Levine Cava, Bovo force way into mayoral runoff
■ County Commissioners Daniella Levine Cava and Steve Bovo are headed to a runoff in the general election on Nov. 3 to decide who will succeed term-limited Carlos Gimenez as Miami-Dade County mayor.
County commissioners Esteban “Steve” Bovo Jr. and Daniella Levine Cava are headed for a fall runoff to decide who will be Miami-Dade’s next mayor after a comeback bid by former mayor Alex Penelas failed to catch on with voters who turned out in record numbers for an August primary.
The third-place finish for Penelas, 58, came despite the advantages he brought to the six-person race to replace outgoing incumbent Carlos Gimenez. Penelas held a wide lead in fundraising, securing more than $5 million from donors, and entered the contest with high name recognition in an election where the COVID-19 pandemic made voter contact and media attention far more challenging than in past years.
Partisan enthusiasm seemed to doom Penelas, the last Democrat to serve as mayor before leaving office after two terms in 2004. Fellow Democrat Levine Cava ran to his left and locked in support from the party establishment to finish narrowly in second in an officially non-partisan primary in a county where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a wide margin.
“It turned into a hyperpartisan election,” Penelas said after calling Bovo and Levine Cava to concede the race. “While that may
be good politically, it will make it hard to govern.”
Bovo, a Republican who embraced President Donald Trump during the contest for mayor, was the only prominent Republican in the race. While Democrats cast far more mail-in ballots, Bovo, 58, enjoyed wide leads in early voting and on Election Day — leads his supporters credited to enthusiasm from voters willing to cast ballots in person during the COVID pandemic. “Steve definitely has the momentum going into the runoff,” said Carlos Lopez Cantera, the former Republican lieutenant governor from Miami.
Though he took almost 30% of the vote in the primary, Bovo faces the challenge of winning more than 50% in the fall when the mayoral showdown coincides with a presidential election where Trump is likely to lose Miami-Dade by a wide margin.
Even with Democrats making up 41% of the county’s 1.5 million registered voters and Republicans just 27%, a Democrat hasn’t won a county mayoral race since Penelas left office in 2004. Gimenez, leaving after serving his maximum two consecutive terms, is now the Republican nominee in Florida’s 26th Congressional District to challenge freshman Democrat Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, an early Levine Cava endorser. At a campaign stop Tuesday morning, Levine Cava’s campaign arranged for her to meet a group of all-female supporters dressed in suffragette white at the Christ Congregational Church voting precinct in her South Miami-Dade district. The day coincided with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which recognized women’s right to vote.
“It’s our time,” said Levine Cava, 64, who would be Miami-Dade’s first female mayor. “Not just because it takes a woman. But this woman is going to fix what they broke.”
A mother of two and a grandmother of one, Levine Cava would also be the first mayor without Cuban roots since Stephen Clark held the post in 1993. Though she speaks Spanish, Levine Cava delivered sometimes halting answers at televised debates with Spanish-language stations. Bovo, the son of a Bay of Pigs veteran and a father of five, speaks fluent Spanish.
GOP BACKED BOVO
Bovo campaigned with the backing of most of the GOP establishment, and outgoing Florida House Speaker José Oliva’s political committee paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of attack ads against Penelas.
Bovo phone bank volunteers included U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from West Miami who employs Bovo’s wife, Viviana, on his Capitol Hill staff. Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez, another Miami Republican, made campaign stops for him. U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Pensacola Republican, endorsed him on Twitter, and Bovo twice in 2020 greeted Trump on the tarmac during presidential visits through Miami International Airport.
Though Democrats dominated mail-in balloting in the August primary — turning in 49% of the nearly 250,000 cast — Bovo enjoyed sizable leads in ballots cast during two weeks of early voting and on Election Day. He finished Tuesday night with just over 29% of the more than 400,000 votes cast and Levine Cava just under 29%.
Second-place counts as a win among the six candidates competing to become the county government’s top administrator. With no candidate able to get 50%, the top two vote-getters will compete in a November runoff. The remaining four candidates will be out of the running.
The third sitting county commissioner in the race, former Miami mayor Xavier Suarez, found that a well-known name wasn’t enough for a contest where he was heavily outspent and out-organized.
The 71-year-old independent anchored his countywide run to his son’s popularity, with both of them featured in campaign commercials and billboards. Suarez ended up with 11% Tuesday night. This is his second fourth-place finish in a race for Miami-Dade mayor; the first came in the 1996 primary that led to Penelas winning his first term.
Fifth place went to one of the two first-time candidates on the ballot, who also were the only Black candidates running. Monique Nicole Barley, a law-firm administrator and daughter of former state representative Roy Hardemon, took 5% of the vote reported so far. Ludmilla Domond, a retail worker and real estate broker, won 1%.
In his campaign, Bovo said he was the only candidate running with the “taxpayer in mind” — a reference to people paying property taxes. He pledged not to allow property-tax rates to rise if he’s elected mayor, a promise Levine Cava and the other candidates later embraced.
BOVO, LEVINE CAVA DON’T OFTEN AGREE ON VOTES
Bovo and Levine Cava have been on opposite end of many major commission votes. When she proposed mandatory paid sick leave for county contractors earlier this year, he linked it to an idea from “Bernie Sanders world.” He voted for extending the SR 836 expressway into West Kendall; she opposed it.
She was the lone No vote approving he American Dream Miami mega-mall in Northwest Miami-Dade, near Bovo’s district in the Hialeah area. Bovo, backed by the county’s police union, voted against a civilian review panel for MiamiDade police that Levine Cava backed after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Joined by his family before voting at the Hialeah Salvation Army precinct, Bovo said he was happy to see so many voters participating in the August primary — even if the morning began with far more Democrats having cast ballots.
“I think it’s a beautiful thing that historic numbers are participating in the electoral process,” said Bovo, the commissioner for Miami-Dade’s District 13, which includes parts of Hialeah and Miami Lakes. He’s held the post since 2011. “I accept whatever decision the voters make today.”