Five candidates head toward primaries in crowded race to replace Ana Maria Rodriguez
Contorted by gerrymandering, a South Florida state House seat that runs from Doral and Sweetwater on the far western edge of Miami-Dade across Collier County to Naples — with a small chunk of Miramar thrown in — is in a tug-of-war between Republicans who want to defend the seat and Democrats who see it as a ripe opportunity to flip it blue.
District 105’s registered voters are nearly evenly split: about 32% Democrat, 32% Republican, and 35% No Party Affiliation, according to state records.
That combination of factors has brought out no fewer than five candidates — two Democrats and three Republicans — for the Aug. 18 primary, which will be held under unprecedented conditions in the midst of a pandemic that is shaping everything from campaigning methods to casting ballots.
The race has attracted two previously unsuccessful state representative candidates who ran in 2018: leasing agent Javier Estevez, a Democrat who nearly won the seat the last time around, and Doral attorney Bibiana Potestad, a Republican who ran in House District 119 and lost in the Republican primary to Juan Fernandez-Barquin. She now lives in District 105.
Also running in the Democratic primary is immigration attorney Maureen Porras.
The Republican primary will include Potestad, Sweetwater Commissioner David Borrero and mental health counselor Pedro Barrios.
Estevez, who only had about $3,000 in contributions when he won the 2018 primary, said he is coming into the race this time with better organization and even more“grassroots energy” than he had before.
He said he has the support of a coalition of western Miami-Dade candidates and elected officials: District 115 candidate Franccesca Cesti-Browne, District 118 candidate Ricky Junquera and District 103 Rep. Cindy Polo have all gotten behind him in his campaign.
He’s raised almost 12 times the amount he raised by July 2018 — $28,497, compared to $2,433 — and said he knew he would run again after losing the seat to Ana Maria Rodriguez, the incumbent, by just 417 votes, or 0.8 percentage points. Rodriguez is leaving the House seat to run for the Florida Senate in District 39, one of the most competitive races in the state.
While door-knocking looks different this year as candidates grapple with campaigning in a COVID-19 hot spot, Estevez, the openly gay son of Cuban refugees, said he has learned from his previous race.
“When I relaunched, I said this was going to be ‘Javi 2.0,’ ” he said. “The biggest difference between this year and 2018 is that I am not surprising anyone.”
Potestad, who moved into the district after her 2018 race, said she nearly shut the door on politics after her primary loss. But when she learned that Rodriguez was vacating the seat, the race “sort of fell in my lap,” she said.
Before she went to law school, she worked as a district intern for state Rep. Juan Zapata of Miami and for the Miami-Dade County Commission as a commission aide. She said that, in her eyes, running for office means a chance to make the state a better place for families like hers, which fled an authoritarian regime in Cuba soon after she was born.
Potestad attended Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, and maintains connections in that part of the district, which she considers a second home.
She has raised more than $155,600 for the race, thanks in part to the endorsement of GOP players like state Sens. Kathleen Passidomo and Anitere Flores and the financial backing of political committees, some led by notable names like Sens. Aaron Bean and Rene Garcia.
She says she’s kept her name before voters by passing out coronavirus masks, knocking on doors — from a careful distance to avoid virus transmission — and volunteering at food distribution sites, which seem to have become campaign go-to spots across Miami-Dade County.
Potestad thinks that health and safety shouldn’t be politicized, and if everyone took mask-wearing seriously, “we can get past this.”
However, she doesn’t support a statewide mask mandate.
“Coming from Cuba, I am not a fan of anything that is mandated, period,” she said.
The rest of the ticket
One of Potestad’s opponents in the Republican primary is Sweetwater Commissioner David Borrero, who got his start in politics as a campaign manager for former Republican state Rep. Carlos Trujillo, a two-time incumbent of District 105. Campaign mailers sent throughout the district call Borrero a “true conservative” who has an interest in education, reducing taxes, defending religious freedoms and eliminating red light traffic cameras and toll increases.
Borrero, who did not respond to phone calls and email requests from the Miami Herald, has hired David Custin as a consultant on the campaign. Custin also works for outgoing House Speaker José Oliva, a Miami Lakes Republican.
Potestad, on the other hand, is getting help from Steve Marin, a political consultant for future House Republican leader Daniel Anthony Perez, who is running in House District 116.
The dueling consultants are part of an internal Republican Party fight in Miami-Dade.
In an only-in-Miami political twist that echoes back to Cuba, Perez’s candidacy — he’s slated to be House speaker in 2024 — has been attacked in recent weeks in ads produced by Custin and backed by Oliva’s political committee. The ads criticize Perez in both English and Spanish for taking engagement photos in Cuba with his then-fiancée during a 2017 visit.
But will any of that matter? Nelson Diaz, managing partner at the Southern Group lobbying firm and chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, said while the large number of independent voters in the district make polling hard to do, he believes the seat will stay red. President Donald Trump’s candidacy makes all the difference, he said.
“The last election showed that it’s not a solid red district,” said Diaz, noting Rodriguez’s narrow win. “But the Republicans have an advantage this year, and that’s the fact that Trump is on the ballot.”
Diaz is not involved with helping any candidates running in the District 105 race, though his firm donated $1,000 to Potestad soon after she announced her candidacy in August 2018.
Miami mental health counselor Pedro Barrios, who bills himself as the most hard-line Republican in the race, is also running in the Republican primary. He has raised about $3,000, but has spent more than $3,600 on his campaign.
The up-and-coming Democrat
Among the Democrats running for District 105, Porras, the immigration attorney, has gotten a boost from groups like Ruth’s List Florida and Emily’s List, which help mentor, train and fund progressive female candidates. She’s also snagged endorsements from Broward County Commissioners Nan Rich and Barbara Sharief, state Sens. Oscar Braynon, Annette Taddeo and others. Porras was born in Managua, Nicaragua, and moved to the U.S. when she was 7 years old.
She’s raised about $31,740, and says one of her goals in office will be to fight for vulnerable populations.
The coronavirus pandemic has taken her campaign largely virtual, she said, and shifted the focus. She has been disappointed in the state’s response and says, if elected, she would promote policies that would keep residents safe and taken care of, like mask orders and creative ways to stimulate the economy.
As the managing attorney of Church World Service, a nonprofit aimed at helping immigrants secure legal help, she has had to deal firsthand with keeping her staff safe and making decisions on how to reopen. She takes the same kind of care with the people she is trying to reach in the district, she said.
“It really stopped becoming about campaigning and turned to how to help the community best,” she said, noting that she is still doing some traveling across the district to meet voters, calling it “soft canvassing.”
The GOP holds a 73-47 advantage in the House. Any seat flipped is precious for Democrats, she said.
The fact that she’s running a primary will help with recognition, said Democratic consultant Christian Ulvert, who is running Porras’ campaign.
“What happens [with Democrats] is these newer candidates don’t have primaries and they forget you still have to talk to voters,” he said. “If managed well, primaries for down-ballot races are not a bad thing. ... There’s two good Democrats but one is superior to flip a seat.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2020 at 8:55 AM.