Sunny Isles Beach elects two new commissioners — one supported by the mayor, one not
Two runoffs Tuesday in Sunny Isles Beach brought mixed results for candidates supported by Mayor Dana Goldman: Fabiola Stuyvesant, who had Goldman’s support, appeared to defeat the mayor’s rival and neighbor, Greg Capra. In the other race, Jerry Joseph defeated Goldman-endorsed candidate Johana Rabinovich, who had recently been appointed to the commission.
Stuyvesant’s victory isn’t final just yet. She leads Capra by 12 votes, 768 to 756, in the Miami-Dade Elections Department’s tally. Seventeen ballots were rejected for missing or mismatched signatures; voters have two days to cure those errors, which could conceivably affect the outcome if enough votes were to swing Capra’s way.
Joseph, 70, has touted a tough-on-development platform in skyscraper-filled Sunny Isles Beach, saying he supports a height limit of four stories for all new buildings on the west side of Collins Ave. Joseph has also come out against the construction of new pedestrian bridges across Collins, calling it a “wasteful” use of taxpayer money and advocating for the hiring of full-time crossing guards instead.
He and Capra were both endorsed by the Miami-Dade GOP, which said in an email announcing the endorsement that electing the two candidates was “essential to continuing President Trump’s legacy and advancing the America First Agenda.”
Joseph switched his party registration from Democrat to Republican in August, according to county records. He told the Miami Herald there had been an “error” and that he made the fix after someone alerted him to it.
“I don’t know how that happened. I would have never, ever put Democrat. I’ve always been a conservative Republican,” said Joseph, who owns a corporate filing service and first ran for public office in November, when he sought the Sunny Isles Beach mayor’s seat.
Joseph said he didn’t initially realize the error in part because he doesn’t vote in primaries. County records show Joseph has not voted in a primary election since he registered in Miami-Dade in 2006.
Stuyvesant, 44, sits on Sunny Isles Beach’s Historic Preservation Committee and first ran for City Commission in 2020. She lives on the same Poinciana Island street as her opponent, Capra, as well as Goldman, the mayor.
Both commission races went to a runoff after no candidate won a majority of the vote in a Jan. 25 election. The two seats opened up after then-commissioners Goldman and Larisa Svechin ran for mayor in November, a race Goldman won.
Former Sunny Isles Beach Mayor George “Bud” Scholl, the CEO of blood bank OneBlood, had resigned in August.
This story was originally published February 9, 2022 at 4:10 PM.
