Overlooked and underfunded, Jackie Gross-Kellogg keeps things positive in HD 113 bid

Under-funded and, thus far, unsupported monetarily by her state and local parties, Jackie Gross-Kellogg hopes to pull a David-and-Goliath in November. Image via Jackie Gross-Kellogg.

Jackie Gross-Kellogg wants to revive the health of Biscayne Bay. She wants to tackle property insurance issues, protect reproductive rights and invest in public schools through policies that ensure their long-term economic stability.

Also on her to-do list: provide outdoor workers with heat protections, raise the minimum wage, make it easier for citizens to vote in free and fair elections, and pass “common-sense” gun control measures.

She’s running for the seat representing House District 113 to effect those policies. But it’s been far from smooth sailing. Her opponent, Republican Miami Rep. Vicki Lopez, carries a comparatively massive war chest and has the ample power of the Florida GOP behind her.

Gross-Kellogg, 56, has largely been left to fend for herself in the race. The result is something rather notable in Florida politics; while she’s been bombarded in the past several months with attack ads, she’s largely run a positive campaign, choosing to focus on her accomplishments and what she hopes to accomplish if elected rather than any of what she considers her opponent’s shortcomings.

“I want to run a campaign that my children would be proud of,” she said.

Gross-Kellogg was born in Chile. Her parents, a Colombian mother and a New Yorker father, ran a tourism business on Easter Island. The family was expelled in 1970, following the election of socialist President Salvador Allende. Five years later, they settled in Key Biscayne, which is where she calls home today.

She developed an early passion for soccer and played competitively through university while earning a degree in English literature. After a semi-pro career in various soccer programs in Miami, Mexico City, and Washington, D.C., she returned to Key Biscayne and co-founded the Key Biscayne Soccer Club. Today, she works as the program coordinator at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center and is the president of the Key Biscayne Dems.

There’s much more, including a deep involvement in local PTSAs and her founding of the nonprofit Friends of Gables High to refurbish her alma mater. And the side effect of her myriad community involvements is that she’s been asked to run for public office for years.

EMILY’s List approached Gross-Kellogg about challenging Republican U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar in Florida’s 27th Congressional District. Later, Dr. Fergie Reid of the national 90 for 90 organization and Margie Stein of 140 Blue Florida sought her out after other Democrats jumped in and out of the HD 113 race.

“Jackie knows how to play team ball, which is crucial in all this, and she’s just cool. HD 113’s constituents couldn’t have a more in-tune person,” Reid said. “She’s going to answer to the constituents’ needs. She’s not in it for herself. She’s looking out for the team.”

Lopez, 66, won by a narrow margin two years ago to flip HD 113 — which covers Key Biscayne and parts of Coral Gables and Miami — on a wave buoyed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Today, the district’s electorate is virtually even between Republicans and Democrats, with independents outnumbering the members of either party.

Since then, Lopez has raised and spent more than $800,000 to hold onto her seat. Gross-Kellogg has yet to crack $50,000.

Lopez’s gargantuan cash advantage is enhanced by the help of the Florida House Republican Campaign Committee (FHRCC), which is funding a TV ad in the 7:30 p.m. time slot accusing Gross-Kellogg of voicing support for biological men playing women’s sports, defunding the police, and raising taxes.

She has done none of those things.

“When I started running, the funny thing people kept asking me, which I was completely naive to, was, ‘Are you brave?’ And I was thinking brave in terms of knocking on doors and talking to people and having interviews,” she said. “I didn’t know it meant having million-dollar commercials being aired attacking me during my dad’s ‘Jeopardy’ time.”

Another FHRCC ad, this one a mailer, told recipients that Gross-Kellogg is an ally of Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and “other congressional radicals as they have praised pro-Palestinian riots and undermined Israel.”

Gross-Kellogg is Jewish. She told Florida Politics that she stands firmly with Israel. Before the pandemic hit, she said, her kids were planning a Birthright trip to the world’s only Jewish-majority country.

“There was this push poll that went out to all these Democrats,” she said. “It said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, Vicki Lopez served prison time in the 1990s, but she was pardoned, et cetera, and did you know that Jackie Gross-Kellogg stands with organizations that support Hamas and the Oct. 7 attack on Israel?’ I was like, what a fucking stretch is that? Are you kidding me?”

In 1997, Lopez — then a Lee County Commissioner going by the name Vicki Lukis — was convicted for honest services fraud. She served 15 months in federal prison before then-President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. A federal judge vacated the conviction 11 years later, and for many years after she worked on criminal justice reforms that won her bipartisan praise and roles with the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce and former Gov. Jeb Bush.

But she’s under new scrutiny. On Thursday, The Tributary published a report revealing her connection to — and behind-the-scenes advocacy for — a school bus camera vendor she supported legislatively that employs her son and son-in-law. Lopez failed to disclose that her sons’ employee benefited from her vote and co-sponsorship of legislation helping the company do business throughout Florida.

In response to the news, the Miami Herald changed its endorsement in the HD 113 race from Lopez to Gross-Kellogg.

Gross-Kellogg, who spoke with Florida Politics before The Tributary’s story dropped, said she found Lopez’s background “fascinating” and frequently corrects people who mistakenly assume Lopez still has a criminal record from her 1997 conviction.

“I feel very firmly about that. I have a friend, my trainer I’ve known since kindergarten, who served prison time. He can’t vote. Vicki can write state legislation. There’s a certain hypocrisy there, but I can’t wage a multimillion-dollar ad campaign about it,” she said.

“Now, if Karl Rove was in this and on my side, I can just imagine what he’d be pulling out. But then you’d get to a point where you burn both sides out and voters don’t even know who they’re voting for, and I don’t want that either. I want people to vote for me because they know me and what I represent.”

Getting the message out hasn’t been easy. While the Miami-Dade Democratic Party and Florida Democratic Party (FDP) have endorsed her, neither has been especially helpful. Gross-Kellogg said Miami Gardens Sen. Shevrin Jones, Chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, has been “stretched thin” with endless demands in a challenging election year. He held a “phenomenal” Blue Gala event in September to stir up additional support for Democratic candidates, and he’s a positive and encouraging standard-bearer for the party, she said, but he simply lacks the resources to support her campaign.

The same goes for the state party. After months of sitting on the proverbial sidelines, the FDP late last month threw Gross-Kellogg some in-kind aid: $1,000 for “data services.” She said she learned shortly after filing in May that she must raise $35,000 independently before the state party would step in to help her.

A mantra she’s heard more than once is that Florida Democrats are “digging deeper, not wider” when it comes to winning or holding seats this cycle.

As someone new to the state political game, Gross-Kellogg still gets emotional about the negativity that tends to permeate the Process. She said she won’t employ distasteful tactics like the ones she’s seen used against her. They don’t inspire her to return fire in kind, she said, but they do provoke her fighting spirit.

“If anything, my challenge is to get my competitiveness and anger under control,” she said, adding that there is something of a silver lining to the fact that so much money is being spent to defeat her. “I’m guessing those commercials are still on because my numbers are looking good.”