Miami special election: Two candidates will face off for Manolo Reyes’ District 4 seat
Two candidates qualified to run for the District 4 seat following the April 10 death of Commissioner Manolo Reyes.
The winner of the June 3 special election will hold the seat for the remainder of Reyes’ term, which ends in 2027. The district includes Flagami and Coral Way.
When the five-day qualifying period closed at 6 p.m. Friday, two candidates officially made it on the June ballot. They now have just over a month to campaign in a truncated election cycle before early voting begins at the end of May.
Here are the two candidates running in the District 4 special election:
Jose Regalado
Jose Regalado, son of former Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado and brother of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Raquel Regalado, is running for the seat.
Regalado, who had been working as an assistant building director in the city of Miami, officially resigned from that role on Monday.
In a letter to City Manager Art Noriega, Regalado wrote that the decision to run “was not made lightly. I had hoped to continue contributing to the work ahead, but sometimes the call to serve takes a different form than expected.”
Regalado will no doubt benefit from name recognition on the ballot. In November, his father was elected Miami-Dade County property appraiser, and his sister was reelected to her second term as the District 7 county commissioner.
Ralph ‘Rafael’ Rosado
Ralph “Rafael” Rosado, an urban planner and former manager of North Bay Village, has also qualified for the race.
Rosado, who lost to Reyes in 2017, has a bachelor’s degree from Florida International University, a master’s in public policy and urban planning from Princeton University and a Ph. D. in city planning from the University of Pennsylvania.
He is currently president of an urban planning and economic development strategy firm called Rosado & Associates.
“For about 20 years, we have called District 4 home, and it would be the honor of a lifetime to be able to serve with each of you and represent a community that I love so much,” Rosado said at a special meeting this month when the Miami City Commission decided to call for a special election rather than appoint someone to the District 4 seat.
This story was originally published April 26, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
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