Suspended commissioner uses Trump tactic, attacks Broward prosecutor as ‘leftist’ and ‘shameless liar’

Alex Díaz de la Portilla, suspended as a Miami city commissioner after he was arrested on corruption charges, is hoping to return to the commission in a Tuesday runoff election — in part by copying the playbook of former President Donald Trump.

It’s a classic Miami combination of politics, alleged corruption, the justice system and race.

The moment Díaz de la Portilla was released from jail following his September arrest, he started attacking the prosecutor in the case — Broward State Attorney Harold Pryor — with claims that Pryor is an activist Democrat out to get him because he’s a Republican supporter of Trump.

There isn’t evidence to support the notion that Pryor is motivated by politics. And circumstances surrounding the case suggest Pryor’s office is doing its job free of political motivation.

Still, Díaz de la Portilla is continuing to push the Trump-style narrative as he fights concurrent battles to regain political office and stay out of prison.

An especially noteworthy move came late last month. Díaz de la Portilla — whose case is in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court and wants city of Miami voters to put him back in office — put out a campaign-style mailer to residents of Broward County calling Pryor a “leftist” and a “shameless liar.”

In a text message on Wednesday, Díaz de la Portilla repeated and amplified his assertions about Pryor and explained why he sent the mailer.

“I sent it out because I have a First Amendment to speak truth to power and correct Pryor’s false narrative. I also consider it a public service to let people in Broward know who their elected State Attorney is: He is a rogue Democrat persecutor, not prosecutor, who is weaponizing the judicial system by targeting a Republican Commissioner from Miami. Mr. Pryor … is looking to advance his political career by attempting to criminalize entirely legal campaign and political activity. This weaponization of the judicial process is exactly what rogue Democrat Persecutors are doing in Georgia and NY to President Donald Trump,” Díaz de la Portilla wrote.

Sean Foreman, a political scientist at Barry University, said there’s more to it.

“Clearly it’s taking a page out of former President Trump’s handbook. He even uses Trump’s picture on the flier. There’s no masking what is at play here. It’s about attacking the process, about attacking the prosecutor, and about attacking the legal system,” Foreman said. “If he’s ultimately found guilty, he can turn around and say this was a rigged investigation from the start.”

State Rep. Michael Gottlieb, a Broward Democrat, and criminal defense lawyer, also called it “a page out of the Trump-style playbook, where it’s just attack.

“Make allegations that are reckless as it relates to the truth, knowing some people are going to believe it anyhow, and hope that the prosecutor’s office will temper their desire to prosecute him. Or he’s looking to continue to antagonize them to the point where they conflict off, and (the case) has to go somewhere else,” Gottlieb said.

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Case assigned

Pryor is a Democrat and Díaz de la Portilla is a Republican.

But the state attorney didn’t decide on his own to cross the Broward/Miami-Dade county line to bring a case against a prominent politician there.

The case was assigned to him in 2021 by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis after Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, who has a relationship with one of the subjects of the investigation who ended up as a co-defendant, disqualified herself to avoid a conflict of interest.

The investigation, which culminated in charges 21 months later, was handled by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics, along with staff from Pryor’s office.

All three agencies announced the arrest, which was made by FDLE agents.

Pryor’s background isn’t in left-wing Democratic politics. Before he was elected in 2020, he worked as assistant state attorney prosecuting felony criminal offenses, a civil attorney in private practice and as a corporate lawyer. In the 2020 Democratic primary, Pryor defeated a progressive opponent who was endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and received financial support from billionaire George Soros.

When the charges were announced, Pryor said in a statement that “The Broward State Attorney’s Office will pursue justice in this matter.”

His spokesperson, Paula McMahon, declined to comment further about the case or about Díaz de la Portilla’s claims about her boss’ motivations.

“Like every other case our office is assigned to handle, our assistant state attorneys will prosecute the case in the courtroom and the justice system. Generally, we do not comment on pending cases,” she said via email.

Campaign mailer

Díaz de la Portilla, a former Florida state legislator, was seeking reelection to the Miami City Commission when he was arrested on Sept. 14. DeSantis suspended him from office the next day.

Díaz de la Portilla finished first in a five-candidate race on Nov. 7, with 36.6% of the vote. He will face second-place finisher Miguel Angel Gabela in a Tuesday runoff.

Running to regain his seat hasn’t been Díaz de la Portilla’s sole political focus.

In late October, an unknown number of Broward voters began receiving campaign mailers from a political committee controlled by Díaz de la Portilla.

The mailers depict Pryor — who isn’t up for reelection until 2024 — the way Trump depicts prosecutors who have brought charges against him.

One big difference: The mailers were in Spanish, apparently to addresses where people with Spanish-sounding names live or used to live.

Most of one side of the full-color card is taken up by a picture of Pryor identifying him as “the leftist Harold Pryor Jr.”

“This is the shameless liar who defames our commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla,” it states next to his picture.

The flip side has a picture of Trump, and a slightly smaller photo of Díaz de la Portilla, along with this statement: “The same shameless liars who attack our President Donald Trump now are attacking our dear Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla. We can’t let the lies tarnish the name and trajectory of our commissioner. Alex Díaz de la Portilla always has fought for us with integrity and decency.”

Alfredo Olvera of Fort Lauderdale, one of the Hispanic voters who received the mailer, is Broward’s state Democratic committeeman.

“It caught me off guard at first,” Olvera said, because the mailer looked as if it came from someone running against Pryor. Olvera’s receiving the flier was first reported by WPLG-Ch. 10.

The anti-Pryor mailer was sent by Proven Leadership for Miami-Dade County.

State records show that Díaz de la Portilla is the chairperson, treasurer and registered agent of the committee, which also paid $150,000 in legal fees to the law firm of his attorney in the criminal case in the days following the arrest.

Gottlieb said he doesn’t see legal implications to the mailers. “There’s nothing that says you can’t call your prosecutor a dirty dog. And it seems many defendants feel that way,” Gottlieb said. Still, he questioned the strategy. “It’s not wise.”

Race

Race is one of the elements of Trump’s attacks on the Black prosecutors who have brought charges against him. He has used the terms “animal” and “rabid,” and described them as racist.

In the South Florida case, Pryor is Black and Díaz de la Portilla is Cuban American. The picture of Pryor is the dominant image.

The combination of pictures and text send a message that Pryor “is a Democrat, and he’s a Black Democrat, and maybe he’s not going to be fair to the Cuban American candidate from Miami. There’s no evidence of that, but I think that’s what he’s trying to paint with these ads,” said Foreman, the political scientist. “It appears to be racial politics. They play this game in the city of Miami.”

Olvera said he saw a racial element to the mailer.

“It’s pitting two demographics against each other. That was one of the parts that really got my attention. A picture of Harold Pryor directed to just Latinos, the Hispanic community. It was done on purpose in my opinion,” Olvera said.

While Díaz de la Portilla said he’s focusing on Pryor, the flier could help him with Miami residents whose votes he needed in the Nov. 7 election and again in the Tuesday runoff, which is likely to have a low voter turnout.

Registered voters in the district he’s running in are 80.5% Hispanic and 7.8% Black.

In his text message, Díaz de la Portilla also linked Pryor with the late Congressman Alcee Hastings. He said Pryor “idolizes corrupt Alcee Hastings who was impeached for actual bribery.”

Hastings, who was Florida’s first Black U.S. District Court judge, was indicted on charges of conspiring to solicit a $150,000 bribe from an FBI agent posing as a racketeer trying to buy his way out of a prison sentence.

A jury found him not guilty, but Congress took up the case and concluded he lied during the criminal trial. The House impeached and the Senate convicted Hastings and removed him from the bench.

Voters ultimately delivered a different verdict. In 1992, Hastings was elected to the first of 15 terms in Congress, representing parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Hastings endorsed Pryor in the 2020 Democratic primary for state attorney. When Hastings died in 2021, Pryor said in a statement that he was a “community mentor, hero, voice for the voiceless, and civil rights giant.”

Political implications

It’s unclear if the attack will actually hurt Pryor politically, assuming he draws challengers to his reelection. So far, no Democratic or Republican challenger has come forward.

Broward is overwhelmingly Democratic and the winner of the party primary is exceedingly likely to win the general election.

What’s more, even if the allegation — going after a Trumpist Republican for political reasons — were true, that wouldn’t necessarily be detrimental for a Democratic candidate running in Broward County. Democrats control all nine County Commission districts, all four congressional districts that take in all or part of the county, 14 out of the county’s 15 state Senate and House districts, and all the countywide elected offices.

“I don’t think it would hurt Harold Pryor, but we live in such a weird political world right now,” Olvera said. “Think about the voter who doesn’t know anything about Harold Pryor, but now they have a flier,” adding that it “creates this sense that (Pryor) is a liar.”

Gottlieb said the mailers could have a political effect, especially among the burgeoning Hispanic population in Pembroke Pines and Weston, where many residents have moved from Miami-Dade County.

Criminal case

Díaz de la Portilla is charged with money laundering, unlawful compensation, bribery, conspiracy to commit those alleged crimes, official misconduct, violation of campaign contribution limits and failure to disclose a gift, with several, but not all of the same charges against a lawyer-lobbyist William W. Riley Jr., a co-defendant.

In announcing the arrests, FDLE said it “found evidence indicating Diaz de la Portilla and Riley Jr. accepted more than $15,000 in payments for Diaz de la Portilla’s brother’s Miami-Dade County Court judicial campaign but did not report them” as required by state law. FDLE also said Díaz de la Portilla “operated and controlled two political committees used not only to support his brother’s campaign, but also for personal expenditures.

One committee reported total donations of approximately $2.3 million and the other reported total donations of more than $800,000, FDLE said.

When he was released from jail after his arrest, Díaz de la Portilla told assembled reporters that there was “nothing true about this complaint.” He said there was “not an ounce of truth in those allegations.”

At the same time, he began attempting to sow doubts about Pryor’s motives and started claiming he was being subjected to supposed Trump-style mistreatment.

If voters decide to return Díaz de la Portilla to the Miami City Commission, the saga doesn’t end. He still faces the criminal charges — and DeSantis could suspend him from office again.

Foreman said the political mailers may be more about the criminal case than elections.

Díaz de la Portilla’s strategy could be “to sully the waters and make whatever legal outcome that eventually comes, to be questioned or (seen as) less valid,” Foreman said.

Staff writer Juan Ortega contributed to this report.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Facebook, Threads.net and Post.news.