Candidates in Miami-Dade’s low-turnout local elections hustle for every last vote
With early voting concluded and no time left to post-mark a mail-in ballot, all eyes in Miami-Dade County’s local races were trained Monday on voters who had yet to cast a ballot in what is turning out to be another low-turnout, off-year municipal election.
Even after a weekend push at the polls, turnout heading into Tuesday’s Election Day was still paltry.
With elections in Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah, Homestead, Sunny Isles Beach and Biscayne Gardens, and 443,718 eligible voters across all races, combined turnout was at just 11.17% early Monday evening, according to Miami-Dade County Elections Department data.
With few voters participating but high stakes, candidates continued to work through early voting and into Election Day in an attempt to edge out their opponents.
In Hialeah, Esteban “Steve” Bovo, running for mayor with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, made waves when a video circulated Sunday of the candidate and his supporters getting into a yelling match with a group of people who appeared to be supporters of right-wing activist and mayoral candidate Fernando Godo.
In the video, captioned in Spanish “trained in Hialeah,” Hialeah police officers attempted to stop the groups from getting physical on the pavement outside the polling location at the John F. Kennedy Library.
At one point Bovo, a former Hialeah councilman, state representative and county commissioner, walked up to the crowd and said “sapingo,” a slight in Cuban slang, triggering more yelling. Another supporter in a Bovo t-shirt repeatedly called someone in the crowd a gay slur. A woman on Bovo’s side accused the opponents of “chusmería,” or insults.
Bovo’s toughest opponent, former Council President Isis Garcia-Martinez, used the altercation in a video posted on her official Instagram Monday.
“This is your candidate on Election Day,” the caption read in Spanish, with the video playing in the background. “How will Hialeah move forward? In Hialeah, we don’t want more of the same.”
Bovo did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. But Trump issued an 11th hour statement through his Save America PAC, encouraging voters to cast a ballot for the “fantastic” Bovo.
Across the county, the final pushes were less dramatic but still prevalent.
Despite low turnout in Miami
— which sat at just under 10% Monday evening — candidates are still spending hundreds of thousands to keep their place in office or, in many cases, edge their way in.
Across the city, yard signs stick out from lawns, and candidate posters are tied to chain link fences and displayed in storefronts across Little Haiti, Overtown and Little Havana. Big billboards for a few candidates overlook busy corridors, including one for incumbent Mayor Francis Suarez towering over I-95.
Suarez has spent at least $1.8 million on his reelection effort — only a portion of a staggering fundraising haul that has surpassed $6.5 million, according to the most recent campaign finance reports. The race to claim Miami’s District 5 commission seat, which represents the city’s historically Black communities, could be the most competitive election this year, and candidates have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars campaigning.
In Miami Beach, signs are similarly ubiquitous in front yards, on roadway medians and in shop windows. During the last day of early voting Sunday, dozens of volunteers crowded the polling location at Miami Beach City Hall, though voters trickled in slowly.
The most contentious contest in the city is the question of whether voters support the idea of rolling back early morning alcohol sales for bars in the city’s entertainment district, with campaigns on both sides pouring in hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach voters.
On Monday afternoon Mayor Dan Gelber, who is up for re-election, pushed a final email to voters, but it was not about his own campaign. He urged those who had not yet cast ballots to vote yes on the 2 a.m. rollback.
“For the past 10 or 20 years, Ocean Drive has not been a place for our own residents. It’s time to put residents first and re-imagine South Beach,” wrote Gelber.
Gelber voted at City Hall Sunday afternoon. “My opponents have just been insulting me,” he told the Miami Herald. “This will be a battle between me and Ocean Drive operators spending a million dollars.”
Even as campaigns scrambled to reach every last voter, turnout for the weeks-long early voting periods remained low, as it tends to be during offyear election cycles when there isn’t a president or governor at the top of the ticket.
As of Monday afternoon, Miami Beach was the city where the most voters had cast ballots early or by mail, though only about 17% of those registered voted. Hialeah trailed behind at 13% turnout, followed by the city of Miami at just under 10%, Sunny Isles Beach at about 9% and Homestead at about 5%.
In Biscayne Gardens, about 11% of voters cast ballots early to decide whether to trigger to process of incorporating what would be Miami-Dade County’s 35th city from an area on either side of I-95, between North Miami and North Miami Beach.
Voters in Broward and Palm Beach counties are also casting ballots in a Democratic primary race to succeed Alcee Hastings in Congress. Turnout among eligible voters, including votes for the GOP primary and no-party-affiliated voters, was 11.38% in Broward and 10.76% in Palm Beach as of Monday evening.