Former President Donald Trump is chiming in on a Miami-Dade County Commission race.
“Kevin Marino Cabrera, special guy, a friend of mine," Trump says in a taped endorsement that Cabrera is using in his campaign material.
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Cabrera was the former president's state director in Florida.
"We helped deliver Florida by a historic margin,” Cabrera said in a recent interview.
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His opponent for District 6, Coral Gables City Commissioner Jorge Fors, thinks it’s a bad idea for the former firebrand president to get involved in Miami-Dade local politics.
"He’s trying to paint himself as a ‘MAGA Republican,’" Fors said. "We don’t really know what he is."
Commission District 6 stretches from the Hialeah area, south down the Palmetto Expressway. It includes Miami International Airport and a portion of Coral Gables.
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While their respective brands of conservative politics are on different tracks, both candidates say senior citizens in the district are a priority.
“Their incomes clearly are not rising, but their property taxes continue to rise, even those that have a homestead,” Cabrera said. “One of the big issues they are facing is that a lot of them are going to have to sell their homes and move out of the homes after living there for decades, because they just can’t afford to continue living there.”
Fors agrees.
“Frankly, over the next three to five years, I think we are going to see a serious problem in where to put these older folks who really don’t know where they are going to go," Fors said. "We are going to have to add more dwellings for them.”
When it comes to politics, Fors knocks Cabrera — and hard — over his 2018 appearance at a GOP protest attended by members of extremist group The Proud Boys. He also calls out Cabrera’s lack of governing experience and his nasty politics, with Fors filing a lawsuit against Cabrera.
“My opponent, frankly, has told a lot of lies during this campaign,” Fors said. “That I was arrested, that I had been investigated for fraud, that I had a history of financial recklessness. He photoshopped me in an orange jumpsuit, handcuffed, behind bars, implying that I had been incarcerated before. None of which is true.”
Inflation, gas prices and the soaring cost of living are major themes of Cabrera’s message. He’s a lobbyist by trade and boasts of impressive endorsements on his website: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Hialeah Mayor Steve Bovo and Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar.
Fors’ lawsuit, says Cabrera, is because he is losing.
“It is a frivolous lawsuit, nobody sues anybody when they are ahead,” Cabrera said. “They sue people when they are behind. I know he is losing, he knows he’s losing, the residents of this district knows he’s losing.”
District 6 Commissioner Rebecca Sosa, who is retiring, has endorsed Fors.
