Miami-Dade Dems will elect a new Chair next week. Meet the candidates

The Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee (DEC) is electing a new Chair next week to succeed Shevrin Jones, who filled a short-term slot in April as the party’s leader but must give it up ahead of the 2025 Legislative Session.

Four DEC members are competing for the job: former Acting DEC Chair Ricky Junquera, lawyer Laura Kelley, Miami-Dade Community Council member Venusmia Fernández Lovely and DEC Secretary Marco Reyes, who ran unsuccessfully this year for House District 119.

On Dec. 14, DEC members will choose which among them will chart the party’s course for the next four years.

The change follows a seismic shift in Miami-Dade politics. President-elect Donald Trump flipped the long-dependably blue county for the first time in 36 years, and all five of the county’s constitutional offices went to GOP candidates.

Christian Ulvert, one of Miami-Dade’s most influential Democratic strategists and a former Director of the Florida Democratic Party, called the Nov. 5 election a “day of reckoning” for the party. Accordingly, the county party’s next Chair will face ample pressure to retool its operations for better returns in the 2026 Midterms and beyond.

Here’s a look at each person vying for the job.

The election on Saturday, Dec. 14, may bring stability to DEC in flux since March, when Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried suspended then-Chair Robert Dempster. The move came more than a year after 10 current and former high-ranking county party members complained Dempster had bungled elections and mismanaged funds.

Junquera was among them. He pointed to several races anticipated as shoo-ins for Democrats that instead went to GOP challengers, such as A.J. D’Amico’s failed run at former Democratic state Rep. Nick Duran’s seat in House District 113 and Jordan Leonard’s upset loss to Republican former reality TV star Fabián Basabe in coastal House District 106.

“These are seats that, in a traditional General Election with the apparatus humming on all sides, we don’t lose,” Junquera said in a Jan. 5, 2023, letter to then-Florida Democratic Party Chair Manny Diaz, who resigned four days later.

Junquera, 38, was born and raised by Cuban American parents in Miami-Dade’s unincorporated Westchester. He’s worked in politics for years, including a nine-year stint as senior press secretary for the nonprofit Sierra Club and as a senior adviser to former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s Senate bid this year.

He has served as Vice Chair of Outreach for the DEC and as Acting Chair in 2018, when the party picked up seats in Congress, Tallahassee and at the county level with candidates like Mucarsel-Powell, Donna Shalala, Javier Fernandez and Eileen Higgins.

In 2020, Junquera mounted an unsuccessful bid to unseat then-state Rep. Anthony Rodriguez. He raised more than $500,000 in the cycle, but lost by 20 percentage points.

Today, he chairs the DEC’s Campaign Committee.

In a statement, Junquera vowed to overhaul the DEC’s leadership and implement changes he believes will bring more stability and success to the party.

“(I am) committed to appointing committee Chairs that have never been Chairs before while providing them training, best practices, and quarterly reviews to ensure they are meeting regularly and producing for the body and beyond,” he said.

Junquera added that he will also require the party to review his work every December.

Kelley, 43, was born in Texas and spent time after California law school in Spain, where she studied Spanish and taught English while studying European law.

She met her husband across the pond, and he was her first immigration case stateside. In 2013, the couple moved with their daughter to Doral, where she runs an eponymous immigration law firm.

This year, Kelley challenged Republican state Rep. David Borrero in House District 111, but lost in the Republican-leaning area by a landslide after raising a respectable $54,000 with no monetary help from her state and county parties.

She said her experience as a first-time candidate and past Chair of the South Florida Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association gives her a “fresh perspective on how to make structural and systemic change” within the DEC.

That includes maintaining a presence in Miami-Dade communities during and between election cycles and consistently communicating through Creole-, English- and Spanish-language media outlets, she said.

“We must approach our electoral losses with humility and compassion (and) listen to voters who stayed home (or) chose Trump, and our base who voted,” she said in a prepared statement. “As an organization, we need leadership who will create processes that rely on accountability for each person and committee.”

Lovely, 46, was born in New York but grew up in Miami. Her father served as a Dominican Consul General.

She is a longtime contributor and performer in the performing arts and has been a key figure on, off and behind the stage.

Her political work has included serving as Chief of Staff to former state Sens. Dwight Bullard and Annette Taddeo, a past DEC Chair, as well as ex-state Reps. Ed Bullard and Roy Hardemon.

In October, she was elected to a Miami-Dade Community Council serving the Area 15 South Bay Board. She is also President of the South Dade Democratic Black Caucus.

An accomplished community organizer, Lovely works today as Director of Administration and Special Events for the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District. She is a past District Field Director for the Progressive Turnout Project.

At the county party’s Blue Gala in September, Lovely was among four recipients of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party’s “Champions for Change” award.

She said in a statement that the DEC must work harder at the ground level to reverse its bad fortunes at the polls.

“As we reflect on Election Night, it’s clear we need unity — a forward-looking path that tackles today’s issues. The road ahead won’t be easy, but we will fight back. First, we have to understand how we got here,” she said. “We are the party of working people, rooted in values and driven to create a better America. The election results remind us that local politics and grassroots organization are key to moving forward.”

Reyes, 42, is a Miami-born small-business owner and real estate agent of Cuban heritage. He was elected alongside Jones in April to serve as DEC Secretary.

He ran this year for House District 119, losing to incumbent Republican state Rep. Juan Porras by 30 points after raising $3,000 in outside funds and $1,000 worth of in-kind aid from the Florida Democratic Party.

Reyes said in a statement that if elected Chair, he would focus on fundraising and hire a full-time Executive Director to oversee the effort whose compensation would be based on how much money they collected.

He’d also prioritize outreach programs “across every corner of Miami-Dade County.”

“Too many Democrats feel unheard, disconnected, and unappreciated by the party,” he said. “I’ve heard this directly from voters while knocking on doors, and I’ve seen how this frustration has led many registered Democrats to switch to no party affiliation. We must start addressing this now. Time is not on our side, with elections just two years away and the potential for special elections before then.”