In her Miami-Dade rematch with Regalado, Lerner faces a new challenge: incumbent money

In 2020, Cindy Lerner barely lost a Miami-Dade County Commission election to Raquel Regalado after finishing a respectable second in fundraising totals, too.

What an exponential difference four years can make.

In their 2020 race, Regalado, a former school board member, raised about $160,000 more than Lerner, a former Pinecrest mayor. In this year’s rematch, Regalado is now the incumbent commissioner facing reelection on Nov. 5 and has out-raised Lerner by more than $2 million.

READ MORE: Raquel Regalado faces a rematch in a Miami county district, this time with a record

Fueled in part by donations from developers seeking favorable votes from the commission, Regalado has a commanding cash advantage as she competes in the only County Commission race on the fall ballot. She and Lerner are running to represent a district that includes neighborhoods in southern Miami and the nearby municipalities of Key Biscayne, Pinecrest and South Miami.

Lerner has raised about $400,000 through her campaign and political committee, Protect Our Future. Through her campaign and political committee, Citizens for Excellence in Miami-Dade County Government, Regalado has raised about $2.8 million.

“It’s an obscene amount,” Lerner, 72, said of the dollars Regalado has raised since taking office in November 2020. “It shows that her vote is for sale.”

Regalado, 50, brushed off criticism of her fundraising success, calling it a vote of confidence against an opponent who is running a negative campaign.

“I’ve built a coalition of support, and that is reflected in the fundraising,” she said. “I’m glad I have enough money to defend myself.”

A Miami Herald tally of donations in the nonpartisan District 7 race found that among Regalado donors giving more than $50,000 to her political committee are the Related Group, a Miami developer that pursues county public-housing deals; the Swerdlow Group, a Miami developer that in May narrowly won a county land deal for a new Costco with Regalado’s support; and Atlantic Pacific, a Related rival out of Boca Raton that also pursues affordable-housing deals with the county.

Lerner has only one donor that has given more than $50,000 to her political committee, according to the Herald’s tally. Barbara Stiefel, a prominent donor to Democratic candidates and environmental causes, gave $60,000 to the Lerner PAC.

The wide financial gap in Miami-Dade’s only November race for the County Commission captures the extreme advantage incumbents typically bring to an election.

Audrey Edmonson served on the Miami-Dade commission for 15 years before new term-limit rules forced her to give up her District 3 seat in 2020. She challenged her successor, Commissioner Keon Hardemon, for the seat in the August primary. She was the only term-limited commissioner to take advantage of being able to run again after leaving office after waiting the required four years to do so.

Edmonson found that past support from donors as an incumbent— she raised nearly $600,000 for her last reelection bid in 2016 — didn’t translate to many dollars as a challenger in 2024. Edmonson said she was only able to raise about $200,000 for her District 3 race this time, compared to the more than $1.5 million Hardemon raised before capturing 61% of the vote on Aug. 20.

“It’s extremely difficult,” Edmonson said of trying to raise money from past donors. “One was extremely apologetic, but he had something coming in front of the commission.”

Katy Sorenson, a former county commissioner now supporting Lerner, said she was stunned at Regalado being able to raise nearly $3 million for a race to represent a district of about 220,000 people.

“It’s just unbelievable,” said Sorenson, who opted not to seek reelection in 2010. “My last race cost $455,000 and I thought that was an incredible amount of money and more than we needed.”

Of the seven commissioners who were up for reelection this year, only Regalado is facing a November runoff.

Four others — René Garcia, Oliver Gilbert, Eileen Higgins and Kionne McGhee — won reelection automatically in June with no challengers to run against them. Two others, Roberto Gonzalez and Hardemon, won their races in August by crossing the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff with the second-place finisher.

The results reinforced the power of incumbency in the commission’s new era of term limits. County voters approved the current two-term limit in 2012, and the charter amendment forced the first wave of departures eight years later in 2020.

The departures left the District 7 seat open for what turned out to be a tight contest in November 2020. Lerner, a former Democratic member of the Florida House, lost to Regalado, a Republican, by 2 points in a district that President Joe Biden won by 8 points.

Four years later, Regalado headed into the fall campaign in a stronger position. While Lerner finished first in the August 2020 election, Regalado took the top spot in this year’s primary and fell just short of the 50% threshold needed to end the race. The Aug. 20 results showed Regalado with 49% of the vote to Lerner’s 42%.

The race is contentious enough that even Zoo Miami’s Ron Magill has become a source of friction. Last week, Regalado’s campaign sent out a statement Magill provided praising the commissioner as “invaluable” in blocking approval of the Miami Wilds water park planned for outside the zoo. The campaign introduced the statement by saying Magill “endorsed” Regalado’s campaign, which Magill said he didn’t do.

Lerner called the statement a lie demonstrating Regalado’s practice of “misleading voters.” Regalado called it a “mistake.”

Both candidates in the race are trying to cast themselves as the best choice for environmentalists. Lerner has the endorsement of the Sierra Club and VoteWater, two environmental advocacy groups.

In 2022, Regalado was the swing vote on the commission’s decision to expand the Urban Development Boundary for the first time in nine years. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups fought the expansion, which passed over the veto of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. The 2022 vote is a centerpiece of Lerner’s political mailers against Regalado, linking the decision to developer donations.

“Greedy developers love Raquel Regalado,” one mailer from the Lerner campaign said. “Developers won … and Miami-Dade citizens lost.”

Regalado defended the vote as a net positive for the environment after securing a requirement that the developer donate more than 200 acres to the county’s preservation bank of wetlands and other sensitive areas. She’s pitching legislation she’s sponsored aimed at cracking down on polluting septic tanks and other anti-pollution measures as proof she’s an environmental ally.

A recent Regalado mailer featuring the endorsement of South Miami’s Democratic mayor, Javier Fernández, declared Regalado “the only candidate with a track record protecting our environment.”

It’s not just the Regalado war chest that is putting Lerner at a financial disadvantage in the election. She’s also getting attacked by an independent group backed by Republican donor dollars.

Multiple mailers hitting Lerner for snapping at constituents while she was mayor of Pinecrest — moments she cited in her campaign launch as proof she’s fed up with politics as usual — came from a political committee based out of Coral Gables, Fighting for a Better Miami-Dade.

That committee received nearly $400,000 since late July from the Florida Courage committee. Based out of Tallahassee, Florida Courage recorded receiving $750,000 since the summer from the Washington-based Republican State Leadership Committee, which backs GOP candidates across the country.

Outspent, Lerner said she’s been relying on retail politics to build support ahead of Election Day.

“The only thing I can do is grassroots,” she said. “I’ve been knocking on doors since February.”