A lawyer who won her first county battle in middle school, Cohen Higgins joins commission

Danielle Cohen Higgins was in her mid-30s four years ago, a mother of a young son and running a small law firm when Donald Trump won the White House in an upset. That’s when Cohen Higgins, Miami-Dade’s newest county commissioner, said she decided to get into politics.

“That was probably the turning point where I said I’ve got to do more,” the 39-year-old Democrat said on a recent morning, days after Miami-Dade commissioners appointed her to the seat vacated in November by incoming mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “Like many women of color, I had a moment. And thankfully so.”

Though a Democratic rising star, Cohen Higgins secured her first political office in an appointment process largely steered by the commission’s leading Republicans.

Rebeca Sosa, the board’s acting chairwoman, led the votes that rejected holding a special election for the District 8 seat. Incoming chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz was one of two commissioners who nominated Cohen Higgins.

When Sosa asked for more nominations, the remaining commissioners offered none. Only Commissioner René Garcia, a candidate for chairman of Miami-Dade’s Republican Party, voted against Cohen Higgins, saying he wanted District 8 voters to fill the South Miami-Dade seat instead.

A political newcomer’s win over experienced rivals

The uncontested appointment vote capped a nearly two-year effort by Cohen Higgins to succeed Levine Cava on the commission. The political newcomer will take her place on the dais for her first regular commission meeting Tuesday, joining an historic wave of new, younger commissioners with children at home — a generational shift after term limits first forced retirements this year.

But while the other first-termers won their commission seats after electoral success elsewhere, Cohen Higgins secured hers by out-maneuvering established politicians seeking the District 8 post.

Among those who tried for the seat were former state senators Frank Artiles and Dwight Bullard, former Cutler Bay mayor Peggy Bell and John DuBois, the sitting vice mayor of Palmetto Bay.

Cohen Higgins raised more from donors than any of the other contenders, pulling in about $300,000 from a collection of lobbyists, developers and county vendors that are the mainstays of the county donor circuit.

“Danielle is a fighter and has a lot of tenacity,” said Marika Lynch, a board member of the Ruth’s List Florida chapter, the fundraising group that backs Democratic women for office and endorsed Cohen Higgins for the District 8 race. “That’s what you want.”

A child of Jamaican immigrants

A first-generation Jamaican-American, Cohen Higgins was the first person in her family to attend college. She joined Miami’s Greenberg Traurig, where her mother was already working in the office staff. “She was very proud when I was able to get a job there as a lawyer,” Cohen Higgins said.

The two lived briefly in public housing in Homestead, when Cohen Higgins’ father was still alive. He died when she was 8.

Despite money being tight Cohen Higgins recalls a secure childhood, growing up in a Kendall condo where her mother still lives. “I didn’t feel like I was without, because I had my mom,” Cohen Higgins said. Food wasn’t an issue, but extras were. She recalled when Z Cavaricci jeans were the must-have at her school.

“It was not in the budget,” she said. “It was a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. But we weren’t poor. At least I didn’t feel we were poor.”

Cohen Higgins and Pedro Zamora

In 1995, the 13-year-old got her first taste of government advocacy when she helped petition the county to rename a street outside McMillan Middle after Pedro Zamora, the famous former student who had died the year before at age 22.

Zamora brought humanity to the plight of young people with AIDS when he starred on the MTV reality series, “The Real World,” and his death drew an outpouring from leaders that included President Bill Clinton.

“He had a very close relationship to one of my teachers at the middle school, who was a mentor. She, obviously, was devastated,” Cohen Higgins recalled, describing a renaming ceremony that made national news. “It was to honor Pedro Zamora, and to celebrate human rights and equal rights and gay rights. It was great.”

She was a scholarship student at the University of Florida, then attended law school at Florida State. After working at Greenberg, Cohen Higgins started her own small firm in Coral Gables. Cohen Law handles liability cases, divorces, white-collar crime and commercial litigation.

She sees her story as capturing the Miami dream for many immigrant families but wonders if her parents had it easier than what the South Florida economy presents to new arrivals today.

“My parents arrived without the proverbial two dimes to rub together, and were able to make something of themselves,” she said. “I wonder whether or not that same opportunity exists for young people today.”

Her appointment expands the number of Black commissioners from four to five, a high-water mark since the creation of single-member districts in the early 1990s to provide equitable representation to Black and Hispanic voters.

Cohen Higgins only Black woman on commission

With the term-limited exits of Audrey Edmonson and Barbara Jordan, the commission also went about three weeks without a Black woman on the board until Cohen Higgins took her seat for an afternoon meeting on CARES Act funding on Dec. 7, hours after appointment earlier in the day.

In the midst of this summer’s social justice demonstrations that followed the death of George Floyd during a Minneapolis arrest, Cohen Higgins wrote two posts about race on her campaign’s Instagram page.

One addressed a day of protests in Miami followed by ransacking of stores and burning of police cars.

“No Miami. We are better than this,” she wrote in the May 30 post. Floyd’s death is not “your license to engage in destruction, unlawfulness and civil unrest. Thank you to those who are truly committed to the cause and engaged in the peaceful portions of today’s protest.”

The next day, she wrote a post for people speaking out for racial justice, confident they weren’t racist themselves.

“You don’t see color but...,” Cohen Higgins wrote, “You prefer black people in very small quantities... You prefer black people with light skin and straight hair. You prefer black people not live on your street.”

In her interview, Cohen Higgins said she considered the concluding line the most important part of the post: “Ask yourself, how many hoops do black people have to jump through before being considered by you? Protest, stand up, speak out but most importantly, start by taking a closer look at you.”

Growing up Black in Miami-Dade, Cohen Higgins said she didn’t experience significant discrimination. She believes her light skin tone made her ethnic heritage less apparent.

“I did not have many encounters of racism. I also recognize that has a lot to do with my complexion,” she said. “My experience is going to be very different from someone who doesn’t look like me.”

When Cohen Higgins filed her District 8 papers to succeed Levine Cava in May 2019, she was pregnant with daughter Sloan. She and her husband Mark, a medical-device sales manager, live in Palmetto Bay with Cohen Higgins’ 8-year-old son, Ari, and two dogs, an “80-pound Dogo Argentino” named Xena and a miniature schnauzer named Charlie.

“Of course the sweet, amazing one is the 80-pounder, “ she said. “The cute little fluffy one is the one that’s a terror.”

Officially, Cohen Higgins has spent the last 19 months as a registered candidate for the 2022 election for the District 8 seat. That was so she and three other candidates could raise campaign dollars for the special election that had been expected once Levine Cava resigned her seat in 2020 to qualify for the mayoral ballot and comply with Florida’s “resign-to-run” law.

As a candidate, Cohen Higgins broke with Levine Cava on one top local issue: a county plan to build a bridge over a canal in Palmetto Bay and allow Southwest 87th Avenue to continue over it.

Levine Cava got heat for opposing the plan, which Palmetto Bay’s leadership didn’t want for the traffic it would bring north of the canal. Communities south of the canal backed the bridge as a way to ease cars snaking through neighborhood streets instead of taking 87th Avenue straight through. Cohen Higgins backs the bridge.

“I was very vocal and clear on that position,” she said. “I didn’t want to sit on the fence on it. I knew the politically safe thing to do would have been to give a cryptic response.”

Levine Cava timed her resignation for after Election Day, allowing her to retain the media attention and fund-raising advantage that comes with a commission seat. That left commissioners to either call a special election in January or appoint a replacement.

Cohen Higgins made the rounds with commissioners, locking in enough support that other contenders with more political experience knew their chances were slim. Bell, the former Cutler Bay mayor, said she heard from county commissioners there probably wasn’t a need to even attend the Dec. 17 meeting “because it’s a done deal.”

Commissioners opted not to let any of the candidates speak before the nomination process that left only one contender up for the appointment vote. The lone commissioner to vote against Cohen Higgins heaped praise on her after the vote.

“We’ve had plenty of conversations.. I know that you are pragmatic person,” Garcia told Cohen Higgins. “I’m proud of you.”

This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 2:00 PM.