County mayor’s race spotlights women candidates’ push for top
In the centennial year of the 19th amendment, Miami-Dade County could make history with its first female mayor and a woman-majority commission. Candidates discuss obstacles, benefits of women in leadership.
When Raquel Regalado ran for her first elected position on the Miami-Dade County Public School Board in 2010, she said she was questioned at every turn — but not because of her qualifications. People seemed to be mostly concerned that Regalado dared run as a single mother in her 30s raising two young children, she said.
“I got a lot of pushback from people who thought I looked too young,” Regalado said. “And then I looked around and I realized, yeah, pretty much all the women who were elected had waited until their kids had grown up.”
But Regalado, whose father, Tomás Regalado, served as mayor of Miami during his daughter’s 2010 and 2016 runs, kept pushing. As the country seriously contemplated the possibility of its first female president in 2016, Regalado tried to make history in Miami-Dade County, which has never had a female mayor represent its 2.7 million residents. She ran against incumbent Mayor Carlos Gimenez and lost by 12 points.
Regalado’s loss ushered in another four years in Miami-Dade County under male mayoral leadership, the mark of a county that despite being the seventh most populous in the country tends to lack female representation. Of its 34 municipalities, only eight mayors are women. And the county’s biggest city, Miami, is run by a male mayor and an all-male commission.
While Regalado opted to run for the District 7 County Commission seat rather than repeat a run for mayor in 2020, three other women — political newcomers Monique Nicole Barley and Ludmilla Domond and District 8 Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava — are vying for what would be a historic victory.
And if one of them takes the office, they could be joined by a female-majority commission. There are commission seats up for grabs in all odd-numbered districts, with women on the ballot in four of the seven races. If women win all four races with viable female candidates, that would bring the commission to six men and six women. A woman would also have to take the District 8 seat vacated by Levine Cava either by appointment or a runoff election to capture a 7-6 majority, one currently reversed in favor of the men.
The potential of a historic election for women in the county could spotlight a localized version of the success female candidates found in 2018, declared the second “Year of the Woman” as the number of women both running for and winning political offices skyrocketed. More than
100 women took congressional and governor’s seats in 2018, outpacing 1992’s “Year of the Woman,” which saw 54 women elected to Congress.
Some candidates say the campaign field isn’t always equal playing ground, with additional challenges for female candidates and especially women of color. But they argue that even if having more female representation doesn’t automatically solve systemic issues, it isn’t merely symbolic, either. Both candidates and current commissioners said having women on board means issues like paid family leave and the gender pay disparity in the workplace are not just discussed, but prioritized, which is why female leadership should matter to voters.
While women have been unable to secure the county’s mayoral seat thus far, they have managed to affect other major offices. For example, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the first Cuban-American State Attorney in both the county and state, is serving her seventh term in her elected position. Several women have been elected to Congress. And the late Gwen Margolis, a longtime state legislator, was the first woman to serve as the president of the Florida Senate.
The Aug. 18 primary, in which voters can cast their first vote in the nonpartisan race for mayor, falls on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The amendment granted some women, but not all, the right to vote. The anniversary highlights the significance of the potential history to be made in Miami-Dade County.
And that history-making moment is “long overdue,” said Paul George, resident historian at the HistoryMiami museum.
“I think we’re behind a lot of places,” George said. “There’s been an incredible dearth of women in leading government positions in this community.”
ADDITIONAL ROADBLOCKS FOR WOMAN CANDIDATES
Some of the candidates attribute that “dearth” to additional challenges women sometimes face when running campaigns, especially countywide. Even the candidates who say they haven’t experienced explicit differences or discrimination while campaigning acknowledge they likely have to work harder than their male opponents.
Regalado said that instead of being asked about the issues, people wanted to talk about the length of her hair or her kids.
She added that negative campaigning can hold women back. She said that she had to “rebuild her life” after her 2016 run.
“It’s the negative campaigns that stop them, because of the idea of their children Googling their name and finding a blog or something,” Regalado said.
Levine Cava, who is leaving her commission seat early to pursue a mayoral bid, is outraising all of her opponents except former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas. Her campaign alone raked in nearly $800,000 in monetary contributions as of July 10, according to county filings.
Despite her apparent popularity, Levine Cava said while running for her commission seat, she saw how qualities often attributed to women weakened her position in some voters’ eyes.
“I got feedback that the men were basically arrogant and cocky and that I was more soft and humble. And that this was perceived as my being insecure, which I just find you know, very upsetting,” she said. “Because you know, it’s like being open and listening and humble and respectful should not be perceived as weakness. It should be perceived as strength.”
In February, Levine Cava released an ad stating that Miami-Dade will “shatter our highest glass ceiling and make history” in November.
Cindy Lerner, who is running against Regalado for the District 7 seat and has served in the state Legislature and as mayor of Pinecrest, said she never felt demeaned as a female public servant. But she also knows the work wasn’t equal.
“For women to succeed, they have to work 10 times harder at the same thing. Luckily, this is not difficult,” Lerner said.
District 3 Commissioner and Commission Chairwoman Audrey Edmonson echoed Lerner, saying even though she doesn’t feel looked down upon by the male commissioners, she knows that she works harder than her white or male colleagues as an AfricanAmerican woman.
And the challenges of being not just a woman but a woman of color in a countywide race is one felt by some of the current candidates, like Domond.
“Before I’m even considered as a woman, I’m looked at as a color first,” said Domond, who is a Black woman and Haitian immigrant. “I think this would be just the beginning ... for people to see that no matter how diverse, ethnicity wise, Miami-Dade is, there’s still a whole lot of hindrances.”
In Miami-Dade County, 79% of the residents are white and nearly 70% identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Nearly 18% of the population is Black.
Domond said if she thought about the challenges of running as a Black woman before launching her bid, she may have never joined the race.
And Monica Skoko Rodríguez, director of the Commission for Women, said Hispanic women can also have trouble talking themselves into running because “communities like us” can have certain cultural lenses that “may be holding women back in some ways.”
“I’m a Latinx woman and I grew up around a lot of machismo and these ideas of cultural roles of men and women,” Skoko Rodríguez said. “I didn’t think that women belonged in politics until later in life.”
But for some candidates, even if their being a woman is a factor for voters, it isn’t for them personally or their campaigns.
District 5 Commissioner Eileen Higgins is hoping to defend her seat against two male challengers. She said that while the thought of a female-majority commission is exciting, when it comes to her running as a woman, she “literally never thinks about it.”
“It makes me uncomfortable talking about myself as a female candidate,” Higgins said. She added that as an engineer, she’s used to being the only woman in male-dominated spaces.
CHAMPIONING ‘WOMEN’S ISSUES’
While not all of the female candidates shared experiences with discrimination while running campaigns, they did all agree on one thing: Women lead differently. And sometimes, differently can mean better, because women often invest in issues men are less likely to prioritize.
Skoko Rodríguez said women are more likely to champion issues like paid leave and domestic abuse education, even though they are issues she said all elected officials should be concerned about.
“I love to see so many women potentially in office, but I think I want everybody to remember that male politicians also have to fight these fights for ‘women’s issues,’ just as fiercely as women politicians,” Skoko Rodríguez said.
Higgins said that some issues just don’t occur to her male colleagues, such as digging into pay disparities for women in the county, “because they haven’t spent a chunk of their career being underpaid and undervalued.”
“When we have a mix of men and women on the commission, we have a broader variety of legislation that benefits the community,” Higgins said.
Higgins added that women don’t just change the content of the conversation, but how it’s had.
“Gender matters. You look at what happens on the City of Miami Commission, where they scream and they yell and they do all that,” Higgins said. “They need some gender diversity.”
Gepsie Metellus, who is running for the commission seat in District 3, said women, and particularly immigrant women, are “hypersensitive” to the needs of all. She said as cries ring out demanding that leaders address structural and institutional racism, antiBlackness and other
“evils,” it’s women who respond.
“I think women hear these cries, women understand these cries, and women are prepared, are poised to respond to these cries,” Metellus said.
Metellus said women are more likely to care about issues related to children and families, an opinion echoed by many of the other candidates, because women tend to pay attention to the “most vulnerable.”
Levine Cava said she thinks the open-mindedness women bring to government would have benefited the county’s COVID-19 response.
“I think it’s been very well documented that the countries or the places where the women are in charge have done better because of the women’s more inclusive, open listening, respectful manner in solving problems,” Levine Cava said.
Regalado said women are better at coming to a consensus and long-term planning, both things that would have changed the coronavirus response.
But Regalado also credits the crisis created by the virus, which has made some residents hyper aware of the influence of local officials as they scrambled to figure out which rules and bans applied to them during shutdowns and reopenings, with bringing more women into the political fold.
THE IMPACT OF MAKING HISTORY
In addition to the way female voices change the conversations within government chambers, the candidates also see the symbolic value in centering female elected officials.
“To have the first woman mayor, or even the first Black woman mayor, it would mean to me more like freedom,” mayoral candidate Domond said. “Freedom to say that the shackles that Miami-Dade County has been under, and these are psychological shackles, would have begun to be broken.”
For Levine Cava, she can see the influence of her run personally on her toddler granddaughter, who she said will say “I’m just like my nonna” when walking around in binocular glasses.
“We know that people are influenced by role models and when girls see women taking on the range of roles in society, it normalizes it. And it makes it something more attainable,” Levine Cava said. “She’s going to grow up with the understanding that the person who loves her and pays attention to her needs, her grandmother, is also someone people vote for.”
Despite the chance to make history, some are cautious of the idea that the “year of the woman” alone can solve systemic problems down the line.
“Women in office is such a triumph toward gender equality, but it is a puzzle piece, not a panacea,” Skoko Rodríguez said. “Racism isn’t going to be solved with more Black and brown politicians the same way that misogyny isn’t going to be cured with more women in power.”
But when they can run, they should run — because men certainly do, said District 7 candidate Lerner.
“I think the one thing
I’ve seen about women … for the most part, they didn’t have the self-confidence, some would say courage, to put themselves out there and run. And men, they will just wake up one morning, whether they have credentials or not, and say I’m running,” Lerner said. “If you have an inner drive, then honor your gut. Honor that inner drive and take a chance.”
Higgins also called for women to take the risk of running.
“We have to step up as women, don’t forget that. If we don’t step up to run, we’re not viable to be voted for,” Higgins said.
In 2018, female candidates came out on top in local and statewide races across the country. The Miami-Dade County women running for office want to see if they can replicate that historic victory in primary elections on Aug. 18 and the general election on Nov. 3.
“It’s about time. It’s about time to see this moment and blaze some trails for the generation of women who will come behind us,” Metellus said. “I do believe that it’s a fact. It’s the year of the woman.”