Steve Bovo running for Miami-Dade mayor and against ‘liberal agenda’

When the coronavirus crisis entered its fourth month in June, the county commission needed unanimous support to bypass legislative procedure for speedy approval to spend $10 million in federal COVID aid on rent relief for Miami-Dade’s poorest residents.

That’s when Steve Bovo blocked the proposal, calling it a hasty attempt to give away taxpayer dollars.

“There’s already talk about figuring out how to add more money,” to the $10 million proposal, Bovo said at the June 16 meeting. “These government programs, that’s all they do. Just add more money.”

As he runs for Miami-Dade mayor against fellow commissioners Daniella Levine Cava and Xavier Suarez, former county mayor Alex Penelas and a trio of first-time candidates, Esteban “Steve” Bovo Jr. has the conservative lane in the contest mostly to himself. The lone Republican officeholder on the ballot, he’s also the only one linking himself to President Donald Trump in campaign mailers and criticizing “far-left liberals” who want to turn Miami-Dade into “New York or Seattle.”

“The only candidate who speaks to the property owner, and the business owner, has been me,” he said in a recent interview. “If you’re trying to make your government the solution to everybody’s problems in the community, ultimately that puts a strain on services.”

Though Democrats easily outnumber Republicans in Miami-Dade, a Republican has occupied the nonpartisan mayor’s office since Penelas, a Democrat, finished his second term in 2004. Bovo, 58, hopes to extend that streak, leaning on his transit work on the county commission, a pledge not to raise taxes and an appeal to voters wary of a leftward shift if Miami-Dade elects a liberal mayor.

While commission chairman in 2018, Bovo won approval of a countywide tax district along Metrorail routes and other transit segments forecast to divert as much as $1.8 billion in property taxes for the construction of rail and high-speed bus routes. A year later, he passed zoning legislation around Metrorail tracks to encourage development close to transit.

In 2014, he was one of three votes against the ordinance that added gender identity to the county’s non-discrimination law. He joined a bipartisan majority in 2017 that endorsed Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s dropping “sanctuary” policies that had local jails refusing to hold inmates longer for immigration officers, a measure Levine Cava and Suarez opposed.

Miami-Dade’s leading Republican, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, came to the Stephen P. Clark Center in 2017 to swear in Bovo as the County Commission’s new chairman. The two are longtime friends, and Bovo’s wife, Viviana, works in Rubio’s office.

Republicans play an outsized role in selecting Miami-Dade’s mayor because the contest starts with a nonpartisan August primary where Democrats tend to stay home more than Republicans do.

Democrats had a six-point turnout advantage in the 2016 August mayoral primary. That’s compared to a 14-point advantage in the November runoff, when incumbent Carlos Gimenez defeated fellow Republican Raquel Regalado for a second a final term. In fact, Republicans have finished first and second in the three Miami-Dade mayoral races held between 2011 and 2016.

If a candidate wins more than 50% of the Aug. 18 primary vote, the contest ends in August. Otherwise, the top two finishers compete in a fall runoff that ends on Election Day in November. Focusing on Republicans in August makes sense for Bovo to try to secure a slot on the fall ballot, but heading too far right could be problematic, said Sean Foreman, a political science professor at Barry University.

“That’s a smart strategy for Bovo to run as the conservative candidate,” Foreman said. “Attaching himself to Trump is more tricky.”

When Trump came to Miami on July 10, Bovo joined Gimenez at Miami International Airport to greet him, and thanked the president for his “commitment and solidarity” with the people of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. He bolstered his bid for Republican votes more when Rubio announced his endorsement of Bovo as a mayor “who will stand up to the anarchist Marxist mobs, not surrender to their outrageous demands.”

New York native but ties to Cuba

Born in 1952 in Queens, New York, Bovo was named after his father, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion as a member of Brigade 2056. The family moved to New York City in 1960, then to Miami. Bovo graduated from Florida International University with a degree in political science.

A father of five, Bovo said before COVID-19 ended his wife’s weekly flights to Capitol Hill, he was regularly juggling commission duties with taking care of their 10-year-old son. “We eat a lot of McDonald’s,“ he said.

Stepson Oscar De la Rosa is the oldest at 28 and sits in the same place on the Hialeah City Council dais that Bovo did. In October, Bovo flew solo from Miami to Tokyo to see his son Stevie, a 26-year-old actor, perform in a touring production of “West Side Story.” “I probably spent the first 10 minutes of the show with teary eyes,” he said. “You get to see your kid doing what you want to do.”

So far, Bovo leads in endorsements from fellow commissioners, with support from three of the four other Republicans on the board: Jose “Pepe” Diaz, Rebeca Sosa, and Javier Souto. Unlike the other two commissioners running for mayor, Bovo was elected board chairman and currently holds a leadership post as Transportation chairman. “I think he was extremely fair and balanced” as chairman, Sosa said. “It’s important to have somebody who understands how the county workss ... And how we can work together.”

Chairwoman Audrey Edmonson, a Democrat, named Bovo head of the commission’s 2020 Census task force, a position that’s become a promotional vehicle for him. At a recent Farm Share food-distribution event in Miami Gardens, Bovo was the official host and a mix of campaign and office staffers wore “Team Bovo” shirts to help hand out the food and direct traffic.

Along with packets of English muffins and bags of rice, motorists received a “2020 Census” calendar from the county. It featured a photograph of the 2020 candidate, and the largest letters were reserved for Bovo’s name.

“He’s having a lot of fun, because he gets to do what he loves,” De la Rosa said. “My father is not an overly ambitious man in the private sector. His heart really is with the community.”

Bovo took his first public post in 1998, when he was appointed to the Hialeah City Council. He won reelection twice and served as council president. In 2008, he won the first of two terms in the Florida House, then a special election for the County Commission’s District 13 seat after the recall of incumbent Natacha Seijas in 2011.

While in the Florida House, Bovo worked as a staff lobbyist for the Miami Children’s Hospital (now named after the healthcare foundation launched by golfer Jack Nicklaus). He had worked for the Hialeah Park Casino while on the city council, too, and kept both as clients for a consulting firm he formed after winning the county commission seat. He said he recently parted ways with the hospital as COVID upended its revenues but that the casino, owned by John Brunetti, remains his firm’s only client.

“Both the hospital and the racetrack were gracious enough to want to continue having a relationship with me,” he said. “For the racetrack, I was really just a political adviser to the owner of the casino. ... I still had a lot of friends still in Tallahassee, and I would consult with him on how to navigate some things. ... I didn’t lobby.”

He reported earning $82,000 through his firm, ELB Consulting, according to campaign disclosures. Bovo reported a net worth of $626,000, mostly from a four-bedroom house in Hialeah valued at $526,000.

A few entanglements

Bovo’s Republican circle brought political trouble in Miami when friend David Rivera, a former Miami congressman, was sued over an alleged $50 million consulting deal to help Venezuela’s state-run oil company boost its political standing in the United States. The arrangement hadn’t been disclosed before.

Bovo said Rivera had participated in at least one campaign strategy call before Bovo filed for mayor in September, and the two had talked in early 2020. The scandal forced Bovo to fire his campaign’s professional fund-raiser, Esther Nuhfer, after allegations her firm received money from the Venezuela arrangement, too.

Last year, Bovo spoke in favor of a zoning change sought by a project near his district that was represented by De la Rosa through his work for lobbyist and lawyer Felix Lasarte. De la Rosa registered to represent Terra, the Miami developer planning more than 1,000 apartments on vacant land off of Interstate 75 and west of Miami Lakes.

De la Rosa pointed out he was in law school at the time and said he registered to lobby in order to interact with county staffers during the application process. “It was more of a legal internship,” he said.

Miami Lakes opposed the zoning change, arguing it would put more pressure to open shuttered I-75 overpasses connecting Miami Lakes with Hialeah. With De la Rosa in the third row of the commission chambers, Bovo joined the unanimous approval of the change, chastising Miami Lakes for “coming to speak on what’s happening on the other side of I-75 when their development is impacting what’s going on with those bridges.”

Bovo said he considered his stepson’s role as more lawyer than lobbyist, and that the two didn’t discuss the project. “He never lobbied me,” he said.

No public polling has been released yet in the 2020 mayor’s race. Bovo’s in third place in terms of dollars to spend in the race, with about $800,000 in the bank. His top donor so far is Conservative Principles for Florida, a political committee run by Florida Speaker José Oliva, which donated $100,000. Levine Cava started July with about $2 million, and Penelas more than $3 million.

He recently won the endorsement of Miami-Dade’s police union, which praised him for “great courage” in fighting the “anti-police narrative” that has become an “existential threat ... to the very safety and security of our residents.”

Bovo’s campaign literature promises a mix of fiscal conservatism and resistance to the social causes that helped animate recent racial-justice demonstrations in Miami and across the country.

Anti tax, pro Trump

A Bovo door hanger promises a veto for any proposed tax increase on properties as Miami-Dade enters its most serious economic downturn since at least 2007. On Twitter, Bovo has emphasized conservative themes as the Aug. 18 primary gets closer.

“This is what unchecked liberal/socialist cities & states look like,” Bovo wrote in a June 19 Twitter post on a report that ANTIFA protesters burned a U.S. flag over a George Washington statue in Portland, Oregon. “What’s next? Re-education camps? Redistribution of wealth?”

When Trump turned 74 in June, Bovo wished him happy birthday on Twitter and said: “His leadership and commitment to our nation is greatly appreciated, especially during these times of uncertainty.”

Asked to grade Trump’s response to the COVID pandemic, Bovo gave him a B-.

“I think our president relies on a lot of input from a lot of different people that sometimes doesn’t get translated into the right communication,” he said.

He added that some Democratic governors and mayors seem determined to break with the Trump administration on COVID measures. And he sees selective outrage when it comes to Trump’s refusal so far to wear a mask in public.

“They criticize him if he does a political rally for masks,” said Bovo, who was wearing a mask when he greeted a visitor at his campaign office. “But you don’t hear a word out of them when it comes to demonstrations.”

Bovo’s blocking the passage of the Miami-Dade rent-relief program until a later meeting was a chance for him to amplify the divide between him and the more liberal members of an officially nonpartisan county commission where Democrats hold the majority.

The delay drew the ire of housing advocates, and it gave opponents another example of what they see as Bovo touting his conservatism at the expense of people needing help. “He’s just playing politics,” Levine Cava said. “He’s playing to his base.”

Bovo pointed out that while the $10 million earmarked for the program came from Washington, it’s part of a $478 million relief package to cover all Miami-Dade COVID expenses. Cities are also seeking portions of that pool of money for their COVID expenses.

When the relief package came up for a second vote in early July, Bovo joined the board in approving it unanimously.

In an interview, Bovo said he wants Miami-Dade to help residents, but not go overboard with spending.

“What government can’t do is embrace a liberal agenda and a liberal policy that is going to collapse the homeowner in this community,” he said. “We’re probably going to look for ways to make sure county government is fulfilling its core mission, and can we do it within what residents in our community can afford? I think that’s going to be a challenge. I’m up for that challenge.”

The Miami Herald has written articles about other candidates for Miami-Dade mayor, and has more to come. Click here to read about Esteban “Steve” Bovo, Daniella Levine Cava, Alex Penelas, and Xavier Suarez.

This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 6:00 AM.