Did Renier Diaz de la Portilla Pull a Fast One When He Registered Unopposed for the District 5 School Board Seat?
Or Is He a Victim of a Fracturing Miami Republican Legislative Delegation?

Nobody’s Home

“Renier was on the phone in the lobby, walking around in circles. … Then he said, ‘I need an address. They won’t let me qualify with this.’”

By Rebecca Wakefield

I don’t know where Renier Diaz de la Portilla lives. He says he lives at 4440 NW 107th Ave., Apartment 205. I braved the first day of school in Doral, also known as the ninth circle of traffic hell, to knock on that door.

I couldn’t tell you whether anyone lives behind the green door on the second floor of a nondescript new development called The Enclave. No one answered, but that hardly proves anything. Diaz de la Portilla isn’t listed on the gate directory either, but this is also not proof.

The reason I bring this up is that on July 21, Diaz de la Portilla, the youngest of three hermanos politicos, effectively walked onto the School Board of Miami-Dade County for the second time. School Board member Frank Bolaños is running for state Senate and no one else filed to replace him. I received a call from someone who was at the Elections Department on July 21, just before 11:30 a.m. The person, who asked to remain anonymous, described the following scene:

“Renier was on the phone in the lobby, walking around in circles. I heard him say, ‘Listen, who is this Angel Zayon guy and why is he challenging me? You’re David Rivera, you should know.’ Then he said, ‘I need an address. They won’t let me qualify with this.’”

This alleged conversation naturally piqued my curiosity. I had heard that Zayon was interested in the seat. He had previously run and lost against Marco Rubio for state legislator. When the deadline passed at noon on July 21, Zayon hadn’t filed. But in that half-hour or so between the phone call and successful qualification, Diaz de la Portilla had been busy.

The day before, the candidate had used the address of his mother’s mattress factory on an elections form appointing himself treasurer of his campaign. The next day, when Diaz de la Portilla arrived to file his loyalty oath and financial disclosure forms and pay a filing fee, a vigilant elections official noticed the address wasn’t residential. This is, allegedly, when he made the phone call in the lobby.

The documents he filed at 11:26 a.m. present a new address, the one at The Enclave, which bills itself as a community of “luxury condominium residences from the $200s.” At 11:32 a.m., he received the official qualifying handbook for School Board candidates. Then he changed his voter’s registration address to match. The change was made at 11:34 a.m. He previously voted from 1519 SW 19th St., the five-bedroom, three-bath home owned by elder brother state Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla and wife Claudia Davant.

When I reached Diaz de la Portilla, he told me that the mattress factory was just his mailing address. He said he had been living at his older brother’s house in Miami, but signed a lease in Doral on July 20. He was married in May and said he and his wife planned to find their own place. “It’s not easy for a newly married couple to buy, so we’re renting for now,” he said. “I have a lease for seven months. You have to be a qualified elector of District 5, so it worked out nicely. The timing was perfect.”

Quite perfect. Diaz de la Portilla denied the phone call ever happened. “That’s not true,” he said. “They are making it up, feeding it to you. I complied with the spirit and letter of the law.”

Diaz de la Portilla then explained that clearly, these questions were coming from “a lot of crybabies trying to win through the courts when they can’t win at the ballot box.” He asked me who my source was and when I declined to reveal it, said “Say hi to J.C. Planas for me.”

Juan Carlos Planas is the state representative who successfully ran against Diaz de la Portilla for his current seat. Planas has accused Alex and Renier DLP of helping bogus candidates run against him this year. Planas recently won a court decision to kick his cousin, Juan Enrique Planas, and another challenger, Carla Ascencio-Savola, off the ballot, for not properly complying with election qualification rules.

Planas told me he’s heard talk about Diaz de la Portilla’s possible residency issue, but hasn’t had time to look into anything but his own race. “The only illegalities I’m aware of are the ones committed by my opponents,” he said.

Diaz de la Portilla, 35, looks forward to his second tenure on the School Board, which he left in 1998 when he was unseated by Marta Pérez. Asked what he planned to focus on this time around, he replied, “Kind of some of the stuff I did before. But I’m a little older, a little wiser. I’m more qualified.”

Let’s hope so.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.