Jacob Ogles
Rep. David Borrero has shifted his candidacy to the new House District 111.
He notified the Florida Division of Elections of his move in a letter received on March 17.
“I am notifying your office that due to the newly approved 2022 State House redistricting map, I am changing my candidate designation for the 2022 election cycle,” the freshman Republican wrote.
That new map (H 8013) originally put Borrero in the new House District 116. He landed in the same district as Rep. Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican in line to be House Speaker in 2024.
Borrero won his current House District 105 seat in 2020 and kept the swing district red. He won with 54% of the vote there just two years after his GOP predecessor, now-Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez, won by a mere 417 votes. This made Borrero’s win one of the most critical for the House GOP as it expanded its majority.
The move shouldn’t make him vulnerable to a Democratic challenge. About 58.65% of voters in the new HD 111 voted for Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and just 40.74% backed Democrat Joe Biden. But the new map does require the incumbent to make a change of address.
The Sweetwater community where Borrero lives made up a small portion of HD 116, which mostly consists of territory now in Perez’s existing district.
Most of Borrero’s existing HD 105 falls in the new HD 111, but his jurisdiction will shift further east than his current turf. The new seat is also contained entirely within Miami-Dade County.
The district sheds an enormous piece of geography in the old HD 105, which spanned westward all the way to U.S. 41 in Collier County. Now, Krome Avenue serves as the western border for HD 111. Most of the rural western land in Borrero’s existing district ends up either in the Key West-based House District 120 or the Naples area House District 82.
The new district is bound on the east by Interstate 75 south of the Broward-Miami-Dade line and by the Palmetto Expressway in its southern portion. It now covers significant portions of Doral and Hialeah Gardens, while losing Sweetwater and the area around Dolphin Mall.
Borrero, a former Sweetwater City Commissioner, hasn’t indicated where he will live. His letter to the DOE lists his campaign treasurer’s address as the return address.
