Jesse Scheckner
Aventura lawyer Kevin Cooper will soon remove the “Vice” from his title with the Miami-Dade Republican Party.
Members of the Republican Executive Committee (REC) elected Cooper, 31, to succeed Hialeah Rep. Alex Rizo as Chair of the Miami-Dade Republican Party for the next two years.
Cooper defeated Sunny Isles Beach Commissioner Jerry Joseph for the job by an 83-15 vote.
Cooper’s win Monday, first reported by the Miami Herald, is the culmination of eight years of work within the REC, a body to which he was elected in 2016 and served as Campaign Director in 2022.
But it didn’t come without some friction. POLITICO reported that Joseph had the backing of a self-described South Florida “election integrity” group called the Election Brigade, that supported numerous other candidates this cycle who have been prone to calling moderate members of the party RINOs (Republicans in name only).
Cooper said he is eager to continue Republicans’ success in Miami-Dade, whose voters last month sided with a GOP presidential nominee for the first time since 1988 while choosing an all-Republican slate of constitutional officers.
The county’s red shift is evident in its voter rolls; this month, the Republican Party moved from third to second place in Miami-Dade, slightly outnumbering no-party voters and falling fewer than 30,000 registrants behind Democrats.
Cooper, who entered politics as a volunteer for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, said he plans to begin fundraising immediately to build a war chest for the 2026 election cycle and add to the Miami-Dade GOP’s voter gains.
“My victory represents a continuation of the work that we’ve done, but also an expansion of that work. We have a winning method that works, and now we just need to build upon it and continue to grow the party,” he told Florida Politics. “We’re a big county, we need a strategy for a big county and the map (for GOP growth) has expanded beyond the typical neighborhoods we’ve always had.”
In an X post Tuesday, Hallandale Beach Council member Anabelle Taub-Lima called Cooper an “incredibly talented young man with an astute grasp on politics whose track record shows he will continue to take Miami-Dade’s RED trajectory to another level.”
“Young talent is what this party is missing,” she said. “I am here for the ride as both a spectator and a FAN! If only (the Miami-Dade and) Broward GOP could merge.”
Cooper noted that Republican Party leaders from Florida’s four southeasternmost counties — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe — used to meet for lunch regularly. It’s a tradition he’d like to revive, he said, though his focus remains on flipping his home county red.
“I do fully intend on winning the golden spatula,” he said.
Others elected to leadership roles included former Sweetwater Vice Mayor Luis Rodriguez as Vice Chair, former Florida Federation of College Republicans Chair Stephanie Torres as Treasurer and Abel Carvajal as Secretary.
Rizo told Florida Politics on Tuesday that he will continue to be active with the state and county Republican parties, but he’s confident the REC is “in good hands” with its new leaders.
“The candidates who won last night have been involved for quite some time,” he said. “Stephanie and Abel have been involved in things we do as an REC for years. Luis was Vice Chairman a couple times before I came along, so he lends some institutional memory and experience to it because he’s much older than the other three officers. They’re all very young, under 40, so it’s a good combination.”
