Guest Author
After contentious litigation, a judge has approved a new district map for the City of Miami that will be in force through the November 2023 Election. Here are some of the winners and losers:
Winners
Sabina Covo
Commissioner Covo’s strongest performance earlier this year was in Coconut Grove. Now she benefits from having a “united” Coconut Grove, which includes the Bay Heights neighborhood that previously was a part of Joe Carollo’s District 3. Even better, she sheds the portions of Morningside where she performed less strongly than other parts of the district. She is now in an even better position for reelection.
Christine King
Commissioner King, Miami’s only Black elected Commissioner, didn’t see her district change too much. The biggest update will be the addition of Morningside, which has fewer Black voters than the rest of this minority access seat but is still a reliably Democratic area. She’s not up for another couple of years, but Commissioner King remains in good shape.
Mixed Bad
Manolo Reyes
Commissioner Reyes’ district is changing pretty dramatically. He is losing the entire southern portion of his district, everything south of Calle Ocho, and is inheriting the western portion of Alex Diaz de la Portilla’s former District 1. Demographically there aren’t a tremendous amount of changes, but he is moving into a more conservative district as he loses the slightly more moderate neighborhoods of Silver Bluff and The Pines.
Losers
Joe Carollo
As if Commissioner Carollo didn’t have enough problems already, he was cut out of his own district as his Bay Heights neighborhood became a part of District 2.
Alex Diaz de la Portilla
He might be the biggest loser of the redistricting process. ADLP’s district was a major focus of the plaintiff’s lawsuit against the new district maps. His new district has more Democrats than Republicans, but a solid 25% of the district’s likely voters are NPAs who are almost exclusively Hispanic. They tend to vote for Republicans, but a strong Hispanic Democrat might find fertile ground here. A flip here would be expensive, given ADLP’s prodigious fundraising abilities. But it’s certainly far more of a possibility than it was last week. Local Democratic leaders, and Miami’s lobbying corps, will be giving the new District 1 a hard look.
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Michael Worley is the President of MDW Communications, a political advertising agency, and a top campaign adviser to City of Miami Commissioner Covo and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins.
