Who’s running for Miami-Dade sheriff this year? Here’s the final list of candidates
More than a dozen candidates qualified to run for Miami-Dade County sheriff this year, the first time in more than five decades that voters will elect an independent top cop to lead a department of more than 3,000 sworn police officers.
The partisan race, in which qualifying ended at noon Friday, sets the stage for a pair of August primaries to determine who will be the first county sheriff since the post was abolished in the 1960s. After the Aug. 20 Republican and Democratic primaries, the highest vote-getter in each party will advance to the Nov. 5 general election.
The new sheriff will be sworn into office in January. As of the noon deadline on Friday, 11 Republicans and four Democrats had qualified for the August election.
The role of elected sheriff was reintroduced in 2018 when voters approved a statewide amendment to the Florida Constitution. Miami-Dade County — the only one of Florida’s 67 counties not to have an elected sheriff — did away with the position in the 1960s after a pair of corruption scandals. Voters chose to abolish the office in favor of an appointed police administrator.
READ MORE: After a storied history of bad sheriffs, Miami-Dade voters will elect them again
Until the November election, Miami-Dade will continue to be the only county in Florida where the elected mayor oversees law enforcement and corrections. After the election, the job of overseeing officers switches to the sheriff’s office. It remains unclear if Miami-Dade Corrections will fall under a new sheriff or continue to be run by the mayor’s office.
The number of candidates running for sheriff is large, and the field is diverse. It runs the gamut from a former city of Miami commissioner who spent several years as a spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol to a suspended Miami-Dade commissioner caught up in an alleged corruption scandal, who worked for 17 years in the county police department, to Miami-Dade’s current public safety director in charge of police, fire and corrections.
The 15 qualifying candidates are:
Republicans
- Ignacio Alvarez, a lawyer at the Algo firm in Coral Gables and a retired major formerly in charge of the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Special Victims Bureau
- Jose L. Aragu, a major with the Miami-Dade Police Department
- Rosanna “Rosie” Cordero-Stutz, assistant director for support services for the Miami-Dade Police Department
- Ruamen J. de la Rua, an officer with the Miami Police Department
- Alexander Fornet, the owner of a Credit Doctor credit-repair business in Doral and a former officer and county reserve officer with the Miami-Dade Police Department
- Jeffrey Giordano, a private investigator who owns Giordano Protection Services and a former officer with the Miami Police Department
- Mario Knapp, a retired major with the Miami-Dade Police Department
- Jose “Joe” Martinez Jr., a retired lieutenant with the Miami-Dade Police Department and former Miami-Dade County commissioner
- John J. Rivera Jr., former head of the Miami-Dade Police Benevolent Association, the union representing the county’s police force, and a retired investigator with the Miami-Dade Police Department
- Ernesto Rodriguez, a lieutenant with the Miami-Dade Police Department
- Joe Sanchez, a former city of Miami commissioner and Florida Highway Patrol trooper who took a leave of absence from that job when he filed to run for sheriff
Democrats
- Rickey Mitchell, a retired lieutenant with the Miami-Dade Police Department
- James Reyes, the chief of public safety in Miami-Dade County and former director of the Broward Sheriff’s Office jail system
- Susan Khoury, a former special agent in the Inspector General offices of the Federal Emergency Management
- John M. Barrow, a major and the head of the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Personnel Management Bureau
Miami Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 14, 2024 at 12:35 PM.
