The Herald recommends new faces, bringing new energy, for the Miami-Dade Commission
Term limits have come for six incumbents on the Miami-Dade County Commission, giving several community-engaged residents a chance to seek elected office, in hope of winning a seat in the Aug. 23 primaries.
It’s encouraging to see so many candidates eager to serve and who have taken the time to educate themselves on the issues most important to their districts and beyond their borders.
However, the Editorial Board, which interviewed the majority of commission candidates, is just as discouraged by, again, the intrusion of partisan politics into these non-partisan races, wholly unqualified candidates who are trying to pull the wool over voters eyes — and one candidate’s failure to look voters in the eye at all.
One new commissioner, Micky Steinberg, won the District 4 seat, held by Sally Heyman, without opposition. Here are our recommendations for the remaining five.
DISTRICT 2
Six candidates have jumped into the race to replace Jean Monestime on the Miami-Dade County Commission. Monestime, the first Haitian American elected to County Hall — serving as commission chair from 2014 to 2016 — has bumped up against term limits.
The six people running to represent District 2 are: Wallace Aristide, Monique Barley-Mayo, Marleine Bastien, Philippe BienAime, Joe Celestin and William D.C. Clark.
All of them are steeped in the challenges facing the district and most of them are already deeply engaged in helping residents clear the hurdles in this predominantly low-income, working-class and middle-class district.
District 2 comprises portions of Miami, North Miami, North Miami Beach, Opa-locka, Hialeah and unincorporated areas of Liberty City, Biscayne Gardens and central North Dade.
Barley-Mayo is making her second run for office, after period of homelessness and harder times in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2020, she sought to become mayor of Miami-Dade County. Though she can articulate some the district’s problems, she was ill-prepared, as she was in 2020, to offer details and solutions when she spoke to the Editorial Board.
Celestin, who owns an engineering firm, is a former mayor of North Miami. This is his second run for this commission seat, having lost to the incumbent Monestime. He told the Editorial Board that, “My political experience combined with my education will help me guide District 2 in a new direction.” Celestin says he would not necessarily support Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s proposal to cut property taxes until he sees the entire budget. He does not support rent control to rein in soaring housing costs. Rather, he suggests the county float bonds to help to finance construction and negotiate with developers to provide a certain amount of affordable housing.
The Herald reported that Celestin filed for personal bankruptcy protection last year over unpaid court judgments stemming from the 1990s. In addition, he says he was unaware of unpaid taxes on his home. Once a reporter asked about it, Celestin produced an image of a check for $25,254 sent to the tax collector earlier this month.
Bien-Aime is the current, two-term mayor of North Miami. He has run into some problems, including being accused of sexual harassment by a city employee. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount. The mayor also has an entanglement of ongoing property-tax troubles. He says that 60% of North Miami residents are renters, and that they spend more than 60% of their income to pay to keep a roof over their heads. The district needs a comprehensive plan before addressing the housing crisis,” he told the Board, while at the same time addressing the need for jobs.
Clark is a retired county paramedic who rightly wants to be a bridge between the Haitian and African-American communities in the district, communities that have not always fully understood each other. His care and compassion for this community are evident through his decades of activism for fairness and mentoring — for instance, leading his school alumni chapter in the fight to help low-performing schools. Like others in the race, his priorities are securing affordable housing and economic development. However, his sobering comment about truly life-and-death issues in the district makes clear the challenges: “As I lay down on my floor from hearing gunshots outside my window the other night [I knew] safety had to be the top priority. Everything comes out that.”
We think that the final two candidates in the race for District 2 are the best prepared.
Aristide is the former principal of Miami Northwestern Senior High School, an institution he helped lift out of the spiral of failure, something of which he is rightly proud. Now he’s principal of iTech magnet high school. He says he works for the people of the district already, becoming the go-to volunteer who can get things done, helping struggling families find food or running interference on behalf of residents whose streets have flooded.
He knows firsthand that training students for technical jobs can help them escape poverty. Training and jobs also help ensure safer communities, he says, citing those “dangerous” after-school hours when some students get into trouble. He would move cautiously in giving the elected county sheriff, slated to start in 2024, all the power over law-enforcement, corrections and fire-rescue.
“We’ve never done it before. We’ve got to be reasonable how we bring this in gradually,” he told the Board. He added, “We’ve got to respect the will of the voters, but also make sure we have some things in place, so we don’t have a sheriff run amok.”
Aristide is not a fan of rent control, preferring to lower housing costs somehow without government mandates and noting that sometimes landlords must raise rents to cover their costs. Aristide has been criticized for the number of campaign donations he has received from the real-estate industry. He needs to make clear the degree to which he feels beholden to developers who might not be building affordable housing in District 2. That said, special interests always make campaign donations, and candidates accept them.
We think Aristide brings the right boots-on-the-ground perspective for what ails the district and to see its potential.
We think the same about the final candidate in this race, Bastien. And it’s to her we give the nod.
She is the founder and director of the nonprofit Family Action Network Movement, a respected and accomplished social services center. It began as Haitian Women of Miami in 1991. With a budget of more than $2 million, FANM offers adult literacy programs, immigration help, parenting classand after-school care.
And, through Bastien’s perseverance and vision, it provides something else: a firm foundation from which low-income families eventually can launch and soar on their own. “We believe that strong families make strong communities,” which FANM helps create by providing “wraparound services.” “But we also give them the tools to contribute to their own transformation and empowerment,” she told the Board.
It’s a smart and compassionate philosophy of a “hand up, not handout.”
She arrived in Miami 40 years ago. “I started as a volunteer. Then I moved to the Haitian Refugee Center where I started and then where I worked for five years as a paralegal. I was trained by some of the best lawyers in the country,” she said. “Then I moved on to Jackson Memorial Hospital. For 13 years, I worked with families making sure that when they are discharged from the hospital, that they got the care that they deserve.”
That’s when she realized that, for people in poverty, “The disease is not the most important challenge in people’s lives.”
Bastien’s campaign is grassroots, her donations coming from small business, workingclass residents and professionals — Haitian Americans and others — in her orbit. This speaks well of her ability to reach the broader community.
She wants the county to explore rent control to help residents being priced out of their units. “Everybody wants to come here. But we also need to bring equity in housing,” she said. “We also need to create opportunities for those whose work sustains our economy, who work in our hotels, schools, hospitals, a lot of immigrants. We have to create an opportunity for them to work where they live.”
And she’s in line with those county commissioners who would not move the Urban Development Boundary, instead providing housing on vacant land within the UDB. Her organization, she said, sees housing issues every day: “They can cannot pay rent, they cannot pay the mortgage. Some of them are being pushed out completely from their environment.”
She noted that she sees much of District 2 ill-served by public transportation, to the detriment of residents and to the economy. As for the county mayor’s proposed tax cut? Bastien, like others, needs to see a fuller picture.
In all, Bastien presented herself as a well-informed candidate who can serve a broad base of constituents. She’ll have to. Every county commissioner must think beyond their district lines. Through her four decades of work and activism, she has had the ear of everyone from elected officials to residents building better lives for themselves. She will bring that heft to the dais.
The Miami Herald recommends MARLEINE BASTIEN for for Miami-Dade Commission, District 2.
DISTRICT 6
There are four candidates in the District 6 Miami-Dade County Commission race, but the real contest is between the power of Donald Trump’s endorsement and longtime Commissioner Rebeca Sosa’s clout.
Kevin Marino Cabrera, a former Trump 2020 Florida campaign director, has the expresident’s recommendation. Coral Gables Commissioner Jorge Fors has the support of Sosa, who has held the seat for more than two decades, but is stepping down because of term limits.
The other candidates: software company owner and Miami-Dade
Republican Executive Committee member Dariel Fernandez and Miami Springs City Council member Victor Vazquez, a longtime educator and veteran, and the only Democrat in the non-partisan race.
The district includes West Miami and suburban areas down to South Miami, as well as both Miami International Airport and the Melreese golf course, part of a parcel where a new soccer stadium is set to be built.
The big-name endorsements no doubt will drive this race. When Cabrera got the nod from the ex-president in May, Trump said Cabrera wants lower taxes, fewer regulations on small businesses and “Safe and Secure Elections.” And then Trump went on to repeat his baseless claim that “the 2020 Election was rigged and stolen.”
Does Cabrera believe the Big Lie? In an interview with the Miami Herald, Cabrera wouldn’t say whether President Joe Biden won the election fairly. “I’m not an expert,” he said. “I know a lot of people have a lot of concerns.”
Fors, meanwhile, is backed by Sosa, and that carries a lot of weight in a district she has represented since 2001. She said she wanted someone on the commission who understands government. “He has experience,” she said of Fors. “The community knows him.”
Fors, an attorney who works at a family law firm with his father, was elected to the Coral Gables Commission in 2019 after a run-off that came down to 173 votes.
Cabrera worked for former U.S Rep. Carlos Curbelo and for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign. He was eager to share his ideas on issues such as affordable housing, transportation and the election of a new sheriff in 2024. He was a lot less forthcoming, though, when asked about his presence at a 2018 Miami GOP protest attended by Proud Boys. The Proud Boys are considered an extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The protest was ugly. The crowd hurled epithets at thenHouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and pounded on the door of then-Congresswoman Donna Shalala’s office. There’s an unsettling photo of Cabrera banging on a door.
Republicans nationwide denounced protest. Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted: “You are not helping the cause of anti-communism if you behave like the repudiation mobs Castro has long used in Cuba.”
When the Editorial Board asked Cabrera about it, he at first deflected on the straightforward question of whether he was there, eventually acknowledging it by saying: “Sure.” Asked if he disavowed the group entirely, he said he did, along with any group that espouses hate or discriminates.
And then there’s Fernandez, the Miami-Dade GOP committeeman. The New York Times has reported that the MiamiDade GOP committee has at least half a dozen current or former Proud Boys in its ranks. Several have been charged with participating in the U.S. Capitol attack. Fernandez said he had no knowledge of any Proud
Boys involvement in the MiamiDade Republican Executive Committee and that he believes in “law and order,” not violence.
Fors isn’t squeaky clean either, but his issues are a lot more run-of-the-mill. For about five years, he claimed a homestead exemption on a condo that he bought when he was 22 but no longer lived in. He said it was an error made in youthful ignorance. He did not claim an exemption elsewhere. He said he paid back taxes, interest and penalties for a total of between $12,000 and $13,000.
When it came to questions of policy, such as increasing density along transit lines to help address the county’s housing crisis, Fors and Vazquez, who are already elected leaders in their communities, had the most detailed answers.
Vasquez cautioned against density that would damage local communities, though he is in favor of more multifamily housing near mass transit. Fors, who is on the board of directors of the Miami-Dade County League of Cities, discussed finding solutions tailored to fit each community. “It’s not a one-sizefits-all,” he said.
On expanding the Urban Development Boundary, Fors said any proposal to build beyond that line between the suburbs and Miami-Dade’s agricultural areas should be fully examined and that expanding the UDB might become necessary in 10 or 15 years but, “It’s not something that should be done lightly.”
Vasquez said he was “skeptical” about pushing beyond the UDB and said he worried about how development on that land might harm long-term sustainability goals, while Cabrera said the approach must be “thoughtful” but that county staff had not yet made the case for building beyond the UDB.
On the issue of electing a sheriff in Miami-Dade starting in 2024 — which has raised questions of shifting police resources to the new office — Vasquez said the county should retain much of the control. Likewise, Fors said he favored a “narrow interpretation” of the responsibilities of the new sheriff. Cabrera, on the other hand, said all law enforcement functions should be turned over to the new sheriff.
Cabrera, who has been working for the global public relations firm Mercury, is backed by Hialeah Mayor Esteban “Steve” Bovo and U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar. He’s married to Republican state Rep. Demi Busatta Cabrera, whom the Editorial Board recommended in 2020, and has been on the MiamiDade Community Council.
Vasquez, a lifelong educator, is interested in making his community a better place. We hope he continues to pursue public service. Fernandez had not fully developed many of his answers to our questions.
Fors has the experience and knowledge to be a valuable addition to the County Commission. His homestead exemption violation was wrong, he paid the penalty, and taxpayers were made whole. In the end, he is the best qualified.
The Miami Herald recommends JORGE FORS for Miami-Dade Commission, District 6.
DISTRICT 8
Incumbent Miami-Dade County Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins, appointed to the commission in late 2020 to fill the vacancy when Daniella Levine Cava became mayor, is asking voters to give her four more years representing District 8.
Cohen Higgins, an attorney, has two opponents: neighborhood activist Alicia Arellano and former hospital emergency room director Karen Baez-Wallis.
The South Miami-Dade district includes the municipalities of Cutler Bay, Palmetto Bay and parts of Homestead. County Commission races are nonpartisan.
Cohen Higgins has never before faced voters in an election, something her opponents both noted. County commises