Jesse Scheckner
One of the nation’s largest abortion rights groups is again backing Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s campaign for the county’s most powerful local office.
EMILY’s List, a political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic women who support reproductive rights, has endorsed Levine Cava for re-election.
The Washington-based group also got behind Levine Cava — the county’s first woman Mayor and the first Jewish person to hold the job — during her first run in 2020.
Sarah Curmi, the group’s vice president of state and local campaigns, said EMILY’s List is “thrilled to endorse” Levine Cava for re-election.
“In her first term, Mayor Levine Cava has been a steadfast leader in South Florida — guiding her community through the tragic Surfside collapse, lowering rates of gun violence, protecting the environment, and championing reproductive freedom,” Curmi said in a statement.
“We are proud to support her re-election.”
Levine Cava, in turn, said she is “honored” to receive a nod once more from the group, particularly at a time when abortion rights are being eroded in Florida and across the country.
“With the ongoing attacks on women’s reproductive rights and Florida’s dangerous new abortion ban, their work to elect pro-choice champions is more important than ever,” she said, referencing the state’s new six-week abortion ban, which a Leon County judge temporarily blocked in late June.
She added, “I am proud to stand with them in this fight.”
The endorsement from EMILY’s List, whose name is an acronym for “Early Money is Like Yeast,” comes alongside the group’s “Madam Mayor” initiative to boost the campaigns of women running for local executive offices nationwide in the 2023-24 election cycle.
Of 1,400 Mayors across the country, only 424 are women, according to the group, which has raised more than $850 million since 1985 toward electing the country’s first woman Vice President, 175 women to the U.S. House, 26 to the Senate, 20 Governors and more than 1,500 state and local officers.
“The battle for reproductive freedom and our very democracy is playing out on a local level every single day — and these women stand at the frontlines, working to make their communities a better place and standing up to Republican extremism in the face of a relentless onslaught against our freedoms,” EMILY’s List President Laphonza Butler said in a statement.
Two people have filed to challenge Levine Cava’s bid for re-election to a second and final four-year term: Republican YouTuber and conservative political activist Alex Otaola and Democratic trapeze artist and self-described First Amendment auditor Miguel “el Skipper” Quintero.
Of the three, only Levine Cava served in public office before seeking the county mayoralty.
The Miami-Dade Mayor job is a technically nonpartisan office. As such, Levine Cava, Otaola, Quintero and whoever else files and qualifies for the race by June 11, 2024, will all appear together on the Primary ballot on Aug. 20, 2024.
If no candidate secures more than half the vote to win outright, the two top vote-earners will compete in a Nov. 5, 2024, runoff.
