Jesse Scheckner
Raquel Regalado has secured a second term on the Miami-Dade County Commission, again defending her District 7 seat from former Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner.
With early votes fully tallied, mail-in votes partially counted and all 71 precincts reporting Tuesday night, Regalado had 56.6% of the vote to defeat Lerner in a runoff rematch four years in the making.
the unincorporated neighborhoods of Kendall and Sunset.
For Miami-Dade voters weighing in on the race, the leadup to Election Day likely felt at least a little bit like déjà vu all over again. Regalado and Lerner also squared off in 2020, both as non-incumbent candidates. Regalado won then by 1 percentage point in a runoff after neither secured enough votes in the Primary to secure victory.
The same happened this year. In the Aug. 20 Primary, Regalado took 49% of the vote, Lerner received 42% and the rest went to third-place candidate Richard Praschnik, who endorsed Lerner six days later.
To win outright, a candidate must take more than half the votes cast. Races for the Miami-Dade Commission are technically nonpartisan, meaning all candidates compete against one another and appear on the Aug. 20 Primary ballot.
Regalado, a former Miami-Dade School Board member, is a Republican. Lerner, who served one Florida House term before serving as Pinecrest Mayor from 2008 to 2016, is a Democrat.
Both are lawyers by training. In terms of policy proposals, temperament, elected experience and funding, voters this year had no shortage of ways to tell them apart.
Regalado, 50, had several advantages. As the incumbent, she could point to her accomplishments at County Hall to bolster her re-election effort. As a Republican serving in a nonpartisan post, she enjoyed cross-aisle support from county and municipal officials.
She also carried a significantly larger war chest than her challenger. Since winning her seat four years ago, Regalado raised more than $3.05 million. By Oct. 31, she had about $299,000 left between her campaign account and political committee, including carry-over funds from her prior campaign.
Lerner raised $459,000 this cycle between her campaign account and political committee. Less than a week before Election Day, she had $13,600 left.
Her endorsers include the Sierra Club, SPLC Action Fund, Ruth’s List Florida, SAVE Action PAC, Moms Demand Action, Equality Florida Action PAC, Gables Neighbors United, I Vote Water and the Kendall Federation of Homeowner Associations.
This cycle, she leaned on her strong record of environmental work, including the creation of an emission-reduction program and free local transit service in Pinecrest. Lerner is a past Chair of the National League of Cities’ Energy, Environmental and Natural Resources Committee and won “Municipal Elected Official of the Year” honors from the U.S. Green Building Council’s South Florida chapter.
She vowed, if elected, to “fight for honest, ethical government, to take meaningful action on sea-level rise and flooding, and to be a voice for the residents of (District 7) — not developers, lobbyists and corporate polluters.” Other expressed goals included improving county infrastructure to better handle sea-level rise, expanding transit with more Metrorail lines and a fully electric Metrobus fleet, and keeping the Everglades free of additional development.
In campaign ads, Lerner said she was “angry” about government corruption, influence peddling and “selling out the Everglades to big developers.”
That was a not-so-subtle knock against Regalado, who in November 2022 cast the pivotal vote to override Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s veto of legislation expanding the Urban Development Boundary (UDB) so a 379-acre industrial complex could be built just west of Biscayne Bay near Homestead.
It marked the first expansion in nearly a decade of the UDB, which is meant to safeguard agricultural and vulnerable lands from residential and commercial encroachment. Regalado originally opposed the move, but switched her vote after developers increased the amount of wetlands they would buy and donate to offset the project’s impacts.
She faced backlash from the decision. She was Miami-Dade Commission Chair Oliver Gilbert’s first choice for Vice Chair in December 2022, but was passed over by her peers after Democrat Danielle Cohen Higgins, who verbally sparred with her over the UDB vote, nominated Republican Commissioner Anthony Rodriguez instead.
But the UDB vote was hardly emblematic of Regalado’s environmental agenda. She led a push to accelerate septic-to-sewer conversions in the county to prevent groundwater pollution and backed several other water improvement initiatives.
Halfway through her first term, she had already filed hundreds of items encompassing everything from using auxiliary dwelling units to provide more affordable housing to an ordinance mandating autism and sensory training for county employees.
Recently, she teamed with Levine Cava on an effort to close the Miami Seaquarium, which for years faced complaints from animal rights groups and citations for lease violations.
A self-professed workaholic and policy wonk, Regalado has also worked as a radio host and professor at St. Thomas University. She sits on the Governing Board of intercounty commuter service Tri-Rail and chairs the County Commission’s Infrastructure, Operations and Innovations Committee.
Regalado grew up in politics. Her father, ex-Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, successfully ran this year for Miami-Dade Property Appraiser.
Her endorsers this cycle included Democratic Miami-Dade Commissioner Kionne McGhee, Republican Pinecrest Mayor Joseph Corradino, Democratic South Miami Mayor Javier Fernández, Republican Key Biscayne Mayor Joe Rasco, and several union and advocacy organizations, including the South Florida Police Benevolent Association and the South Florida AFL-CIO.
With a win Tuesday, she promised to continue championing neurodiversity inclusion — her two children are on the autism spectrum — while fighting for environmental resilience and economic development. She said she wanted to do more to support first responders, reduce taxes and help seniors. Further advocacy for green infrastructure also made her to-do list.
