Commission, not voters, will decide who fills District 8 seat

Jose “Pepe” Diaz won the election Thursday to lead the Miami-Dade County Commission and helped the new board flex its muscles by voting to use appointment powers to fill a vacant seat and by announcing a surprise plan to poach the county’s budget director from newly installed Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

Shortly after a unanimous election as board chairman, Diaz prevailed in a debate on how to fill the District 8 seat that Levine Cava had to give up to run for mayor.

Her May resignation took effect Monday, and a divided commission voted to reject a special election that could cost more than $1 million in favor of the remaining 12 board members appointing someone next month.

“Nobody wants to see another election for a while,” said Diaz, an 18-year commissioner elected to his final term in 2018 for the county’s District 12 seat, representing the Doral area. He argued against spending more money on an election shortly after the resources and energy expended for the general election that had Miami-Dade voting for president, along with mayor and commission seats.

Commissioners pushing for a special election called it an insult to residents of the South Miami-Dade district to substitute the board’s preference over voters’ for who will represent the area until 2022.

“No price — even $1.2 million in a pandemic time — is too great for democracy,” said Commissioner

Sally Heyman.

The motion to hold a Jan. 26 election for the District 8 seat failed on a 7-5 vote. Joining Diaz on the no side were Jean Monestime, Rebeca Sosa and four of the five newly elected commissioners: Oliver Gilbert, Keon Hardemon, Kionne McGhee and Raquel Regalado. The fifth new commissioner, René Garcia, voted with Heyman to hold an election, along with Eileen Higgins, Joe Martinez and Javier Souto.

Garcia opened his comments with a jab at Levine Cava, who could have given up her seat during the campaign and allowed MiamiDade to call a special election to coincide with the countywide August primary.

“Why are we in this situation right now?” asked Garcia, who was endorsed by the term-limited commissioner who ran against Levine Cava, Esteban “Steve” Bovo Jr. “A decision was made by the officeholder to not vacate the seat until [after] the election.”

Levine Cava didn’t take a position on the District 8 decision. An ally is one of the leading contenders for appointment: fellow Democrat Danielle Cohen

Higgins, a lawyer whose campaign manager, Christian Ulvert, also ran Levine Cava’s successful mayoral run. She’s one of four people who filed for the District 8 seat in anticipation of a special election, though they’re officially registered to run in 2022.

The other candidates are neighborhood activist Alicia Arellano; John DuBois, the vice mayor of Palmetto Bay; and counselor Leonarda Duran Buike. Rebeca Sosa, the acting chairwoman of the commission until Diaz takes office in January, said the appointment should come from one of the filed candidates. However, commissioners are free to appoint someone else.

The appointment could decide the partisan balance of the officially nonpartisan board, currently split between Democrats and Republicans. With Levine

Cava on the board, Democrats had seven members and Republicans five. New Republican commissioner Raquel Regalado replaced Xavier Suarez, an independent.

Commissioners met for the first time with the new members, and with Levine Cava’s debut in the mayor’s chair after swearing-in ceremonies Tuesday.

The meeting also brought a surprise for the new administration when Diaz announced a plan to create a new budget post for the board and Sosa quickly suggested offering it to Jennifer Moon, the county’s veteran budget director.

The move sets up a significant shift in budgetary heft from the executive to the legislative side of county government, with Moon the go-to expert on county spending and revenue for more than a decade.

She was demoted from deputy mayor by Levine Cava but assigned to continue overseeing the budget office as Miami-Dade faces the financial hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sosa made the offer when Levine Cava was outside of the chambers. The mayor reappeared during the discussion but didn’t speak. Called to the microphone, Moon sounded pleased with the invitation but did not commit.

“You come with the connections to the mayor’s office, so the mayor’s office and our offices can work in conjunction together,” Sosa said. Gilbert described the move as trying to win over Moon’s affections. “I just got a vision of when I was in fifth grade, will you be my girlfriend? Check yes or no,” he said.

The new administration was expected to bring staffing changes, but Moon generated extra speculation after an incident at a fall budget hearing involving

Levine Cava.

Levine Cava was the board’s top critic of the

2021 budget that thenMayor Carlos Gimenez and Moon submitted, and was the apparent target of a hot-mic moment during the Sept 17 hearing. When Levine Cava began her critical speech on the budget Sept. 17, the Zoom camera shifted to a masked Moon in a conference room telling people around her: “Behind my mask, I’m saying ‘F--you.’ ”

Moon apologized and said she wasn’t talking about Levine Cava, and the thencommissioner said she believed her. But Levine Cava’s campaign manager said “he hoped something more than apology comes of it” and campaign staffers began wearing masks that said: “Under my mask, I’m saying... DLC!”

After Sosa’s offer, Moon came to the microphone and left her options open.

“I’m a little embarrassed,” she said. “I really appreciate what you all are saying. I really need to talk to my husband and my family. Do I have to say yes right now?”