Miami Beach incumbents hold their commission seats while one race heads to runoff
Miami Beach Commissioners Laura Dominguez and Alex Fernandez withstood challenges to maintain their seats in Tuesday’s election, while a third commission race with no incumbent is heading to a runoff.
Dominguez won with 61% of the vote in the Group II race, defeating Fred Karlton after a fierce campaign to try to unseat her.
Fernandez won easily against Luidgi Mary in Group III with 84% of the vote.
The Group I race is headed to a Dec. 9 runoff between Monica Matteo-Salinas and Monique Pardo Pope. Matteo-Salinas finished first among six candidates at 23%, while Pardo Pope was second with 20%. Brian Ehrlich trailed Pardo Pope by less than a percentage point but was outside the 0.5% margin needed to trigger an automatic recount.
Matteo-Salinas, 46, is a former legislative aide to Fernandez and Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who was term-limited in the Group I seat and lost Tuesday’s mayoral race to incumbent Steven Meiner. Matteo-Salinas works in the city’s fleet department and has said she will resign from that role if elected.
Pardo Pope, 44, is a lawyer who serves as vice president of the Women’s Cancer Association of the University of Miami.
While the race is nonpartisan, backers of both candidates have emphasized their political leanings in campaign messaging. Matteo-Salinas is a registered Democrat. Pardo Pope is a registered Republican.
Pardo Pope is advancing to the runoff despite recent headlines about her past social media posts in which she referred to her late father, convicted serial killer Manuel Pardo, as her “hero.”
In a statement posted to Instagram in September, Pardo Pope wrote that she was “confident that voters will look past the sins of my father and understand that I too am a victim in this.”
“I did not get here easily. I went through a long period of anger and bitterness, struggling to understand how the man I loved could commit such a crime,” Pardo Pope wrote. “I realized that holding onto that anger would only destroy me; it would make me another statistic. I had to make a conscious decision, between myself and God, to forgive him.”
The race between Dominguez and Karlton was the nastiest in this year’s election cycle in Miami Beach — even including the contest for mayor.
Karlton had support from Miami Beach Commissioner David Suarez as he hammered Dominguez on her record while in office, particularly as it related to support for development projects.
Dominguez was elected to the City Commission in 2022 to succeed her life partner, Mark Samuelian, after Samuelian’s death.
On Tuesday morning, Suarez’s brother-in-law was arrested for driving an unregistered golf cart belonging to Suarez. Video showed the brother-in-law allegedly taking part in an effort to remove Dominguez campaign signs and replace them with signs for Karlton.
This story was originally published November 4, 2025 at 8:10 PM.
