In the wake of a surprising Democratic victory in Jacksonville's mayoral election last week, the contest for the top job in Miami-Dade is a Republican-only affair.
County Commissioner Carlos Gimenez and Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina are the clear leaders in the polls ahead of Tuesday's special election, and are expected to advance to a runoff.
Democrats are virtual nonentities in the 11-candidate field. In the race for campaign cash, the top four hopefuls are Hispanic Republicans. That's the way Florida's most populous county rolls in local elections.
Although liberal pundits perennially spin hopeful yarns about Miami's Latin population abandoning the Republican Party, there is no evidence of that here. Cubans, who represent roughly one-quarter of the region's voters, remain staunchly in the GOP camp.
"The Democratic Party in Miami-Dade is not organized. They have a terrible ground game. They've been shut out of county politics for years," says Sean Foreman, assistant professor at Barry University in Miami Lakes.
Tuesday's mayoral race is officially nonpartisan, but, as in Jacksonville and Tampa, where Democrat Bob Buckhorn was elected mayor earlier this year, there's no confusion over party affiliations in Miami-Dade.
In addition to Gimenez and Robaina, fellow Republicans Marcelo Llorente and Jose "Pepe" Cancio are the biggest names in the race to fill out the unexpired term of Carlos Alvarez (another Republican), who was ousted in a recall election.
Despite the GOP's longtime control of Miami-Dade's political machine, Democrats have made no headway in the special election spawned and shadowed by allegations of corruption.
Retired rapper Luther Campbell is the only Democrat in the field with a reasonable chance of cracking double digits on Election Day, Foreman said. That would be enough votes to trigger a runoff, but nowhere near enough to advance to the next round. Other Democrats in the field trail far behind.
Meantime, Republicans Gimenez and Robaina have been waging a fierce internecine battle via Spanish radio stations and robo-calls in both Spanish and English.
Gimenez touts himself as the true reformer, having consistently opposed the costly and controversial Marlins stadium deal that ultimately took down Alvarez.
Robaina maintains that Gimenez has been in office too long, and notes that the commissioner collects three government pensions.
Gimenez responds that Robaina flip-flopped on the stadium issue and he points to an ongoing criminal investigation into the mayor's personal finances. (Robaina is not to be confused with the eponymous former state legislator who is running for a County Commission seat.)
Having thrown Alvarez out of office, Miami-Dade voters are focused on "accountability and corruption," polls say.
But Norman Braman, the auto magnate who led the successful recall drive, is not taking sides in the mayoral contest. Upset at the way the commission watered down or ignored his proposed charter reform proposals, Braman is urging votes to reject all measures on the ballot.
In the District 13 race for County Commission, Braman is backing Esteban Bovo, whom he calls "totally committed to a reform agenda." Bovo, who left his state House seat to make the run, is, naturally, a Republican.
Early on in the mayoral campaign, Robaina received the endorsement of the powerful Latin Builders Association. Last week, the Miami Herald endorsed Gimenez.
As with the endorsements, the lion's share of campaign cash has flowed to the top-tier (i.e., Republican) candidates, with Robaina collecting $767,075 as of last week.
Cancio criticized the Latin Builders for issuing an endorsement without previously sitting down with all the candidates. And non-Hispanic candidates, including Campbell and Roosevelt Bradley, complained that they were shut out of a debate conducted in Spanish by Univision.
"This turns the clock back 50 years on race and ethnic relations," said Bradley, who, like Campbell, is African-American.
Univision responded that it simply invited the four candidates who had raised the most campaign cash. Following Robaina, were Llorente ($402,831); Gimenez ($257,963); and Cancio ($170,650). No other candidates reported more than $26,000.
Llorente, a former state representative who originally planned to run for the mayor's job in 2012, rejected the notion that the election had boiled down to a two-person race.
"I'm feeling incredible energy and a lot of enthusiasm at the early voting sites," he said Wednesday.
Meantime, Robaina was embroiled in another late charge of flip-flopping.
Bidding for a nod from the conservative Christian Family Coalition, Robaina signed a "Marriage Protection Pledge" to uphold traditional marriage. Cancio and one other candidate, Wilbur Bell, also signed the pledge.
But a homosexual group, SAVE Dade, countered that Robaina went on record with them saying he supports "some domestic-partner rights."
In a subsequent statement, Robainas campaign said:
Mayor Robaina stands by themarriage protection pledges he signed which define and protect marriage and all of its benefits as the union of one man and one womanas defined by the Florida Constitution, overwhelmingly approved by voters in November 2008. Efforts to misconstrue Robainas position on this issue are absurd and politically driven.
The Miami-based CFC, which has a strong record in backing winning candidates -- almost always Republicans -- is not endorsing in this contest. But the group's leader, Anthony Verdugo, stood by Robaina, saying, "He supported marriages as the union of one man and one woman and would do nothing to support civil unions or domestic partnerships."
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Reach Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
