Billy Corben and Axios reporter Marc Caputo dissect the midterm results, asking why Florida stayed Republican when other states flipped. Caputo argues that Florida's large population of recent arrivals, weak Democratic spending and David Jolly's campaign choices, including refusing to debate and fundraise, shaped the outcome.
They discuss how national party committees allocate money and how political ads and PAC spending tilted the airwaves. The second half turns to Miami-Dade, where Elaine de Valle explains the role of partisan supervisor of elections Alina Garcia, the bollatera tradition of absentee ballot collection, and conflict-of-interest questions in the Maria Elvira Salazar and Elliot Rodriguez recount.
Listeners will hear each speaker's claims presented as their own views.
In this episode Billy Corben, Elaine de Valle, Marc Caputo
This episode's transcript on the Florida midterm results and Miami-Dade recount was made with HappyScribe's AI note taker.
Ads in this audio differ from the text. Tap the sentence you're hearing to follow along.
Synced: the text now follows the audio.
Roy.
Yes?
I haven't seen you in a couple weeks. We did our pre-election midterms episode.
Look good, that did.
And now we're— And now we are doing our post-election episode. But, but, no, but— I mean, listen, other than the fact that Florida is immune to sanity and reason and blue waves, it is in fact the only flood that we don't get is a blue wave. Other than that, it was— you must have had a good night by and large, no?
Yeah, if I was living outside of Florida, sure.
If you were living in the blue state of Texas, you mean?
Yeah.
Or the blue state of Georgia?
Yeah.
You mean, or the blue state of Kansas?
Yeah.
You mean—
Nevada, New Mexico.
It was— it was a crazy, crazy night for sanity and reason and arguably centrism. I'm looking forward to talking about this with White House correspondent and senior political reporter for Axios.com, Mark Caputo, in just a moment, because I think there was a lot of interesting— a lot of— a lot of shake-ups in the force here, a lot of glitches in the matrix, a lot of things fell in a weird way, and I'm not entirely sure where it's going to lead us next.
Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about, okay? Two weeks ago, on this show, I said this: there is absolutely no socialist or communist, for that matter, Roy, threat to this country. The real threat is cronyism and corruption and kleptocracy and oligarchs and their political puppets stealing our money, stealing our property to profit themselves. That is the real enemy of democracy and the real enemy of capitalism.
So, flash forward, Roy, a day or two after the election, your boy Ron DeSantis was on your girl Sage Steel's—
No, no, no, don't you do that to me.
Your boy Ron DeSantis was on your girl Sage Steel's show.
No, no, no, no, definitely not my girl. How dare you.
Then he said, and he said the following:
Is this screaming socialism gonna work? Obviously, it didn't work in this election. And, and why? And I think the reason is, is what they're comparing is not free enterprise to socialism. What they're comparing is how government gets involved in business, and you have crony capitalism. So the best kind of supporters of socialism are some of these corporatist Republicans who, who propagate these crony policies, because the average person seeing that and saying, "Wait a minute, you're trying to bend the government to funnel benefits to this corporation or that, that industry or this.
Uh, what about having a competitive market?"
I'm sorry, what?
Oh, that's BS. No, totally, totally BS.
I'm sorry, after this election, you can't tell the difference between me before the election and Ron DeSantis after the election? Mark Caputo, what the hell is going on here? What has been sort of, like, shaken or shifted out of place? And where is it that, like, what are— what is it that the Republicans have to do now? Your one, DeSantis, was arguably better than any other version of DeSantis. You know, we were hopeful he was gonna be like a, you know, conservationist or environmentalist, whatever. But, but even Byron Donald's was a little— I don't wanna say contrite, but even reasonable in his winning speech.
I don't know, like, like, it seems— is there, like, this moment of realization, of contrition, of moving towards the center, of, of, of terrible losses out of Florida and narrow wins in Florida for the party? And what is going on?
I'm hesitant to predict the future because so far the past has shown us that every two years we're kind of tacking back left and right.
Hmm.
Sometimes it's every four years. So here, Republicans in Florida narrowly survived a heartstopper, and so, you know, they heard, to a degree, what voters said, the dislike voters appear to have for President Trump, which is really driving a lot of this and the sort of related issues. And so, yeah, they're sounding a little more centrist, a little more moderate, so to speak, more prone to talk about— how would I say this?— kind of sort of economic populist messaging, which is more consistent with what you said, anti-corporatism.
But, you know, easy for Ron DeSantis to say. He raised $200 million for his 2024 presidential campaign. A lot of that was soft money from big corporations that had business in front of the Florida legislature and the Florida government, which he ran, he'll run, so.
Yeah.
Okay, corporatism is bad. We get it. We get the joke.
Dude, and, and cronyism, I mean, like, the man built a crony concentration camp in the Everglades. I mean, all of that money, half a billion or more dollars that was supposedly going to be, you know, reimbursed by the federal government, by FEMA, and never did, went all to, like, campaign donors and PAC donors and Republican supporters. And, like, that was literal— that, that concentration camp not only violated human rights and the constitution, but was an absolute, like, temple to celebrate crony capitalism.
So what the hell is this guy talking about?
He's talking about running for president again. That's what he's really talking about.
Ha.
That's what he will, but that's really what's happening here.
Mark, explain to me why this is, uh, this, uh, midterm results are having to be good for Democrats, because everybody on the news is saying, "Oh, the races were closer this time. It was closer this time."
Oh, you mean in Florida?
Yes, in Florida.
No, dude, this is what— this is always the headline. The headline for Florida Democrats are, "Look, we lost by so much less." That's what Nikki Fried calls a victory. Like, Nikki Fried, I think, is Spanish for "Nobody else wants this job." She, by the way, is the chair, for those listening, of the Florida Democrats. And the fact that she still has a job today, let alone two years ago, let alone two years before that, is astounding to me.
Well, I, I disagree with there. We can argue it. I think what you're saying is that Florida Democrats felt like Miami Hurricanes fans.
How dare you.
After the fourth quarter of the Notre Dame game. Uh, so, yeah, I mean, but the reality is, is Florida's sort of unique in its mix of voters. If you look at the exit polling, something like two-thirds of, or probably one-third of the electorate has been here for less than, uh, five years, or fewer than five years, five years or fewer. And those people voted by giant margins for the Republicans, the newcomers. The other two-thirds of the electorate, uh, narrowly broke for the Democrats by two points. And basically, when you put everything on the scales, well, that's what happens.
So what am I saying? Florida has for a while and continues to import Republican supervoters. That's number one. Number two, yeah, they don't have the money. And then number three, let's face it, David Jolly ran one of the shittiest campaigns we've seen in a very long time.
Disgrace.
Well, and that's the other thing. Uh, you mentioned the money. Did the DNC do enough to convince people to vote for Democrats here in the state of Florida? Because it seems like the sharing of the money pie did not equate to the racists.
You're, you're gonna— you're gonna hate me for saying this. This is one of those kind of stickler things that political reporters bring up. The DNC doesn't really do that sort of thing. So the DNC is sort of the, the, the broad party structure under which, like, local parties are, and local parties sort of help with local races, and state parties sort of back them up. Uh, ultimately, top-of-the-ticket races, the race for governor, for instance, that's not a DNC thing. That's a DGA thing. That is, it's a Democratic Governors Association thing.
Well, what about, uh, what about the race for Senator Angie Nixon?
I was gonna say. So the safe— the race for the Senate. That's a DSCC thing, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And here's another word for you, an SMP thing, a Senate Majority PAC. That's the super PAC that's controlled by, uh, Chuck Schumer and company.
And then congressional races are the DCCC, which is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Yeah.
Campaign Committee. Yeah, and then they're— and then they're related, um, you know, super PACs.
I, I— so I think, Mark, I think Roy is talking about the catch-all, right? Like, what do the national Democrats do?
The national Democrats thought it was— and understandably so. They thought that there's no point, you know, sending money to Florida because it's gonna get blown. Now, you know, the reality is, is everyone I've talked to, at least when it comes to the governor's race, believes that if David Jolly had had $50 million, $50 million on air, uh, he probably would've won anyway, despite running such a shit campaign. But because he ran such a shit campaign, he was unable to convince those national donors to send him the money, or even some state donors. So at a certain point, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You run a bad campaign, people don't want to invest. Sometimes people don't want to invest, and you wind up with a bad campaign.
Can we talk about how bad David Jolly's campaign was?
Oh, it's remarkable.
I mean, it's, it's, it's astounding.
It's, it's, it's really interesting enough. You know, my first statewide race that I covered in Florida was in 2002, right? Jeb Bush is reelected. So I've seen enough statewide races now to be considered a gray beard— oh, my hair is white. It's Charlie Cristwite, right? Uh, is that the— what's stunning and what's really unique about David Jolly was, number one, he's a very nice guy. And I almost feel bad for saying what a shit campaign he ran.
Okay.
But he ran a shit campaign. He deserves it. But he's a really nice guy. Like, he's the kind of guy, like, you could trust, like, "Hey, can you look after my kids for a few minutes? You know, I'm gonna go out and do something, and you won't burn a house down or molest your kids or whatever," right?
That's true.
Which in Florida, it's a huge, huge, you know, bardocker. Uh, and right? So all those things, all those disclaimers aside, he has Jolly— he's a religious man, and he's a good sort of a religious man. He, like, he— he's sort of one of those sort of good, like, try to live the life of a, of a Christian, you know, treat other people, uh, equally and well under the golden rule. But he has this messianic belief. He had this messianic belief that he was gonna win. And he had this certainty that he was correct and that what voters wanted was a different kind of politics, right?
And therefore, he wouldn't get down in the mud, basically wouldn't campaign. And he wouldn't fundraise. He bragged on the campaign trail about not fundraising. And this is a common thing you'll see with a lot of candidates, including Ron DeSantis in 2024, is there's a— there's a class of candidate that generally believes they are their best consultant and that the other consultants don't know what they're doing. And sometimes, and this certainly was the case of Jolly, they wind up in a situation where they start to believe that what their consultants are telling them is wrong, and therefore, they do the opposite.
So the con-consultants say zig and they zag. So the consultants say, "Hey, we don't have any money. We're getting outspent by Byron Donald's. Byron Donald's wants to debate. Here's a great opportunity for us to earn free media as opposed to paid media," i.e., uh, television ads, radio ads, whatever, that costs money. "Here, it's free. It's earned. Let's go debate. Let's get on stage." Jolly, nope, not gonna do it. He refused to debate, something you just never really see.
By the way, to your, to your, to your knowledge, did anybody inside his campaign other than himself.
Everybody.
Believe that that was the right thing to do?
I, I heard of one person after the fact.
Uh-huh.
But, like, everybody in the campaign was just appalled.
What are you doing?
I just couldn't believe it. I was like, "This is insanity." But, you know.
Yeah, but dude, if I didn't know better, I would've said Jolly was an op. When I talk about the Florida Democrats being the Washington generals of American politics, you know, like the controlled opposition of the Harlem Globetrotters, this was, like, textbook example, dude. Like, I don't even understand.
The controlled opposition, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, like, what are we talking about here? Like, the guy didn't do anything you need to do to get the job. And you said, "Oh, he was $50 million away from the national party and national donors from winning this election despite his shitty campaign." If he just campaigned, he wouldn't have need— he could have overcome the outrageous deficits.
I mean.
You know, margin in, in cash between him and Byron Donald's.
Well, in the case of, like, debating, for instance. Well, number one, in the case of fundraising, it's effort in, it's money out. Like, it's called call time. Like, where candidates actually sit there on the phone, they have to call people and ask for donations. That's one way you earn money. It's call time. A second way, especially nowadays, is you develop a small fundraising base. And usually, you do that through a combination of lots of earned media, again, lots of TV hits. You create news events. You find a way to get people to come to press conferences. And you have a good social media footprint, right? Uh, like, James Fishback is a fantastic example on the right of this in the governor's race.
That guy— I've never seen a dude who, who's done more with less to create news. Jolly had zero interest in doing that. And then when it came, again, to debating, him refusing to do that sent the message to these national donors, like, "You know, if you're not gonna run this kind of campaign, we're not gonna give."
Right.
And one of a person I don't want to give their name away who has known Jolly for a very long time, uh, said to me right after he pulled the debate stunt, I actually called them up. I was like, "What, what's up with this guy's psychology?" And they said, this is a quote, "David usually has a plan, and it's always a shitty one."
Uh, Mark, uh, I noticed, uh, and this has been a happening a lot lately with the political ads, it felt like it was five to one in favor of the GOP as far as what was being played on television.
100%.
Yeah. That's the money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
During football.
Exactly. During football, right?
Yeah. It was not just, not just during football, just everywhere. Like, even in hockey. But still, but still, like, it, it feels like it was three to one from political action committees. And Hakeem Jeffries is talking about, "Maybe we should overturn, uh, Citizens United." Do you think that actually might happen?
No.
No.
Congress can barely name a post office.
Well, we can name an airport in Palm Beach.
Sure you can.
Yeah, but that's the legislature. That's the Florida legislature, not Congress.
You're right.
So, so Jolly in the basement. I mean, that's, that's what this was. He refused to campaign IRL. He refused to campaign online. He refused to debate. He refused to fundraise.
Yeah, he was campaigning, but, like, going to these, like, like, shitty little events with no TV cameras, right? So, like, "Oh, yeah, you're gonna go to, I don't know, Bethel AME Church in, you know, Feldspear." I'm not sure if that's, uh, you know, uh, if Feldspear has a, a Bethel AME Church or, you, you know, some parking lot on a Walmart in, in, you know, in Milton, Florida.
It was like a whistle-stop train tour.
Yeah, but, but no one could hear the whistle, right? No one knew about it. You know, and from what I understand, and I probably shouldn't traffic in this, but I have it on good enough authority. It's one source, and hell, it's, you know, it's a podcast. So I'm going to get it. But one person told me, up until about two weeks before the end of the election, like, two, three weeks out, Jolly was still so hands-on running his own campaign that he was booking hotel rooms and travel for Gwen Graham, his running mate.
Oh, God.
It's like, you know, you have a campaign that's supposed to be doing these things, and that's what you should do. So again, he had this messianic belief that he was right, that, you know, "I'm not gonna platform, you know, Byron Donald's lies," and therefore and I, you know, people want a different kind of politics.
So stupid.
And, and he in addition to bragging about not fundraising and having his fundraisers quit, there was one anecdote, a mutual friend of ours, Billy, had, had told me that he was on the campaign trail with Jolly in front of, I don't know, it was a Palm Beach airport or somewhere like that.
The Tampa Airport?
Gas when gas prices were spiking. It was like $5.50. You're in an airport, right? 'Cause they jack up the price. But nevertheless, it was still high. And the person was just like, "Hey, man, like, why don't you talk about gas prices?" And Jolly's like, "Nah, not a state issue." And what? And so the guy.
This, this guy personifies my saying that the Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Yeah. I can't remember which Israeli said that about the Arabs after I think it's after the '67 war, but yeah, it certainly applies. The what's really sort of remarkable is that the one thing that Jolly didn't do, uh, that, you know, would've made him like, he, he, he did everything a conventional Democrat could do. And in a red state, that's a little hard to win, right? James Talarico did not run as a traditional Democrat. Colom in Mississippi was the most, I think, most interesting, uh, Senate candidate out of all of them to have won, uh, in part because it's Mississippi, didn't campaign as a traditional Democrat.
Jolly, a former Republican, did in part because he probably thought, "Well, people might think I'm a fake Democrat, and therefore, I need to be a, you know, true toe-tag liberal on all of this stuff." The one thing he didn't really do, criticized Donald Trump, who by Election Day had a net approval rating of negative 11 in the state, meaning, like, 55, 56 percent of Florida voters had a negative opinion of him, and only, like, 45, 44 percent had a positive opinion of him. So it was like a freebie to bash Trump, which is what, you know, Democrats did everywhere because, you know, the same reason Willie Sutton-Rob Banks, that's where the money is, the reason you bash Trump as a Democrat, that's where the votes are, wouldn't do it.
Mark, before we go, there it was not all bad news in terms of the Democrats losing less or losing by less. There was the, you know, the, the redistricting scheme in Florida that did not work. The four Democrats were, were reelected in the redis that's only because they had already redistricted, you know, the shit out of this state, uh, previously. There wasn't really a lot of additional ground to go.
No, by the way, I disagree with that. I disagree. The, the new gerrymander was a gerrymander. The prior one really wasn't. And it almost became what's called a dummy mander. Mario Díaz-Balart almost lost his seat as a result of the new gerrymander. But by the way, I know you're gonna hate me for this, but Nikki Fried has done, uh, like, yeoman's work with little money, and they did flip a ton of seats, uh, this whole election cycle.
Yes.
A lot of that was FDP sort of related in back.
Hor-horse shit. I think it was Angie Nixon. But, uh, Roy, I'm.
No, no, I said this election cycle. That's before her.
Okay.
I think they had, like, 50-some prior to the election.
This is this is one of the celebrations that I got, the emails I got from the Democratic Party, Roy, was like, "We ended the Republican super majority."
Get the out of here.
Now, now it's just a majority. Oh, congratulations.
It's like, it's like, wait, what?
Hey, we, we only lost to Notre Dame by seven.
I mean.
Great job.
But some crazy shit, though. Um, Miami-Dade County swung blue. A Democratic Socialist member, Angie Nixon, outperformed David Jolly in Dade County. Dude, I think she won Darao. I mean, Trump literally kidnapped Madu.
I saw that. I just looked at it.
He, he literally kidnapped Maduro for that community and, like, like, to pander and got him nowhere with that. Then, of course, he sent ICE in. But, like.
He sent ICE in so bad that they canceled Oktoberfest because people were so scared to go on the street. Like, what?
And then they voted for a Socialist, Mark. I'm like, so weird shit.
Well, I think Socialist that Jay said she was.
But you but, but I'm just saying weird shit happened here. Like, look, when the Republicans call everybody a Socialist and a Communist, e-eventually, it stops working. In her case, she actually joined the Democratic Socialist, uh, Party. You could argue because she needed a ground game, right? She did not have party support. Vindman was, you know, Alexander Vindman was the party candidate in the primary, and she had no, you know, she needed a team, right? So you can argue that that's why she did it and she won. But it doesn't matter. To say she's a member of the Democratic Socialist was accurate, was a fact. And she won Dade County.
She outperformed Jolly. She won some of these more right-wing conservative MAGA precincts and cities. So what do you what do you make of that?
I, I need to look at the precinct data. I, I would assume she probably over-overperformed with non-whites, as we would, you know, kind of charitably call them. Uh, and, uh, that would be my guess as to the secret of her success. By the way, Angie Nixon deserves a, a lot of credit for her organizational chops. I mean.
100%.
She did have a good network. They did know how to hit the phones. She was fantastic on social media. Uh, but the fact of her sort of Democratic Socialist adjacent sort of policies and, uh, profile really is gonna make it difficult for her to win statewide next time, uh, 'cause she is planning to run for Senate again. And I think th-this time, Republicans aren't gonna underestimate it, uh, underestimate her, and they're gonna really sort of try to lay some wood on her.
And I think that they sh I really do. I think she I, I didn't think she was going to win. I didn't think any of the statewide Democrats were going to win. But I think she really almost single-handedly dragged a lot of the.
Well, but I.
She was the top of ticket, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. David Jolly was running as if he knew he wasn't gonna win, but he wanted to come in a very respectable second place. I, I think in a text message with you at a certain point, I think I, I called months ago, he was gonna finish at 48.5%. He finished at 48.7%. So I was off by 0.2.
Yeah. I think you and I are both on the record with each other where we stood and how we called this race in, in Florida well, well in advance. I think Florida is incredibly predictable. I know listen, we're natives.
It's winnable, though. I still think it's I think it's winnable. You have the right candidate. You have the right money. You have the right environment.
So not, not Jolly.
Not Jolly.
Dude, Jolly was that's the but that's the tragedy of Jolly, is that it was that was a winnable race.
He could've been the right candidate.
Absolutely. That was a that was a winnable race that he lost. Not his campaign, not his consultants, not his experts, not his money people. He single-handedly sabotaged his own campaign.
But he did a he did a great job not platforming Byron Donald's at the debate.
Jesus Christ.
Now you've just platformed him in the governor's mansion.
And on that note.
All right.
Mark Caputo, White House correspondent and senior political reporter for Axios.com. As always, Mark, thank you.
Thanks, man. I'll see you.
When you serve a boar's head sweet-sliced ham, something magical happens. Born from a family recipe, it's expertly smoked and crafted for carving. This is the ham that will bring everyone and everything together. Boar's head sweet-sliced ham, compromise elsewhere.
The holidays should be about the people you love. Not mandatory work parties where I pretend to care about someone's kitchen renovation. Now's the time for those unexpected holiday side quests and enjoying a great-tasting light beer. Last year, mine was my cousin's garage, a Miller Lite, and a four-hour debate over the best Christmas movie. Dan would make it a segment, then argue the other side on purpose. Best night of the season. Tis Miller time! In that garage, I felt great. I took a sip. I looked around and thought, "Yeah, this was the right call."
Miller Lite is a taste you know you can depend on. Brewed for taste, it just hits different. The original light beer since 1975 and still iconic more than 50 years later. Miller Lite is great taste done right. Go to millerlite.com/dan to find delivery options near you. Or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Tis Miller time! Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.
A judge denying Democratic congressional candidate Elliot Rodriguez's motion to remove Alina Garcia from the Miami-Dade elections canvassing board.
Rodriguez alleging conflicts of interest.
It's in connection to the recount happening right now.
Republican incumbent Maria Alvarez Salazar leading the race for the congressional seat by less than half a percent.
The supervisor of elections, Alina Garcia, made a statement to our partners at the Miami Herald on election night that the judge called stupid.
The controversy stems from supervisor of elections Alina Garcia declaring Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar the winner with or without a recount.
Another conflict of interest raised by Rodriguez, Garcia's son-in-law also actively serving as Salazar's lawyer in the recount process.
More recount shenanigans in Miami-Dade County. Clutch my pearls, right? Uh, so I want you to make a documentary about it. In fact, I did. 537 votes, executive produced by Adam McKay, now streaming on the HBO Max machine or whatever they call it right now. That is about the 2000 Florida recount, which by a margin of 537 votes made George W. Bush the president over Al Gore and really arguably set us onto the alternate 1985 course. It's like when Biff got the almanac.
Nothing has quite been right in the country ever since that kind of ripple in the matrix.
Oh, you goddamn right, meatball.
Oh, sorry.
You goddamn right, meatball.
Thank you. I like yours better. Sorry. We should replace coaties with, uh, Greg Cotex's with, uh, with, with, with yours.
Oh, come on, man.
So that's an old-school Neal line. That wasn't mine. I can't take credit for that. We now have, thanks to an amendment to the state of Florida constitution, a partisan hack as our elections supervisor. It used to be like a professional position where a competent, experienced person would count the ballots. And now we have partisan elections to elect a sheriff, to elect a tax collector for some reason, to elect a clerk of courts, the property appraiser, and the election supervisor. So you have a, a person here who is a devout Republican who is responsible for free and fair elections in Miami.
And it's not just any election supervisor. It is Alina Garcia, who is basically a Bollatera, who was the protégé of the mentors David Rivera and Frank Artilles, two of the most notorious election fraudsters in the history of Miami. She also worked with Joe Carollo, friend of the show.
In God we trust.
And of course, Alex Dillaportilla, who, you know, was removed from office and arrested for bribery and money laundering before those charges were dropped 14 months later. But there's a lot of people right now, Elaine Devaye, scratching their heads going, "Bollatera, what the hell is Billy talking about? A Bollatera." Elaine Devaye is a friend of the show. She is an award-winning journalist and responsible for Political Cortadito, which is a must-read for Miami politics. Elaine, what is a Bollatera?
What does it mean in the context of Alina Garcia and these ridiculous conflicts of interest, which have really put a dark cloud over this, this election and its results?
Well, a, a Bollatera, and, and as you know, but for the sake of your readers, is a uniquely Miami political character. Um, it comes from the Spanish word for ballot, which is boleta. And it's somebody who gathers, uh, harvests, or somehow collects absentee ballots, or what now is called mail-in ballots, usually from Hispanic voters, usually, or many times in elderly housing or public housing, and then delivers them to a particular candidate. Um, this has been going on for decades.
Uh, sometimes they're paid, um, like ballot brokers, and so and it, it can be per-perfectly legal. But in Miami-Dade, we have a lot of notorious cases where ballots have been manipulated, sometimes even changed, um, or voters have been pressured to vote a certain way. Um, it's not just in Hialeah. We had a case a couple of years back in Homestead, um, where somebody was, you know, having, uh they were filling the ballots out for them i-in front of them. Um, and so this is something that, you know, has happened for years.
And Alina Garcia, while she has never been accused of being a Bollatera herself, has worked with the Republican Party. I mean, I remember 20 years ago when I worked at the Miami Herald, going to the Republican Party office in Darao, and she was there sort of supervising the Bollateras, if I if you may. You know, I mean, it's like, um, she was like the, the, the, the she was the logistics center, um, you know, for the Bollateras. And, and I'm not saying that she did anything illegal, but certainly she has been involved in some of the more you, you forgot to mention Steve Bovo, who she also worked for in 2012.
Hialeah.
Someone in his office was caught with, I don't know, I think more than 100 ballots in the trunk of her car. Um, so, you know, this is you know, this has been an ongoing thing. It's an industry in Miami-Dade. And she has been involved in some part of the industry for years before she became a state rep and now our elected supervisor of elections.
It's.
Um, she says that she doesn't have to accuse herself because, you know, there are other, you know, uh, like the mayor and commissioners who also get involved in partisan politics, but they don't count votes. She's counting votes.
Right.
It's completely different.
She's.
And yes, I miss Christina White. I miss Christina White a lot.
She, she should have, like, the least partisan position, but she shows up to all of these Republican things. It's what the kids call a bad look. It's not a problem that she's a Republican. It's a problem that she's so overtly partisan when your job is free and fair elections. I just think it's problematic. And here, the conflicts. Let us count the ways. So first of all, as you heard in that news story up front, her son-in-law, and I think who I think works with her daughter, I think they're, like, partners in some way, like, are working on team Maria Elvira Salazar in this recount against Elliot Rodriguez in Florida's US Congressional District 27.
You have this, as the judge put it, really dumb comment that Alina Garcia made in full partisan glory to a Miami Herald reporting saying, Roy, that whatever, you know, with or without a.
That's the winner.
A recount, Maria Elvira Salazar won. It's like, wait. I'm sorry. Wait. You're declaring a winner before your office has facilitated by the way, this recount isn't Elliot Rodriguez didn't ask for a recount. The law, Florida state law, says when the margin is less than 0.5% the split early on was like 1,100 votes or less between the two candidates, there was an automatic recount. That's by law. What Elliot Rodriguez was saying was you should recuse yourself because of these bladegrin conflicts of interest so you don't taint the process.
And arguably, Maria Elvira Salazar should have said, "Yes, I if I'm to win here, this is gonna taint my victory. People will look at this as, like, something fishy or suspect happened." And if it didn't, if the process is, is kosher, then just what, what's the issue with walking away? Why didn't Alina Garcia, Elaine, just say, "You know what? Fine." Just to preserve the sanctity of our elections and, and the process and the perception of any potential conflict, I'm gonna take a step back.
My staff and the, the current canvassing board are perfectly competent and able to facilitate this. Why didn't she do it?
Well, she, she's falling back on the statutory, uh the, the fact that the state, uh, sta-statute allows her to participate in races that, um well, this is what she says, is that she doesn't have to recuse herself because she's not biased. I, I don't understand why she doesn't recuse herself. No, no, no. I, I don't understand why she doesn't recuse herself because the optics are terrible. And she's not this is not only bad for Maria Elvira because she's gonna have this taint over her head.
This is bad for Alina. That's an elected position. She's up for reelection in two years. Why would she want whoever's gonna run against her to have this kind of ammunition? Like, what does it cost her? No recuesta nada. To just recuse herself from this recount and have another judge or somebody else appointed. Like, you know, it, it just doesn't make any sense. I, I think part of it is, um, you know, her, her loyalty to the Republican Party. I mean, if she doesn't recuse herself, it actually makes the optics worse because there's no there's no reason not to, you know?
There was a reason why she, you know, she didn't endorse anybody in this election. She did endorse Amendment 3. And there, you know, she says she has a statutory ability and, and discretion in order to, uh, endorse something that's not necessarily partisan. Um, but in this race, which is not only partisan, but it's being watched nationally because the consequences are enormous, really. Not recusing herself has become the story, you know, national.
Well, and the story is, according to PoliticalCortadito.com, must-read Miami politics, you obtained some exclusive audio of Alina Garcia suggesting, as the headline reads, the elections chief, the person in her position, could hide votes. And she's talking about, I guess, in the context of Democrat JC Planas, who was running against her a couple of years ago for the position of elections supervisor. And she's kind of inferring, like, how he might do that, putting votes in a drawer like, like they do in the Florida legislature.
She used to be a state representative in the Florida House, Roy. And I like to say every accusation is a confession here 'cause she's sort of putting it on like, "Well, he could do this." And it's like, I, I know JC Planas. I don't even think that he would think to do that. He's such a straight arrow and so, you know, like, so, like, uh, obsessed with, like, doing the right thing and, and ethics and everything. But, like, let's play this, this audio, Roy. Part of it's in English and, and part of it she speaks in Spanish.
So I'll ask you, Elaine, to please translate on the other end of this.
I don't think it's influential. So it's influential in the sense that, um in the sense that I count the votes, but that's all we do. That's what the office does, you know?
Es que lo hubiera he estado escondiendo la boleta de Westchester y nada más que sacándola de Pablo Rodríguez. Es igual que con los Bills, que lo guardas en la gaveta y no lo sacaste.
What did she say, Elaine?
So everybody knows what "tú sabes" means, but when she says that it, you know, él hubiera he would have hidden the ballots that came out of Westchester and only brought out the ones that came out of the Black neighborhood, sort of like the Bills that you hide in a drawer when you don't wanna take them out. Um, and yeah, I mean, she's, she's basically saying that she, she's speaking in the past tense. So this is after she was elected. But she, you know, which, which, number one, indicates a real lack of knowledge of how ballots are counted, right? Because I don't know about you, but when I vote, my ba I put my ballot in the machine myself.
I don't know how.
Okay.
You know, you can, like, maybe block out all the ballots from a certain precinct, which is what she's trying to say. But, you know, i-if she's saying that he could do that, why would she be unable to do that? Why would she we trust her? Why should we trust the process? Why should we trust that her loyalties and her friendships and her familiar relationships are not going to, uh, impact her delivery of her service as an impartial, uh, judge in this recount? Let me also say that, you know, her daughter and her son-in-law are not just working for Miami now in the recount.
From what I understand, they've been working with her in the campaign. So a victory would be a success for them. They're invested. And so her family is invested in Miami-Dade's victory. How is that not a conflict of interest by itself? Without the comments that she made to the Herald, without the audio of her believing that it's possible for somebody to hide votes and not hide other votes, you know, how is that not a bias by itself? Her family is invested in this election.
But she's also very specific about the demographic or the race of the people in whose votes she would be more or less inclined to count. De los barrios negros, as she says. I mean, I don't know how I feel about that, Elaine.
Well, she says Westchester, which is a Republican stronghold, and y el barrio de los negros is a Democrat stronghold. That's what she means. I don't know that she's necessarily racist. I know that she's Republican and, you know.
Necessarily.
No, I don't. But I think that, yeah, she, she does. You know, maybe it equates. I will say that one of the things that they're saying is that Elliot is an election denier, which I think is ridiculous 'cause, like you said, this is a state-mandated thing. But also, when I interviewed Alina when she was running for office as the election supervisor, I found it relevant to ask her if she thought the 2020 elections had been stolen by Joe Biden. And she refused to answer that question.
Oh.
She said that she knew that in Florida, there had been no fraud, but she couldn't say.
Oh.
What happened in the rest of the country.
Oh.
So it's interesting that now she's, you know, she's calling Elliot a, a, an election denier. She's saying that this, you know, his lawsuit is political theater when she defended all the lawsuits in every state that Trump made after 2020.
Mm-hmm.
So I think it's a little bit hypocritical. And it's exactly one of the reasons why she needs to recuse herself. She's hyper-partisan. It's not that she's partisan. It's that she's hyper-partisan.
Roy, uh, I don't know that Alina Garcia is racist. We have more exclusive audio of her.
I just wanna let everybody know I have a few Black friends.
Oh, wait. I'm sorry. That's not that's not Alina Garcia. Slow Mo.
Oh, voices deeper.
Yeah, that was Shlomo Danzinger in, uh, in.
I'm sorry. That's gonna haunt me forever.
It really should. So, uh, before we go, Elaine, lightning round 'cause I mentioned at the top that sh that her mentors were among the most notorious election fraudsters in Miami history. And it's not just her past, though, either, with David Rivera and Frank Artilles. Most recently, David Rivera was convicted, Roy, in federal court just a few blocks from here and sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiracy and money laundering and involving illicit financial transactions from Venezuela's state oil firm.
Like, total shady character who also was r-really the mastermind behind an election conspiracy fraud that two other people, his actual co-conspirators that he recruited into the scheme, went to federal prison for this election fraud. But Alina Garcia, she actually, I think i-am I getting this right, Elaine? She, like, put her home up as collateral for bond for David Rivera, who is now a notorious convicted criminal serving 10 years in federal prison.
She put up her house for as a as collateral, let's so to speak, for David Rivera's bond. And not only that, but she convinced, uh, members of her family, I believe her brother, uh, to put up his house because, you know, Alina Garcia does everything with her family, even the recount, the collateral for David Rivera's bond. It's all a family affair.
On that note, next time we'll talk about Frank Artilles. Maybe I'll have him on the show. What a character he was. I mean, just abso another election fraudster who went to, uh, in this case, state prison. Just a, a fabulous story. I just I just this is why we can't have nice things here, uh, Roy, and why they say that the great thing about Miami is that it's so close to the United States. Elaine Duvaye, PoliticalCortadito.com. Thanks so much for being here again.
Thanks for having me, Billy. And keep up a good fight.
At this point, I'll keep up the bad fight. I just want the fight. Roy.
Yes.
2026. It's been 20 years since the release of Cocaine Cowboys. I made it when I was 11 years old.
Oh.
In case you're in case you're doing the math. And so we are celebrating, commemorating, really. I'm gonna say celebrating. But it is the 20th anniversary, and it is our second documentary. It's arguably one of our, our most popular docs. And we are releasing it today, right now, for free on YouTube. You just go to CocaineCowboys.com or search for Cocaine Cowboys. Go to Rack and Tour's YouTube page, whatever's easier for you. And we have completely we spent the last 10 months doing a visual reimagining of the documentary.
Which is why we haven't had a show here.
Which is why we haven't had a show.
Bang, bang, snort, snort.
That too. And we've been just working on it and trying to give something back to the fans 'cause we got the rights back after 20 years at Magnolia. And we just wanted to do something cool and different and make the movie look like you know, we wanted to make a gangster movie when we made Cocaine Cowboys, not so much a documentary. And now we've sort of able to realize that vision a little bit more than we than the resources that we had at our disposal when we made this little indie film with a very big idea that cocaine money had helped build the city of Miami as we know it or love and love it, or as the people in outside of Miami love to hate it and the people inside Miami kind of hate to love it.
And so this is our gift to the fans, and it looks like it was made in 2026. It's got sort of Vice City vibes going on. And so maybe a new audience who, who hadn't previously had a chance to see it.
Bang, bang, snort, snort.
Maybe they will get a chance to, to check it out for free. The movie blew up originally 20 years ago on Bootleg, so we decided that we would bootleg it ourselves, make it available for free on the internet. Have a good weekend. Cocaines.
Seems as if the only place in America where Republican strongholds didn't get flipped was in Florida. Billy Corben talks about the midterm results with Axios senior political reporter Marc Caputo. Plus, Elaine de Valle from Political Cortadito joins the show to talk about how Miami Dade County's supervisor of elections Alina Garcia's conflict of interest affected Florida's 27th congressional district race between Maria Elvira Salazar and Eliott Rodriguez.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices