In the race for Miami-Dade mayor, Alex Penelas is leading the pack in donations

Alex Penelas heads into the 2020 campaign season as the financial front-runner for Miami-Dade mayor, with a comeback campaign easily outpacing the four incumbent county commissioners running against him.

The former two-term mayor seeking his old job raised more than $2.8 million in 2019. That’s well ahead of the second-place finisher, Daniella Levine Cava, an incumbent commissioner from South Dade, who recorded just over $2 million raised since she joined the race in April.

Even that $2 million figure masks the fundraising gap between Penelas and his nearest rival, since Levine Cava transferred $400,000 leftover from her 2016 commission campaign to her mayoral race.

Three other commissioners running to succeed a term-limited Mayor Carlos Gimenez trail Penelas by even more. Esteban “Steve” Bovo, representing the Hialeah area, raised about $1.5 million last year, followed by Miami-area commissioners Xavier Suarez ($1 million) and Jean Monestime ($490,000).

The year-end results give Penelas a formidable war chest as the race enters a more active phase ahead of the county’s nonpartisan Aug. 18 primary. His top donor is Miami healthcare mogul Mike Fernandez, who gave more than $300,000. Prestige Companies, a Miami-Dade developer, gave more than $90,000, making it a top backer as well.

Rodney Barreto, head of Miami-Dade’s Super Bowl committee and a partner in a Coral Gables lobbying firm who was a chief fundraiser for Penelas in the 1990s, gave the former mayor’s political committee $15,000 in December.

Knowing they’ll be outspent, Penelas’ rivals are casting the money edge as a sign of the former mayor being the candidate of special interests.

“I’m not surprised at all,” Bovo said. “Alex made a lot of millionaires while he was there.”

Out of office since 2004, Penelas rejected the idea that his backers were linking their donations to doing business with the county. Especially when he’s running against four incumbents with direct power over the county’s nearly $9 billion budget.

“When you look at the other people running for mayor, it’s almost transactional,” he said. “I have nothing to offer people other than a vision for this county.”

Holding county office typically gives candidates a significant advantage in fund-raising, since the most reliable donors in Miami-Dade races are the vendors, lobbyists, and developers that rely on government business. Commissioners running for mayor in 2020 are enjoying support from those donors.

Among Bovo’s top donors are lobbyist Jorge Luis Lopez and Fisher Island Holdings, the developer behind Fisher Island, the luxury development that relies on the county for cargo docks and zoning rulings.

Levine Cava has donations from affordable housing developers Pinnacle and Related Group. Her top donor is Donald Sussman, a Fort Lauderdale hedge-fund executive who was Hillary Clinton’s biggest backer in 2016. He gave $250,000 to Levine Cava, picking her over the other two current or former Democratic officeholders in the race: Monestime and Penelas. Monestime was not available for comment Monday.

The Penelas 2019 haul of about $2.8 million has him narrowly trailing the $3 million raised by Gimenez at the end of 2015 for his final reelection bid in 2016. (The Gimenez fundraising total amounts to about $3.3 million in today’s dollars, thanks to inflation.)

Raquel Regalado challenged Gimenez in 2016 as a sitting school board member, and was outspent nearly 5 to 1 in that race. She predicts candidates will need even more dollars in 2020 to draw voters attention to county politics.

“With this presidential race, people are exhausted” already, she said. “It’s going to be difficult to keep people motivated and to get them out,” for the mayor’s race in August.

The Levine Cava camp said the Penelas advantage isn’t large enough to keep her from beating him. While the race could end in August, the top two finishers would compete on Election Day if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the primary vote.

“I’m very confident we’re going to have a very competitive race in August and November,” said Christian Ulvert, Levine Cava’s campaign manager. “She’s got large donors, and she also has recurring small donors that are growing every month.”

The Penelas advantage is most significant when it comes to money the candidates have to spend — the “cash on hand” figure when expenses are subtracted from donations. Penelas reported $2.6 million cash in the bank in December, compared to about $1.5 million for Levine Cava, $1.2 million for Bovo and less than $1 million for Suarez and Monestime. Juan Zapata, a former county commissioner, has less than $70,000 to spend, and three candidates running for their first office have raised $1,500 or less.

Suarez, a former Miami mayor whose son, Francis, now holds the post, says he’s counting on voters who know him already, press attention and social media to make up for the Penelas money edge. “I don’t think I can outperform Alex Penelas on fundraising, so why try?” he said.

Still, Suarez said he’s planning on ramping up his own fundraising operation this month, with a donor reception planned for late January. The location? “It’s at the home of the mayor of Miami,” he said.