Recall effort fails against Miami-Dade’s Democratic mayor

The effort to oust Miami-Dade’s Democratic mayor has failed, with YouTube host Alex Otaola announcing Wednesday that his group secured only a fraction of the nearly 66,000 voter signatures needed to hold a recall election.

Otaola, a Republican who ran against Mayor Daniella Levine Cava two years ago, blamed voter apathy, a lack of support from GOP leaders and other hurdles for his effort collecting fewer than 26,000 petition signatures ahead of Thursday’s 4 p.m. deadline to hit the target required in the county charter to ask voters whether they want to throw a mayor out of office.

“It is a shame,” Otaola said in Spanish after filming an episode of his Spanish-language YouTube program in the home studio of the Homestead-area rural compound where he lives. “Miami-Dade deserves better.”

Otaola was one of four Republican challengers who tried to unseat Levine Cava in 2024. Levine Cava, a two-term Democrat, won the nonpartisan election by a wide margin, with Otaola finishing third with 12% of the vote.

The Otaola recall effort looked uphill from the start. His group’s initial paperwork to launch the petition was rejected by the county Clerk’s Office late last year over errors on the forms. The second set of paperwork passed muster in January, triggering the 120-day window to gather signatures from at least 4% of the county’s 1.6 million registered voters. Otaola said his group gathered 25,715 signatures.

Unlike in 2011 when billionaire Norman Braman bankrolled the recall of then-Mayor Carlos Alvarez, there was no well-funded countywide effort visible to gather the signatures needed to force a recall election of Levine Cava, who has two years left before term limits force her to leave office in November 2028.

A reporter who signed up for text alerts from the Otaola group received a list of two dozen businesses accepting signatures but no other communication. Otaola’s political committee, Recall Cava, reported raising just $950 in the first three months of 2026.

Just as Florida’s Republican Party largely stayed out of the 2024 mayor race, no leading GOP figures joined Otaola to try and build support for a Levine Cava recall this year.

Flanked by two lawyers, Otaola credited the Miami Young Republicans group for providing the lone source of partisan support in the recall effort. He said no elected Republican spoke out in favor of the recall.

This story was originally published May 13, 2026 at 11:36 AM.