anti-Beltway GOP sentiment that sent him to Washington sent him tumbling out of the…
In a result widely forecasted in polls, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has won their party’s perspective primaries in Florida by hefty margins. Clinton is besting Bernie Sanders all across the state, but is doing particularly well in the tri-county area of South Florida, which is home to the state’s largest…
Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine will be the first mayor of a city in Miami-Dade to visit Cuba in an official capacity since 1959 he announced today. Levine is framing the trip as a learning opportunity and hopes to scope out what effects the opening of Cuba to American visitors…
Ted Cruz never called out Marco Rubio’s so-called Miami values. Unlike efforts to paint Barack Obama as a product of that “corrupt Chicago political machine,” few opponents have smeared Rubio as a product of Miami’s banana-republic-as-usual political world. In the 2010 Senate race, a Charlie Crist ally once lambasted Rubio…
Donald Trump has not rolled out a textbook campaign to appeal to Jewish voters. First, he gave a speech laced with anti-Semitic jokes to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Then he started demanding a “loyalty pledge” that gave his rallies a distinctly Munich circa-1933 vibe. And just this past weekend, a…
For more than a century the heterosexual couples living together in Florida have had to live in the shadow of the law unless they decided to enter into legally recognized holy matrimony. Thanks to a law dating back from the 1800s, the oppressed Florida heterosexual, or “straight” couples as many…
Early voting days wrapped up in Florida this weekend, and the share of Floridians heading to the polls before election day has hit record numbers. On the Democratic side, early and absentee voting is up more than 200 percent since the 2008 primary. For Republicans, the number is up roughly…
Ask anyone a year ago who they’d think would win the Republican primary in Florida and they probably would have told you either our Florida former Governor Jeb Bush or current Senator Marco Rubio. Both are home-state boys, and both looked like they were gearing up for well-funded, serious runs…
Florida Republican lawmakers have been chipping away at abortion rights for years, but yesterday the Florida legislature passed its most sweeping anti-abortion law to date. The bill is now headed to Governor Rick Scott’s desk, but significant parts of the law may be struck down by the Supreme Court by…
One of Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s most persistent tics is to start yelling, “Jobs!” over and over whenever he’s pressed with a tough question. This is the same guy, after all, who once pleaded the Fifth more than 500 times in a deposition. He’s an Olympic-level non-answerer, and most interviewers…
Last night, Bernie Sanders managed to pull a historical upset against Hillary Clinton in the Michigan Primary but to capture the nomination he’ll have to pull off a few more of those magical upsets. A strong showing in Florida, the state with the fourth most Democratic delegates, next week would…
Last month, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine asked the state ethics board for guidance on a slippery question: Could he vote on a new mega-condo project on Purdy Avenue even though he owns property next door? Although critics said the mayor’s own investments might get a significant boost from the…
The GOP establishment’s concentrated push against Donald Trump seems to have paid some dividends over the weekend with Ted Cruz besting Trump in two states that Trump had a previous polling lead in. The attacks, concentrating on Trump’s questionable Trump University business, also appear to have dealt some damage to…
Marco Rubio had a no good, very bad weekend. He’s now the de-facto establishment candidate, and in the four states voting on Saturday, he racked up tons of high-profile endorsements. He spent more per spent more per vote this weekend than any other candidate on either side of the aisle. It…
One of the odder habits of Donald Trump is that he likes to cut out articles from newspapers or prints them out from online, write notes on them in sharpie, and then send them off in an envelope in the mail to various people. This appears to be one of…
