Jesse Scheckner
Doral Mayor Christi Fraga won four more years in office Tuesday, defeating her challenger by a landslide reminiscent of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s resounding re-election victory three years ago.
With early and mail-in ballots fully counted and all 12 precincts reporting, Fraga scored 79.2% of the vote to beat Roxanna Garay, whom she outraised more than 70 times over.
“THANK YOU DORAL!” Fraga wrote in a Wednesday morning post on X. “Thank you for all the support you have given me, it is my honor to serve you for 4 more years!”
Also re-elected was City Council member Rafael Pineyro, an ally of Fraga’s who also held a major funding edge over his lone opponent, Ivette Gonzalez Petkovich. Pineyro kept his Seat 1 post with 60% of the vote.
“Grateful for the trust and support from the Doral community!” he wrote on Instagram late Tuesday. “Together, we’ve achieved so much, and I’m honored to continue serving for four more years. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who voted and to my amazing volunteers for their unwavering dedication. Let’s keep moving forward together!”
The race for the right to succeed Vice Mayor Oscar Puig-Corve in Seat 3 is heading to a runoff after none of three candidates captured more than half the total vote count to win outright. Voters will decide Dec. 10 between Nicole Reinoso, who took 44.6% of the vote, and Juan Carlos Esquivel, who took 35.6% of the vote. It’s the end of the road for now for third-place Irina Vilariño.
Fraga, 37, raised more than $471,000 through her campaign account and state-level political committee, Next Generation Leaders, since she made history two years ago as the first woman elected Mayor of Doral.
She vowed, if re-elected, to improve public safety and the quality of life for residents, advocate for low-impact development and effective traffic solutions, and to fight political corruption and government mismanagement.
Her re-election campaign touted city initiatives she backed, including property tax reductions for low-income seniors, expansions of city parks and local flood-mitigation programs. In May, Fraga made news when she called on past City Council members to return payments they received through a since-canceled pension plan.
She was in the news again last week after a Doral resident filed a pair of complaints with the Division of Elections over her errant claim that the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County had endorsed her. Hialeah Rep. Alex Rizo, the party Chair, blamed it on a misunderstanding.
Garay, a 37-year-old fellow Republican and former supporter of Fraga’s, raised and spent $6,500 through Oct. 31. Her campaign website said she was “fully committed to serving our community with unwavering dedication to faith-based principles.” She wanted to “promote unity and transparency” while working “tirelessly toward building a more sustainable and smarter city.”
She told the Miami Herald that scoring 21% of the vote felt something like a win, adding that she was already thinking of a 2026 run for the City Council.
Fraga’s margin of victory Tuesday was about the same as Suarez’s in 2021, when he bested four challengers for the city’s top elected post. His closest competitor was Max Martinez, a digital sports show and podcast producer. Suarez raised a record $5 million toward his re-election and took 78.6% of the vote. Martinez took 11.6% after raising less than 1% of the incumbent’s haul.
Pineyro, 40, significantly outpaced Petkovich, 45, in fundraising as well, albeit not as much as Fraga. He stacked $103,700 and spent $81,300 through the end of last month. Petkovich raised $14,200 and had about $4,300 left less than a week before Election Day.
Doral voters also weighed in on 10 proposed city charter amendments, approving eight. The two they rejected would have changed the city’s government from a Mayor-Council-Manager form to Council-Manager and made the Doral Charter Revision Commission conduct a review every 10 years instead of the current five-year rate.
The approved amendments will:
— Give the City Council power to create and organize committees, a change from the current arrangement in which the Mayor does so with Council approval.
— Require Council approval of mayoral actions involving other governments.
— Assign the power to hire Doral’s City Manager to the City Council, based on recommendations from a search committee, instead of having the Mayor nominate someone whom the Council must confirm.
— Give the Mayor and Council members equal power to appoint a member each to five-seat city boards and agencies, replacing a current process in which the Mayor appoints them all, subject to Council confirmation.
— Eliminate runoff elections, except when there is a tie.
— Replace the Office of Charter Enforcement with an Office of Inspector General, which will have power to audit, review and investigate city spending contracts and programs.
— Require people who serve two consecutive terms as Mayor to be out of office for four years before running for the City Council.
— Cap the Mayor’s compensation at the current rate of $77,587 and pay for Council members at 30% less that ($54,311), rather than use the prior formula of paying the Mayor and Council members a base salary of $50,000 and $12,000, respectively, adjusted annually for the Urban Consumer Price Index.
