Jesse Scheckner
Republican firefighter Omar Blanco is heading to Tallahassee as the new Representative for House District 113 in Miami-Dade County. He defeated Democratic education nonprofit director Norma Perez Schwartz in Tuesday’s General Election.
With early votes fully tallied, mail-in votes partially counted and all 56 precincts reporting, Blanco had 59.4% of the vote to win the HD 115 seat. He succeeds Republican Rep. Alina Garcia, who successfully ran for Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections and must leave office in compliance with Florida’s resign-to-run law.
Blanco, 52, carried a larger war chest, more business-related endorsements, significantly more support from his party and the benefit of a long tenure in a hero’s profession into Election Day.
It also wasn’t the former firefighter union President’s first electoral rodeo; Blanco ran for Congress in 2020, losing to fellow firefighter Carlos Giménez, who went on to supplant the district’s then-Democratic Representative.
Perez Schwarz, 44, isn’t a political neophyte either. After losing her early childhood education contract job during COVID, she phone banked and canvassed for Ruth’s List Florida, which endorsed her in June, and went door-to-door in support of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s history-making 2020 campaign.
She also served on civic boards, including as a voting, PTA-appointed member of the Secure Our Future Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations to the Miami-Dade School Board.
She vowed, if elected, to address housing and property insurance unaffordability, defend women’s reproductive rights, upgrade local infrastructure and protect the environment.
Between when she filed to run in April and Oct. 31, Perez Schwartz raised about $33,500. She had less than $3,000 left five days out from Election Day.
Blanco, meanwhile, stacked $439,000 between his campaign account and political committee, Let’s Get Back to Basics. He spent most of it before Aug. 20, when he defeated a pair of Primary opponents by 30 percentage points, but since then still raised more than three times what Perez had all cycle.
That’s not including $18,400 worth of in-kind aid from the Republican Party of Florida for polling expenses.
Blanco, whose website boasts endorsements from Associated Industries of Florida, five first responder organizations and the Christian Family Coalition, also promised to address soaring property insurance rates. Other priorities included providing seniors more protection and enhancing public safety.
The husband of a public school teacher, Blanco said he would work to further protect parental rights in education, a phrase used as the official title for a Florida law restricting LGBTQ-inclusive classroom instruction that some critics have called “Don’t Say Gay.”
HD 115 covers a portion of south Miami-Dade, including Cutler Bay, Palmetto Bay, Pinecrest and the unincorporated neighborhoods of The Falls, Kendall and Westchester.
The district has shifted redder in recent elections. Voters there sided with Andrew Gillum over DeSantis by 4.4 percentage points in 2018, but then picked Trump over Joe Biden by 2 points two years later, according to MCI Maps.
After redistricting in 2022, DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio won the district by 17.4 points and 15.6 points, respectively. By last month, 38% of HD 113 voters were registered as Republicans, compared to 29% who were Democrats and 33% who belonged to a third party or no party.
