Surfside voters replace almost all their incumbents. Pembroke Pines reelects its mayor.
Incumbents did not fare well in Tuesday’s Surfside election. Only one incumbent — Commissioner Tina Paul — got reelected. The beachside town will have a new mayor and three new commissioners.
Charles Burkett, who served as Surfside’s mayor from 2006 through 2010, reclaimed the title from the man who defeated him 10 years ago. According to unofficial results, with almost all ballots counted, Burkett received about 52.4 percent of the votes, beating incumbent mayor Daniel Dietch, who received about 47.6 percent.
Surfside, which has about 6,000 residents, was the only municipality in Miami-Dade County to have local elections on the same day as the presidential primary, but one of several across South Florida. In Broward County, Pembroke Pines residents voted for a mayor and council member and three other cities held elections.
Despite concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, voters did show up Tuesday at the polls. However, many people across both counties voted by mail or did early voting, records show. In Miami-Dade, with not all precincts reporting, voter turnout was about 14.7 percent of the 1.47 million registered voters. In Broward, with almost all ballots counted, the turnout was about 25 percent out of the 907,020 registered voters.
The mayor’s race in Surfside originally had three candidates, but Victor May dropped out before the election.
Burkett, a 25-year resident of Surfside, ran on the platform: “Save our small-town way of life in Surfside.”
At a candidate’s forum in February, Burkett slammed the current commission for what he called overdevelopment and said “enough is enough.” He called Surfside “an oasis.”
“It’s a getaway for all of us,” he said. “We want to keep it like that.”
Dietch, a trained geologist and anthropologist, told residents in a Vote411 questionnaire that his focus is “strengthening our Sense of Community.” His other two priorities: tackling climate change and addressing local vehicular traffic.
In Surfside the entire commission — the mayor and four commission seats — comes up for a vote every two years. The mayor’s seat is a separate ballot item. For the commission seats, the top vote getters in the pool of candidates get the seat, and the person with the most votes becomes vice mayor.
This year, there were nine candidates vying for the four seats. One incumbent, Barry Cohen, did not run for reelection. With almost all votes counted, Paul had the most votes with about 16.8 percent and will be vice mayor. The other three winners were: Eliana R. Salzhauer, with about 15.6 percent, Nelly Velasquez, with about 14.1 percent and Charles Kesl, with 11.4 percent. The other candidates were incumbents Daniel Gielchinsky and Michael Karukin, and Shlomo Danzinger, Iris Herssein and Ben Jacobson.
Residents of Pembroke Pines, one of Broward’s largest cities, reelected the incumbent mayor, Frank C. Ortis. Ortis, 76, handily beat Angelo Castillo, 61, with 12,810 votes or about 55 percent, with almost all votes counted. Castillo, who has been on the commission since 2004, received 10,412 votes or about 45 percent.
Ortis, who was elected to the Pembroke Pines City Commission in 1996 and has been the mayor since 2004, told the Sun Sentinel before the election the issues he wanted to tackle were traffic and safety.
For the District 2 seat, which includes the northeastern part of the city, incumbent Commissioner Jay Schwartz beat political newcomer Mark O’Loughlin with about 60% of the vote compared to O’Loughlin’s 40%.
Other Results
▪ Lauderdale-By-The-Sea: Incumbent Chris Vincent won the mayoral seat with about 73 percent of the vote, with all precincts and early votes counted and partial results from vote by mail. His opponent, John A. Graziano, received about 27 percent.
▪ Lighthouse Point: Incumbent Glenn Troast won the mayoral seat with about 70 percent of the vote, with all precincts and early votes counted and partial results from vote by mail. His opponent, Everett Marshall III, received about 30 percent.
▪ Pompano Beach: Residents overwhelmingly defeated three charter amendment questions that would have changed election dates, extended commission terms from two years to four and staggered elections.
Miami Herald staff writer Aaron Leibowitz contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 10:16 PM.
