Exactly four years to the day after Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez fired transit director Roosevelt Bradley amid a cloud of mismanagement claims, the mayor himself was ousted in a recall by voters angry over the top guy’s politically clumsy handling of county finances — specifically, property-tax rate increases to help cover public employees’ raises.

Now Bradley is running for his former boss’ job on what he says is the strength of his record as transit director, while contending Alvarez made him a scapegoat for the failure of a controversial half-penny sales tax to produce a promised array of transit improvements.

Bradley says he’s not running for redemption, but because he believes his experience deep in the belly of the county bureaucracy makes him the best-prepared to run it.

Still, he can’t help savoring the irony of that March 15 date, which saw him forced out of the public service he relished, then opened the door to his return.

“I think it’s predestination,’’ says the preternaturally confident Bradley, who is rarely seen in public without a well-tailored suit and tie, shortly before adding: “I’m running to win this election outright, without a runoff.”

It’s a bold pronouncement that draws not-for-attribution guffaws from some veteran political operatives, who note that Bradley enjoys at best limited public recognition and a decidedly uphill battle even to make a runoff against the well-financed and far better known frontrunner among the 11 candidates, Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, especially in a short race. The election is May 24.

But then Bradley, 55, has long fashioned himself as a winner who has persistently prevailed against tall odds.

Today, after a 35-year professional career that includes two pre- and post-county stints in private business, Bradley lists his net worth at more than $1.4 million and lives in the leafy suburb of Miami Lakes, a long way from his upbringing in south Miami-Dade as one of nine children of a single mother who did migrant farmwork.

Since his exit from the county, Bradley has joined the private sector, doing transit consulting (though not for his former agency), and lobbying at the county for a company that won a multi-million dollar contract at Miami International Airport to secure luggage with shrink-wrap.

As mayor, Bradley says, he would work to make sure others get the same chances he did.

“I believe everyone should have a fair shake. I would not be where I am today if not for the many people who helped me. I was given an opportunity. I was very fortunate,’’ Bradley says.

And his chances of winning election, he insists, are better than the cynics can know. Bradley, who is black, says the ouster of Alvarez and Commissioner Natacha Seijas by overwhelming margins shows that county voters are ready to look beyond racial and ethnic affiliation in choosing leaders.

“This county has grown up. This county needs an administrator. This job is not for a trainee,’’ Bradley says.

Bradley is widely seen as the candidate of the county’s black political establishment. During his tenure in the transit agency’s top ranks, Bradley courted and received strong backing from the commission’s four black members. After his dismissal by Alvarez in 2007, the commissioners, joined by four other colleagues, held an unusual “name-clearing’’ hearing and gave Bradley a symbolic vote of confidence. They said the reasons then-county manager George Burgess cited for firing Bradley, including mounting evidence of fiscal problems, and allegations of nepotism and other hiring irregularities, were either unwarranted or relatively insignificant.