Miami-Dade County local elections 2020: Mayor, State Attorney, & more…

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

I think there should be a thread for Miami-Dade local elections. This is of course the largest county in Florida with nearly 2.7 million residents, so the County Mayor is arguably the most important executive in the state after the governor.

Here we can discuss the county mayoral election, pitting major candidates like County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava (D), former County Mayor Alex Penelas (D), County Commissioner Xavier L. Suarez (NPA), and County Commissioner Esteban Bovo (R) against one another to succeed Mayor Carlos Giménez (R) who is term-limited.

For State Attorney (which is what Florida calls the position most Americans may know as "district attorney"), we have the 27-year incumbent Kathy Fernández-Rundle (D) facing the stiffest challenge of her career from former prosecutor and ACLU official Melba V. Pearson (D). Rundle is infamous for failing to charge a single police officer with a crime in her entire tenure as State Attorney, including in the case of Darren Rainey (**warning, graphic images at that link), a mentally ill Black man who was boiled to death by police in a scalding shower at a Miami-Dade prison in 2012. Pearson has pledged to end such public corruption if she is elected to the position.

And so that we don't end on a sad note, I'm including this tweet from mayoral candidate Bovo, who recently had Senator Marco Rubio pretend to phonebank for him: https://twitter.com/billycorben/status/1293568181391495168?s=21

[ajc0918]

I'm hoping Daniella Levine Cava and pull off the mayoral race.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

I'm hoping Daniella Levine Cava and pull off the mayoral race.

Same here. I just voted on Monday for Daniella and Melba Pearson. Though the mayoral race will almost certainly go to a November run-off between Daniella and whoever gets 2nd place, with Penelas and Bovo fighting for that spot.

[ajc0918]

I'm hoping Daniella Levine Cava and pull off the mayoral race.

Same here. I just voted on Monday for Daniella and Melba Pearson. Though the mayoral race will almost certainly go to a November run-off between Daniella and whoever gets 2nd place, with Penelas and Bovo fighting for that spot.

Wow so DLC is in first place and it could be a DEM vs DEM race?

Miami-Dade has changed so much in the past few years.

[brucejoel99]

It's hilarious how if Suarez wins, father & son will respectively be County Mayor & City Mayor. So Miami. But I think the top-2 run-off is gonna be Penelas (his poll numbers are decent & his fundraising is a monster) vs. Bovo (as the guy most Republicans vote for), & Penelas wins that since Dade is a big (non-Atlas) blue county in presidential years.

But who knows? Could also be Penelas vs. DLC on Nov. 3rd.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

It's hilarious how if Suarez wins, father & son will respectively be County Mayor & City Mayor. So Miami. But I think the top-2 run-off is gonna be Penelas (his poll numbers are decent & his fundraising is a monster) vs. Bovo (as the guy most Republicans vote for), & Penelas wins that since Dade is a big (non-Atlas) blue county in presidential years.

But who knows? Could also be Penelas vs. DLC on Nov. 3rd.

Interesting. What makes you think DLC won't make it? She's been leading in the few polls that were taken, and her campaign is literally everywhere in the county.

[pikachu]

Didn't know this was happening! Anyway, could someone in the area give a tl;dr about Miami local politics and issues? From my very limited knowledge, I get the impression that local politics are very dynastic and dominated by Cuban Republicans.

[brucejoel99]

It's hilarious how if Suarez wins, father & son will respectively be County Mayor & City Mayor. So Miami. But I think the top-2 run-off is gonna be Penelas (his poll numbers are decent & his fundraising is a monster) vs. Bovo (as the guy most Republicans vote for), & Penelas wins that since Dade is a big (non-Atlas) blue county in presidential years.

But who knows? Could also be Penelas vs. DLC on Nov. 3rd.

Interesting. What makes you think DLC won't make it? She's been leading in the few polls that were taken, and her campaign is literally everywhere in the county.

Eh, not only was one of those polls a Change Research poll (which are statistically unrelibale in FL as a whole, let alone a single county) & the other a DLC internal, but her leads in both of them were well within their MoE's, so I'm not all that keen to put much stock into them.

Bovo is heavily leaning into the right-wing vote's support for the current cultural wars concerning Goya, "defunding" the police (he said a while back that he'd literally change nothing), stopping "socialism" in Dade County, etc., so it feels like he should probably be able to get 1 of the 2 spots in the run-off, which would leave the other spot for one of the Dems, & I just have a feeling that Penelas is more likely to get it than DLC because he has much more name-recognition than her since he's so entrenched in Dade politics - obviously because he's the former Mayor - & because there has honestly just been (& this is surely a perk of the fact that I mentioned earlier: that his fundraising is a monster) a mega-ultra-super sh*tton of Penelas ads plastered all over TV on every channel, whereas there hasn't been a single DLC ad as far as I can tell, so that might not bode well for her being "literally everywhere."

Not to mention, Penelas is going after a more-reliable demographic of suburban voters that are looking for a "moderate" with years of experience, while DLC is going after relatively less reliable demographics: the youth vote, conservationists, & people who want a new face, so unless she has a really strong grassroots outreach/GOTV operation, I don't think this being the case helps her either.

Don't get me wrong, I think DLC is head & shoulders above the rest of the field & would probably serve to actually help move Dade County forward on issues like industry & job opportunity expansion in order to prevent a Millennial brain-drain, environmental sustainability, affordable housing, etc. (honestly, I think the only issue Penelas is better on is public transit, seeing that he's calling for a massive increase in transportation funding in order to expand the Metro out west, something the half-penny tax should've accomplished had it not managed to go elsewhere), but I just don't think she's gonna be able to pull it out next Tuesday. I'd really love to see her & her campaign prove me wrong, though!

[brucejoel99]

Didn't know this was happening! Anyway, could someone in the area give a tl;dr about Miami local politics and issues? From my very limited knowledge, I get the impression that local politics are very dynastic and dominated by Cuban Republicans.

That impression would've been true once upon a time but Dade politics has very much shifted over the years to the point that Little Havana is currently represented on the County Commission by a white Democrat (basically a female Tim Kaine, but one whose ability to speak Spanish actually helped her with Hispanic outreach) rather than a Cuban-American Republican. Cuban Republicans hold nowhere near the grip on Dade politics that they once did.

As for the major political issues of the day, pretty much what I described in my reply to this thread before this one: public transit, expanding industry & job opportunities so as to prevent a Millennial brain-drain, environmental sustainability, affordable housing, etc.

[MARGINS6729]

It's hilarious how if Suarez wins, father & son will respectively be County Mayor & City Mayor. So Miami. But I think the top-2 run-off is gonna be Penelas (his poll numbers are decent & his fundraising is a monster) vs. Bovo (as the guy most Republicans vote for), & Penelas wins that since Dade is a big (non-Atlas) blue county in presidential years.

But who knows? Could also be Penelas vs. DLC on Nov. 3rd.

Interesting. What makes you think DLC won't make it? She's been leading in the few polls that were taken, and her campaign is literally everywhere in the county.

Eh, not only was one of those polls a Change Research poll (which are statistically unrelibale in FL as a whole, let alone a single county) & the other a DLC internal, but her leads in both of them were well within their MoE's, so I'm not all that keen to put much stock into them.

Bovo is heavily leaning into the right-wing vote's support for the current cultural wars concerning Goya, "defunding" the police (he said a while back that he'd literally change nothing), stopping "socialism" in Dade County, etc., so it feels like he should probably be able to get 1 of the 2 spots in the run-off, which would leave the other spot for one of the Dems, & I just have a feeling that Penelas is more likely to get it than DLC because he has much more name-recognition than her since he's so entrenched in Dade politics - obviously because he's the former Mayor - & because there has honestly just been (& this is surely a perk of the fact that I mentioned earlier: that his fundraising is a monster) a mega-ultra-super sh*tton of Penelas ads plastered all over TV on every channel, whereas there hasn't been a single DLC ad as far as I can tell, so that might not bode well for her being "literally everywhere."

Not to mention, Penelas is going after a more-reliable demographic of suburban voters that are looking for a "moderate" with years of experience, while DLC is going after relatively less reliable demographics: the youth vote, conservationists, & people who want a new face, so unless she has a really strong grassroots outreach/GOTV operation, I don't think this being the case helps her either.

Don't get me wrong, I think DLC is head & shoulders above the rest of the field & would probably serve to actually help move Dade County forward on issues like industry & job opportunity expansion in order to prevent a Millennial brain-drain, environmental sustainability, affordable housing, etc. (honestly, I think the only issue Penelas is better on is public transit, seeing that he's calling for a massive increase in transportation funding in order to expand the Metro out west, something the half-penny tax should've accomplished had it not managed to go elsewhere), but I just don't think she's gonna be able to pull it out next Tuesday. I'd really love to see her & her campaign prove me wrong, though!

If DLC was running against Bovo, do you think she could win?

[brucejoel99]

It's hilarious how if Suarez wins, father & son will respectively be County Mayor & City Mayor. So Miami. But I think the top-2 run-off is gonna be Penelas (his poll numbers are decent & his fundraising is a monster) vs. Bovo (as the guy most Republicans vote for), & Penelas wins that since Dade is a big (non-Atlas) blue county in presidential years.

But who knows? Could also be Penelas vs. DLC on Nov. 3rd.

Interesting. What makes you think DLC won't make it? She's been leading in the few polls that were taken, and her campaign is literally everywhere in the county.

Eh, not only was one of those polls a Change Research poll (which are statistically unrelibale in FL as a whole, let alone a single county) & the other a DLC internal, but her leads in both of them were well within their MoE's, so I'm not all that keen to put much stock into them.

Bovo is heavily leaning into the right-wing vote's support for the current cultural wars concerning Goya, "defunding" the police (he said a while back that he'd literally change nothing), stopping "socialism" in Dade County, etc., so it feels like he should probably be able to get 1 of the 2 spots in the run-off, which would leave the other spot for one of the Dems, & I just have a feeling that Penelas is more likely to get it than DLC because he has much more name-recognition than her since he's so entrenched in Dade politics - obviously because he's the former Mayor - & because there has honestly just been (& this is surely a perk of the fact that I mentioned earlier: that his fundraising is a monster) a mega-ultra-super sh*tton of Penelas ads plastered all over TV on every channel, whereas there hasn't been a single DLC ad as far as I can tell, so that might not bode well for her being "literally everywhere."

Not to mention, Penelas is going after a more-reliable demographic of suburban voters that are looking for a "moderate" with years of experience, while DLC is going after relatively less reliable demographics: the youth vote, conservationists, & people who want a new face, so unless she has a really strong grassroots outreach/GOTV operation, I don't think this being the case helps her either.

Don't get me wrong, I think DLC is head & shoulders above the rest of the field & would probably serve to actually help move Dade County forward on issues like industry & job opportunity expansion in order to prevent a Millennial brain-drain, environmental sustainability, affordable housing, etc. (honestly, I think the only issue Penelas is better on is public transit, seeing that he's calling for a massive increase in transportation funding in order to expand the Metro out west, something the half-penny tax should've accomplished had it not managed to go elsewhere), but I just don't think she's gonna be able to pull it out next Tuesday. I'd really love to see her & her campaign prove me wrong, though!

If DLC was running against Bovo, do you think she could win?

Yes, for the same reason that Penelas wins if it's a Penelas vs. Bovo run-off: Dade is a big (non-Atlas) blue county in presidential years.

[brucejoel99]

Good news: DLC advanced to the run-off! She evidently had a much better ground game than I was giving her credit for, given the noticeable lack of any ad presence. In any event, now that she's in a run-off against Bovo, she - as previously intimated - all but has this in the bag come November, if for no other reason than that this race will match national trends: this is gonna be a wave election with high turnout & Biden voters won't be breaking ranks to vote for a Trumpist. It'll literally be a microcosm of national politics.

Bad news: Katherine Fernandez Rundle was re-elected as Dade's state attorney, so the "bad apples" of law enforcement are presumably celebrating all over the county tonight.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Congratulations to Florida Democrats for cleaning house from all the homophobes and Trump-lovers, and selecting a number of progressive DAs.

[ajc0918]

Good news: DLC advanced to the run-off! She evidently had a much better ground game than I was giving her credit for, given the noticeable lack of any ad presence. In any event, now that she's in a run-off against Bovo, she - as previously intimated - all but has this in the bag come November, if for no other reason than that this race will match national trends: this is gonna be a wave election with high turnout & Biden voters won't be breaking ranks to vote for a Trumpist. It'll literally be a microcosm of national politics.

Bad news: Katherine Fernandez Rundle was re-elected as Dade's state attorney, so the "bad apples" of law enforcement are presumably celebrating all over the county tonight.

Apparently DLC's internal polling for the run off has her up 11% too. Would be awesome to have a strong democrat in that office.

Levine Cava’s internal survey, conducted by Change Research, shows her leading Bovo 39%-28% with 33% of voters still undecided.

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/360288-levine-cava-internal-poll-lead-bovo

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Good news: DLC advanced to the run-off! She evidently had a much better ground game than I was giving her credit for, given the noticeable lack of any ad presence. In any event, now that she's in a run-off against Bovo, she - as previously intimated - all but has this in the bag come November, if for no other reason than that this race will match national trends: this is gonna be a wave election with high turnout & Biden voters won't be breaking ranks to vote for a Trumpist. It'll literally be a microcosm of national politics.

Bad news: Katherine Fernandez Rundle was re-elected as Dade's state attorney, so the "bad apples" of law enforcement are presumably celebrating all over the county tonight.

Ugh, she's one of the worst