This Miami-Dade candidate won reelection, extending a 52-year streak

Lyndon Johnson was president the first time Harvey Ruvin won an election, and on Tuesday the 83-year-old won another and easily secured a seventh four-year term as county clerk.

The county’s longest-serving elected official, Ruvin won his first office at age 30 when he became mayor of North Bay Village in 1968. He served on the county commission through the 1970s and 1980s, then won the clerk’s office in 1992.

The Democrat’s win Tuesday with 73% of the vote over independent Rubin Young marked his 13th countywide win, since he served on the commission when those seats were elected by all county voters.

The $250,000-a-year job puts Ruvin in charge of the county’s court system, including the offices where people pay parking tickets, file divorce papers and record mortgages and deeds. An environmentalist who once recorded a climate-change rap, Ruvin served as chairman of the county’s Sea Level Rise Task Force that issued a report in 2014.

“I’m deeply grateful for the voters, enabling me to continue doing the work I love in the community I love,” Ruvin said in a statement. “I’m grateful to my 1,150 co-workers, who come to work every day in the spirit of public service, without whom our accomplishments wouldn’t have been possible. Their dedication in the face of this pandemic has been heroic.”

This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 6:54 PM.