Ryan Nicol
Former House candidate Rhonda Rebman Lopez is once again atop the House District 120 field in fundraising after pulling in more than $30,000 for the fourth straight month.
Lopez joined the race in September and has led her opponents in fundraising every month since. She’s competing in the Republican primary against attorney Alexandria Suarez and Islamorada Councilman and former Mayor Jim Mooney.
Republican candidate Jose Felix Peixoto had also filed to run, as had former Democratic Agriculture Commissioner candidate Roy David Walker, but both have withdrawn from the contest in the last few weeks.
Lopez ended 2019 with more than $162,000 raised in four months as a candidate. She’s seeking to replace term-limited GOP state Rep. Holly Raschein.
Lopez will enter 2020 with nearly $155,000 still on hand. That’s more than enough to put her ahead of the rest of the HD 120 field.
Mooney is second in cash on hand, going into the new year with more than $54,000. He’s added $56,000 since filing for the contest in August. That includes back-to-back months of raising just over $18,000.
Suarez, meanwhile, started the 2020 cycle in the contest for Senate District 39. She swapped to the HD 120 race after Rep. Ana Maria Rodriguez decided to run for SD 39.
Overall this cycle, she’s added more than $38,000. She has more than $36,000 of that still remaining.
HD 120 covers Monroe County as well as parts of southern Miami-Dade County, and leans Republican. In 2016, Raschein secured a convincing win, defeating her Democratic opponent by nearly 15 percentage points.
But that margin closed in 2018, with Raschein winning by just over 6 percentage points.
Still, with Walker’s withdrawal, Democrats don’t have a candidate in the race. Whether they will concede the seat to Republicans to focus on other contests remains to be seen.
Candidates and political committees faced a Friday deadline to report all fundraising activity through the end of 2019.
