Florida Republicans appeared to force Miami Democratic state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez into a recount Tuesday and fended off two fierce challenges to their narrow majority in the Florida Senate as a bitterly fought and expensive election cycle came to an end.
The Republican surge in Miami-Dade County that helped boost President Donald Trump’s margin in the state helped elect state House Rep. Ana Maria Rodriguez to Senate District 39 seat in South Miami-Dade and Monroe County, and Jason Brodeur, a Republican former state representative to Senate District 9 in Seminole and Volusia counties.
But the biggest surprise of the night was that Javier Rodriguez, who was first elected to the Senate four years ago, appeared headed for a recount against newcomer Ileana Garcia, a Republican who founded Latinas for Trump. With all precincts reporting at 10:30 p.m., Javier Rodriguez trailed Garcia by 110 votes, although the Miami-Dade elections officials said some vote-by-mail ballots were still uncounted.
Christian Ulvert, an advisor to Javier Rodriguez’s campaign, said in a Tweet that the Miami-Dade County elections office “has confirmed 11,000 VBM [vote-by-mail] ballots countywide, a number of which are in SD37, need to be processed and counted. Given the closeness of the race and the Dem advantage we saw in VBM voting, once those results come in, we will offer comments on next steps.”
Florida law requires an automatic machine recount if the vote margin is less than .5 percent and a hand recount if it is less than .25 percent.
By contrast, Ana Maria Rodriguez, a Doral Republican, easily defeated former House colleague and South Miami Democrat Javier Fernandez in the race to replace Anitere Flores, a Kendall Republican who retired because of term limits.
An hour after polls closed, Fernandez conceded, appearing to have trailed Rodriguez by 12 percentage points in preliminary results. He released a statement that he was “disappointed in tonight’s results” but was “buoyed by the knowledge that we ran a campaign we could be proud of that focused on the problems facing the people of South Florida.
“I am grateful for the support we have received and I remain resolved to continue to work to better the community I’ve called home my whole life,” he wrote. “I congratulate Senator-elect Ana Maria Rodriguez on her victory.”
By successfully defending the two seats, Republicans also ensured that they will yet again dominate the once-a-decade redrawing of legislative and congressional districts in 2022. Census projections show that Florida is likely to gain one or two additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives after 2020, so the redistricting process is crucial for both parties.
More than $3.4 million in cash and support was been poured into the race on both sides, on top of high-profile endorsements from the likes of Miami Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and former President Barack Obama.
Rodriguez is moving her family from Doral to Homestead, where she closed on a house Tuesday afternoon. Her home in Doral was not in District 39. She said Fernandez called to congratulate her, and was “classy and very polite.”
“I told him that whatever he needed, my doors are always open to him,” she said. “I am honored and humbled to have so much support from our community. It’s truly a blessing to be in public office and to serve as an elected official.”
She had not yet spoken to Flores, who she considers a mentor and a friend.
Flores won the in 2016 when she ran to replace Democrat Dwight Bullard after the Senate district lines were redrawn. But Democrats identified it as one of the most flippable seats in the Legislature, and spent money — and ran the advertisements — to reflect that. Republicans did the same.
Before she was elected to the state House, Rodriguez served on the Doral City Council and before that, worked as a government liaison for Baptist Health. She is currently the vice president for the Miami Association of Realtors.
District 9
In Seminole County, Brodeur, who has been campaigning for the District 9 seat for three years, defeated Democrat Patricia Sigman in what had become the most expensive campaign in the state.
The district gives Republicans a two-point lead in voter registration but Sigman, a labor and employment lawyer, had been leading in some polls in recent weeks.
The three Senate races were among the most expensive in the state with raising $1 million in his individual campaign account, Ana Maria Rodriguez raising $860,103 and Jose Javier Rodriguez raising $793,789, according to the Florida Division of Elections. In addition, the Senate leadership committee and independent political committees also spent heavily on the races.
District 37
Keeping Rodriguez in his seat was a key priority for Senate Democrats, who pumped more than $300,000 into his campaign to help with polling, research, campaign staff and political consulting. The district includes Coral Gables, Pinecrest, Key Biscayne, downtown Miami and coastal communities south of Cutler Bay.
Javier Rodriguez, a Miami attorney, promised to tackle sea level rise in the region, overhaul the state’s unemployment system, including raising the minimum benefits to $500 per week, and offer financial assistance to pandemic-battered small businesses.
Garcia, a former television personality, tried to flip the seat with the backing of Senate Republicans, who also poured thousands of dollars into her campaign.
She ran with the endorsement of Gov. Ron DeSantis, and tried to win over voters in the Hispanic-majority district by casting Rodriguez as an extreme or socialist sympathizer, a political tactic for both parties in Miami, which is home to hundreds of thousands of residents who fled Latin American countries led by authoritarian regimes.
In the weeks leading up to the election, voters in the district were bombarded with ads from a mystery donor who tried to promote Alex Rodriguez, a little-known third-party candidate who had not actively campaigned but whose name on the ballot, the same as the frontrunner, presented an opportunity to confuse voters.
Senate Democrats accused Republicans of pushing out the mailers, which they described as a “coordinated, dark money effort to siphon votes from Democratic candidates” to “help weak Republican candidates.” Republicans declined to comment on the mailers.
Incoming Senate President Wilton Simpson said earlier in the cycle that Democrats should be concerned with District 37 and not to underestimate Garcia, a first-time candidate. Simpson chairs the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, which poured $215,000 into Garcia’s campaign.
District 35
West Park Democrat Shevrin Jones, a state House representative and former teacher easily defeated Darien Hill, an independent who has been essentially inactive in the race.
Jones was the victor in a crowded primary contest in August in which he sustained campaign smears, attacks targeting his sexuality and even a bout of COVID-19. Jones, one of the Florida Legislature’s few openly gay lawmakers, will replace term-limited Sen. Oscar Braynon representing parts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties in Senate District 35.
In the primary, Jones beat out three Tallahassee veterans — former Sen. Daphne Campbell, Rep. Barbara Watson and former Rep. Cynthia Stafford — as well as Miami Gardens Councilman Erhabor Ighodaro and retired firefighter Wilbur Harbin.
But even with a slate of candidates who all have their own following, Jones raised more money than all of them combined while growing a national profile of his own. After he was diagnosed with COVID-19, Jones took to major news networks like CNN and MSNBC as well as local media to criticize the state’s contact tracing program and discuss the state’s response to the pandemic.