Jesse Scheckner
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava evaded a runoff contest Tuesday, securing more than enough votes to earn a second term as the county’s top executive official.
With all precincts reporting, Levine Cava had 58% of the vote. To win outright, voters had to cast more than half their ballots in her favor.
Miami Lakes Mayor Manny Cid placed second with a 23% share of the vote, followed by social media influencer Alex Otaola with 12%.
Four others — broadcaster Carlos Garin, ex-Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger, business owner Eddy Rojas and trapeze artist Miguel Quintero — took 3%, 2%, 1% and 1%, respectively.
“I am truly humbled and honored by the vote of confidence, and the trust the voters placed in me to serve another four years as your Mayor. Through the hard work, unwavering commitment, long hours and hot days, we marked a decisive win, despite facing six opponents who attacked us, lied about our progress and the incredible work we have done,” Levine Cava said in a statement.
“Just as I promised four years ago, I will do so again tonight. I am ready and promise to continue doing the work that needs to get done. We will double down on our housing challenges, invest in our infrastructure so we can be future-ready, prioritize healthy and safe communities and ensure we are a resilient county that protects and preserves our environment. We will continue to partner with our business community so together we can chart a path for progress to take on challenges big and small. And I promise to stay community-focused to empower people to achieve their full potential and live their American Dream.”
The sole Democrat in the technically nonpartisan contest, Levine Cava made history four years ago, when she became the first woman and Jewish person to win the Miami-Dade County mayoralty.
Six challengers stood in the way of her being the first such person re-elected to the post.
A couple of them — Cid and Otaola, both Republicans — carried large enough war chests and name ID to threaten her incumbency.
Cid lamented his loss Tuesday as a loss for residents who are finding it increasingly harder to make ends meet.
“While the election is over, my heart goes out to the middle-class in Miami-Dade, who currently do not have a voice at County Hall,” he said. “the dreams and aspirations of working families became mine, and the success of small businesses in the 305 has to be front and center during all discussions in Miami-Dade County. We brought these issues to the limelight, and I’ll continue to be their advocate.”
Levine Cava was the only mayoral candidate to qualify for the race by petition, a feat she accomplished twice. Her fundraising was jaw-dropping: $6.3 million since she took office, a sum more than seven times that of her opponents’ combined gains combined this cycle.
Nearly 75% of the county’s municipal Mayors backed her, as did close to two-thirds of city Vice Mayors and more than 90 other current and former local leaders and myriad union and advocacy organizations.
As accomplishments, she was able to tout the county’s sub-2% unemployment rate, record-smashing airport and seaport business, green initiatives like the shore power program at PortMiami and a federally funded electric bus fleet, and an administration that netted 75 Achievement Awards from the National Association of Counties last year.
She also received national attention for her response to the Surfside condo collapse in 2021, when she led the county through the second year of the pandemic as her administration distributed more than 300,000 at-home test kits to residents and more than $80 million in emergency rental assistance.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried, who similarly made history as the first woman elected as Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner, celebrated Levine Cava’s win Tuesday.
“Mayor Levine Cava has proven herself a bold leader capable of delivering results for the people of Miami-Dade County. Her vision, integrity, and commitment to results show through in her work — she’s lowered crime, tackled the affordability crisis head-on, prioritized the environment, and strengthened the local economy,” Fried said in a statement.
“Miami-Dade County is in good hands with four more years of Daniella Levine Cava. Congratulations, Madam Mayor!”
But in the leadup to Election Day, Levine Cava’s opponents were quick to point out she made a lot of mistakes and questionable moves in the past four years. In 2022, she attended a trip to Qatar, funded by the country’s authoritarian regime, which at the time had her chief political adviser on its payroll.
Last year, her administration’s failure to renew a local gas tax caused a $17 million county shortfall. Levine Cava publicly played the flub off as an impromptu tax holiday while quietly suspending her Budget Director.
She caught heat in January over deferred maintenance at MIA that shut down the hub’s interterminal SkyTrain, forcing travelers to walk up to a mile to their gates. In a statement, she blamed her predecessor’s administration.
More recently, Levine Cava attracted negative headlines for backing a now-canceled plan to purchase an office complex in South Miami-Dade at a rate higher than market value and a $2.5 billion bond proposal she similarly nixed after it proved unpopular with voters.
Cid, 40, said those missteps and others prove Miami-Dade was in the wrong hands. Everyday county residents just aren’t living better under Levine Cava than they were four years ago, he argued, pointing to still-shadeless Metrobus stops, increased trash collection fees, parking fees at taxpayer-funded parks and an arduous permitting process that incensed at least one other Levine Cava challenger this year.
Under Levine Cava, Miami-Dade’s government workforce grew by 9%. County employees, thanks to new union agreements, got raises that are expected to increase Miami-Dade’s already growing budget by $250 million over three years.
Cid proposed something of a U-turn. If elected, he said he’d cut county spending while slashing countywide property taxes by 10%, which alone would remove about $200 million per year from the budget.
It wasn’t necessarily a radical idea; U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez, who preceded Levine Cava as Mayor, made an even larger cut in 2011 near the end of the recession that resulted in the termination of hundreds of county jobs and, for the public servants who survived them, pay reductions.
Notably, property values were falling then; they’re rising now.
Cid said some of the downsizing would come just by eliminating roughly 3,000 already vacant government positions and several senior-level jobs Levine Cava created that he viewed as superfluous, including the soon-to-be obsolete Chief of Public Safety post.
He also vowed to take a close look at how much and to whom the county pays for outsourced goods and services. A recent staff report revealed that one out of every five contracts Miami-Dade approved last year was a no-bid deal.
“The bureaucracy is just way too big,” he told Florida Politics.
With a victory this year, Cid said he’d eschew donations from companies with existing contracts with or seeking contracts from the county. “How can I be an administrator when people I’m supposed to hold accountable are giving to my campaign?” he told the Miami Herald last year.
Between when he launched his campaign in September 2023 and Aug. 2, Cid raised close to $528,000, with large donations from real estate, health care and technology businesses.
He also carried endorsements from the Associated Builders and Contractors, the Christian Family Coalition and Miami Young Republicans, a Florida GOP affiliate.
Otaola, 45, didn’t boast the institutional support Levine Cava and Cid enjoyed, nor did he have many big-name backers — aside from Roger Stone, who worked to help his campaign.
Instead, he had an army of online backers who made more than 13,000 small contributions, mostly through his “Hola! Ota-Ola” YouTube show, which centers largely on Cuba and communism — both major focuses of his campaign.
Many of Otaola’s donors lived outside Miami-Dade. But many also lived within it, leading some to predict he’d outperform Levine Cava’s other challengers in a county with the world’s largest Cuban diaspora.
His campaign website listed several objectives, from reducing traffic and boosting business with tax incentives to safeguarding schools and supporting police. Atop his was is making “Miami-Dade a communist-free zone.”
Not-so-coincidentally, that was the name of an electioneering communications organization that raised $67,000 to support his campaign. Otaola separately amassed $311,000, including a $23,000 self-loan.
If elected, he promised to use county resources to rid Miami-Dade of corruption and communism by empaneling specialized commissions to investigate businesses and “frontmen” he said are funneling laundered money back to the oppressive regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
He offered little to no evidence such activities take place. Levine Cava’s campaign blasted him for saying she allowed it to happen on her watch.
But the voters, Otaola said, “are asking for us to step in.”
“The communist penetration has been long coming, and there has been no one at the county level willing to take on these things,” he told Florida Politics.
During the 2020 election cycle, as Otaola’s popularity soared along with his YouTube subscriber count (now at 377,000 and rising), a resurfaced video of him hosting his show in blackface made headlines, drawing accusations of racism. He said he regretted the incident.
Four other candidates ran in the technically nonpartisan Mayor’s race.
There was Republican Carlos Garín, a 59-year-old Spanish-language actor and broadcaster who ran for the Miami-Dade Commission in 2018, placing last in a four-way contest that Democrat Eileen Higgins won.
Since filing to run Jan. 31, he added $27,000 to his campaign account, most of it his money.
Another Republican, 45-year-old businessman Shlomo Danzinger, gained political prominence in 2022 when he unseated Charles Burkett for the Surfside mayoralty. Burkett won a rematch in March after months of unflattering headlines about Danzinger, whose bellicosity at government meetings led to frayed relationships with others at Town Hall.
Danzinger had endorsed Levine Cava prior to his ouster. Two days after he announced his candidacy for Miami-Dade Mayor, he rescinded the nod. He raised about $12,000 between mid-April and Aug. 2.
On Monday, Danzinger sued Miami-Dade and three of its election officers, including Supervisor of Elections Christina White, for allowing Levine Cava to appear on the ballot with “Cava” counted as her last name, not “Levine Cava,” so that her name appeared at the top of the list of mayoral candidates.
Levine Cava’s campaign called the suit a “last-minute stunt” and noted her name appeared on the ballot the same way when she won in 2020. Judge Antonio Arzola of the 11th Judicial Circuit threw out the suit Tuesday morning.
Candidate Miguel Quintero inarguably had the most unique day job of the seven people running; he is a trapeze artist and runs an at-home circus business called Miami Flying Trapeze.
He might still have been focusing on that endeavor alone today were it not the subject of numerous code violations and citations from the county since 2021. Quintero said he was the target of a vendetta, and his campaign was as much an effort to call attention to the issue as it was an attempt to increase police accountability and government transparency.
He sued the county twice this cycle, once last year over the code citations issue and again this year so that he could use his nickname, “el Skipper,” on the ballot.
A former Democrat, Quintero now serves as Vice Chair of the Miami-Dade Libertarian Party. He raised $6,000 through early August.
At the back of the pack in fundraising was first-time candidate Eddy Rojas, a 39-year-old independent who owns a valet parking company.
He raised just $2,400 since filing in January and spent all but $100 on the race’s qualifying fee.
