Gilbert edges Fulton in tight Miami-Dade commission race

In a race being watched far beyond Miami-Dade County’s borders, Miami Gardens Mayor Oliver Gilbert was clinging to a narrow lead Tuesday night over political rookie and Black Lives Matter matriarch Sybrina Fulton, whose support surged in the wake of

George Floyd’s death.

With 48 of 50 precincts counted for the District 1 seat on the county commission, Gilbert had 50.59 percent of the vote to Fulton’s 49.41. With more than 32,000 votes counted, they were separated by less than 400 votes.

Many Miami-Dade political analysts had expected Gilbert, mayor of his hometown for eight years, to win comfortably but the race proved a dead-heat. Results posted on the Miami-Dade Elections Department’s website showed him with an edge on ballots cast on Election Day.

At 10 p.m., Gilbert said he was confident his lead would hold up. “This extremely close election is proof positive that every vote matters. I was expecting a tight race going up against a candidate with national notoriety. But I always had faith in our local voters, in the voters of our communities,” he said. ”I ran a solution-based campaign that enabled me to move and motivate voters and go for this victory.”

Gilbert would succeed term-limited Barbara Jordan on a commission undergoing a makeover and help Gilbert expand on the political clout he has earned for running Florida’s largest Black-majority city. He would be one of at least five new faces among 13 commissioners led by a new county mayor. The district encompasses Miami Gardens, Opa-locka and Carol City in northwest Miami-Dade.

The race between Gilbert and Fulton was elevated to a national profile because of Fulton’s stature in the Black Lives Matter movement.

After her teenage son Trayvon Martin was shot to death by a white neighborhood watch volunteer in 2012, she joined other mothers who lost children in violent confrontations and police brutality incidents to fight for racial justice. She attended George Floyd’s funeral and marched in protests in Miami and other cities wearing a T-shirt imprinted with Trayvon’s image. Hillary Clinton and Cory Booker were among those who endorsed her. Jay-Z and Jussie Smollett made campaign contributions, along with small donors from across the nation.

But it wasn’t enough to match the funding of Gilbert, who had the backing of the county’s traditional power brokers and political donors as well as that of Jordan.

Fulton, 54, was running for government office for the first time after a career working in five county departments and promised as the “voice of the people” to make the bureaucracy less of a morass and more responsive to residents.

She was also determined to end “Black flight” from Miami-Dade County, an unaffordable and unsatisfying place to live for many of her neighbors, she said. She ran an inspired campaign, following in the footsteps of other women in the Black Lives Matter movement who entered politics.

Both Gilbert and Fulton view the civil unrest that has mobilized Americans since Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May as part of a national reckoning on race. Uprooting discrimination — in housing, employment, education and transportation — will be one of his goals as District 1 commissioner, Gilbert said.

Gilbert, 47, a lawyer and former prosecutor in the state attorney’s office, says reshaping the Miami Gardens police department “organically” with local personnel was key to a 39 percent reduction of crime in the city and an increase in the number of Black officers to 50 percent of the force. He’d like to introduce similar changes and add more emphasis on implicit bias training and community policing at the county level.

Gilbert is also proud of Miami Gardens’ $50 million investment in parks and youth programs.

“The defund police movement has occurred as people have watched government defund social services,” he told the Miami Herald during his campaign. “A budget is a true expression of your priorities. Prevention of violence should come before suppression of violence.”

Gilbert

Fulton

Gilbert’s priorities include improvements to public transit, more affordable housing, innovative economic development and a push for federal relief funding to businesses hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Transit-oriented development is critical to affordable housing,” he said. “Teachers and young professionals can’t afford to live here. We’ve got to aggressively tackle fundamental supply and demand, infill and density questions.”

Gilbert, like Fulton, is a resident of Miami Gardens.

“As for the county, let’s stop seeing it as 13 districts with Haitians, Cubans, Blacks, whites. See it as one place. One transportation and housing ecosystem. A place where we want our kids to grow up. For too long we’ve been governed by people who say they want change in Miami-Dade.

Let’s actually figure it out this time.”