Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez speaking with Donald Trump at the Trump Doral Resort in 2014. Text message in the background from Gimenez’s Communications Director is from a recent public records request that is part of a public ethics complaint.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez delayed the publicly reported launch of his congressional campaign after one of his top career county staffers apparently violated a county order forbidding career staff to participate in partisan election matters.

Both the Mayor and his Communications Director and Senior Advisor Myriam Marquez are facing a serious ethics complaint about her use of government staff time and resources to respond to a political inquiry triggered by Miami Herald’s reporters David Smiley and Doug Hanks’ coverage of the congressional race. Marquez used to be the Executive Editor of the Herald.

Former Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairman Juan Cuba obtained records showing that Marquez did use her office on Gimenez’s partisan chore and shared the information with him directly by text message, all of which is filed in the complaint to Miami-Dade’s Commission on Ethics & Public Trust, a copy of which is below.

Political Cortadito broke the story of the complaint, and about the public records request that substantiates the allegations.

While the Herald has not yet covered Cuba’s complaint yet, reporter Doug Hanks said on the record that he is covering the story about his former Executive Editor and is already in contact with the Ethics Commission.

It all began nine days ago, and the result is that the Mayor’s long-rumored plan to seek higher office is on hold, and in its place is a potentially damaging ethics investigation that could already be ongoing.

First, on January 9th the Mayor confirmed widely spread rumors that he planned to enter the GOP nominating race for Congress in Florida’s 26th district, implying that the gossip about him making an announcement on the day after his final State of the County address was accurate.

“Sometime next week I’ll make an announcement,” Gimenez told the Herald.

Then, the following day Florida Democratic Party officials released a lengthy video slamming the two-term county mayor, calling him “Corrupt Carlos” and “El Corruptito.”

Even Gimenez’s one top fellow Republicans, specifically 25th District Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, told the Herald that the longtime mayor was inexperienced in partisan elections, and not even guaranteed to win the primary race. (A rare moment of agreement between this author and the Congressman whose financial affairs related to his office are dubious at best.)

Furthermore, the nine-year mayor has to solve the partisan political Rubik's cube puzzle of how to appeal to Republican voters who might see him as not pro-Trump enough after having publicly announced his support for Hillary Clinton during his last re-election campaign in 2016, without turning off the district’s anti-Trump voters in a theoretical general election this November.

Numerous Miami Republican candidates up and down the ballot in 2018 went out of their way to avoid all ties to Trump during their general election, including covering up and deleting social media posts.

Regardless of what’s to follow, Miami-Dade Mayor Gimenez is already guiding a congressional campaign which has taken a significant step backward before it has even begun against his fellow Republicans, whom he faces an uphill battle to beat, just to earn the privilege of squaring off against popular first-term incumbent Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.