For Miami-Dade’s new chairman, term limits bring a ‘new way of doing things’
■ Miami-Dade’s new commission chairman, Jose Pepe Diaz, takes over as term limits shift the board from long-serving members to newcomers. He must leave his seat in 2022.
After nearly two decades on the County Commission, Jose “Pepe” Diaz took his place atop the legislative body on Wednesday with a swearing-in ceremony that also marked the coming end to a political era in Miami-Dade.
Diaz, who represents the Doral area, is part of the retiring old guard on the powerful 13-seat commission, one of five members forced to leave in 2022 as the final wave of term limits kicks in for commissioners serving when voters approved the eight-year caps in 2012.
The first batch of longserving commissioners left in November, replaced by commissioners with much shorter political horizons on the board and more willingness to scrap publicly on the dais.
“We treat our parents and spouses with the utmost respect. We should do the same with our colleagues,” Diaz told the audience gathered outside Hard Rock Stadium for the outdoor ceremony, which is usually held in standingroom-only commission chambers. “It is much easier when you can look around the dais when you know the 12 other people sitting around that table...have your back.”
Diaz counts most of the new commissioners as allies, and was a top fundraiser for several winners.
His political committee, We the People, gave about $275,000 last year to seven sitting commissioners.
The biggest contributions went to election efforts for newly elected commissioners Keon Hardemon and Kionne McGhee, whose committees each got about $80,000, and $70,000 to a committee supporting Commissioner Raquel Regalado, also elected to the board in November.
A FORMER SWEETWATER MAYOR NOW MIAMI-DADE CHAIRMAN
Diaz, a former Sweetwater mayor, was elected chairman unanimously in November, succeeding Audrey Edmonson, who was forced by term limits to leave the commission seat now occupied by Hardemon. Diaz picked new commissioner Oliver Gilbert, a former Miami Gardens mayor, to serve as vice chairman.
A Republican, Diaz was sworn in Wednesday by Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez, a former state representative from Miami-Dade.
As chairman, Diaz has authority over commission staff, including newly appointed budget adviser Jennifer Moon, who left the new Daniella Levine Cava administration after a demotion from deputy mayor. He also has authority over which legislation lands on the agenda, and which commissioners get coveted chairmanships of legislative committees.
In an interview, Diaz said the new commissioners have brought along “a new way of doing things” and experience from prior elected offices. He said he didn’t consider the change to be negative. “Maybe it will be refreshing,” he said, “to shake the tree a little bit.”
The election of Diaz, who was born in Cuba, followed the unwritten tradition of the commission to alternate the chairmanship between Hispanic and Black members.
The position also puts Diaz, a 60-year-old grandfather and U.S. Marine veteran, in the ceremonial spotlight for county events.
In his speech, Gilbert recalled playing as a child there — in a dirt field of what was then suburban land in an unincorporated area of Dade County. A few years later, Gilbert and a cousin were selling backyard parking spots near the newly built Joe Robbie Stadium.
“It’s an extraordinary thing to live in a place where the kid who parked cars for the stadium when it was built to be the vice chairman of the County Commission being sworn in at that stadium,” he said. “In a city that didn’t exist when that stadium was built, and where he served as mayor for eight years.”