In swing Florida House race, Anthony Rodriguez faces challenger hoping for blue wave
Two Miami-born Cuban Americans with drastically different platforms are vying for the same West Miami-Dade County state House seat in one of the most contentious swing districts in South Florida.
Incumbent Rep. Anthony Rodriguez is facing a challenge from Democrat Ricky Junquera, in the race for Florida House District 118. It runs north to south vertically through West Miami-Dade County, including Tamiami, Kendale Lakes, The Crossings, Richmond West, and Zoo Miami.
It’s a district that has flipped from Democrat to Republican at the state House level every two years since 2014. The margins have been so thin that in 2016, former Rep. Robert Asencio’s win was preceded by both a machine and hand recount. Asencio, a Democrat, won by just 53 votes.
Rodriguez unseated him in 2018 by just 2 percentage points.
While Hillary Clinton won this district with about 54% of the vote in 2016, state figures before the 2020 August primary show there are more Republican voters, with over 35,000 registered, than registered Democrats, which amount to nearly 32,000 voters.
The number of independent voters in District 118 has been steadily climbing in the past four years, now reaching over 34,000 voters with no party affiliation.
Whoever is elected would be part of the once-a-decade redistricting process, representing a district that is nearly 80% Hispanic.
Rodriguez’s campaign is leading in funding, boasting nearly $107,000 on hand, plus money raised through his affiliated political committee, totaling about $243,000. Meanwhile, Junquera’s team is trailing the incumbent with over $52,000 on hand, after dropping $110,000 on television ads earlier this month. But Junquera, a regional press secretary for the environmental nonprofit Sierra Club, has also drawn national support from progressive groups seeking to flip state legislatures blue, including Latino Victory Fund, Run for Something and Sister District Project.
While they don’t agree on much, there are some parallels in both candidates’ backgrounds: they’re Cuban-American contemporaries, raised in single-mother households in West Miami-Dade and attended high schools just 10 minutes apart.
But Rodriguez, a 32-year-old business owner who runs a property management company with his wife, is a visible supporter of President Donald Trump, leading a crowd of his backers at a recent rally with Donald Trump Jr. at the Tamiami Airport in the Pledge of Allegiance. He’s received funding from organizations like the Florida Benevolent Police Association and the GEO Group, one of the largest operators of private for-profit prisons in the country.
Meanwhile, Junquera, 34, is the vice chair of outreach for the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. If elected, he would be the second openly LGBT Latino to serve in the Florida House of Representatives. He says one of the main reasons he’s running is because he supports the expansion of Medicaid in the state, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For me, healthcare is first and foremost the most important thing,” Junquera said in an interview with the Miami Herald. “For over 10 years, I’ve been battling with Medicare and Medicaid and doctors even accepting [my mother’s] insurance to be able to get her to see a doctor.”
Rodriguez touted legislation he sponsored in the House to further regulate plastic surgery offices and doctors in the state. One of the main reasons Rodriguez said he wants to continue to serve is because he wants to address the bureaucracy and hurdles of small business owners in South Florida, from professional licensing to renewing permits.
“I want to start cutting red tape for small businesses, see how we can create more jobs, higher paying jobs, see how we can get people back to work now after COVID-19,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez has attacked Junquera over what he calls his support for a movement to “defund the police,” based on a pledge Junquera signed for a national group that supports progressive state candidates called Future Now Fund, which outlines “end mass incarceration” as one of its only law enforcement-related goals for lawmakers who sign. But Junquera denied it meant defunding police departments.
“No, I don’t believe that we should be taking money away from our police departments and our police officers, but there is a conversation to be had about changing tactics and putting resources behind mental health services,” Junquera said.
Healthcare
Junquera says addressing Medicaid expansion in Florida should be a priority for the Florida Legislature.
“Our most vulnerable people we’re not even talking about. Everybody with cancer, diabetes or … people with other illnesses, it’s harder on them now,” Junquera said. “There’s more people that can benefit from it now than the over 800,000 people that were uninsured, who could’ve benefited from it before.”
Rodriguez does not support the expansion of Medicaid in the state. When several Democratic representatives were calling for an emergency session in Tallahassee earlier this year to address COVID-19 funding, Rodriguez said the reason he voted against reconvening was because Democrats’ intention was “to get sneaky” and address policies he believes were unrelated to the health pandemic.
“My colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided to throw in other stuff onto that special session petition, such as a healthcare expansion and things of that nature, that were not pertinent to COVID-19,” Rodriguez said. “There’s already a current healthcare system that’s working, there’s already a Medicaid system that’s working... No COVID patient has been denied access to being treated. Zero.”
The economy and COVID-19
The incumbent said he supports Gov. Ron DeSantis in reopening of schools and the state because he says he believes now there is more data to support safety protocols. The disease caused by the coronavirus has so far claimed 15,530 lives and infected about 739,000 in Florida.
“Earlier on, I think that there was some mixup with data, but at this point i believe there’s data to lead them to believe it’s the right time to start opening things back up,” said Rodriguez. “At some point, we still have to have faith and trust in our elected leaders.”
Rodriguez, who has three school-age children, said he is sending them back to school.
Junquera argued that the state mishandled the pandemic while District 118 has been hard hit by unemployment, and some residents continue to wait for their unemployment checks to arrive.
“I can’t in good conscience say that the state did anything right to begin with,” Junquera said. “That has caused the severe difference in people who adhere to mask orders and social distancing and those who do not. ... A lot of people are tired of the super hyper-partisan politics.”
He added that while the state could have funneled relief funds to small local businesses in the form of rent payment assistance or buying inventory, legislators gave tax credits back to large corporations.
Junquera also said he believes DeSantis is rushing reopening measures over political reasons, to lower the unemployment rate ahead of the November election.
“I think it’s wrong for Governor DeSantis to force Phase 3 reopening in places where we should obviously not be doing that. And we understand why he’s doing that, right? He’s forcing everyone off the unemployment rolls,” he said.
Education
In Junquera’s view, public schools in Florida are underfunded and not enough public school teachers have received raises comparable to their work.
“The fact that a high school student from South Miami High was able to hack into the school system not once but twice,” Junquera said, “that shows you that they never had the money to spend it on their servers in the first place.”
Rodriguez, as the Republican candidate who advocates for charter schools, boasts an unlikely endorsement from the largest teachers’ union in the state, the Florida Education Association.
“One of the things that I’ve been attacked on is that I’m pro charter schools, and I don’t hide from that. I’m not pro charter schools, I’m pro school choice,” Rodriguez said. “I do believe that there should be a level playing field.”
While he’s out-raised by the incumbent, Junquera says he’s confident he can win this year, and says that through his policy work with Sierra Club, he has not shied away from building consensus in some of the most conservative states in the country.
“I will not vote down party line because I’m told to. You would not see that in my votes, and you would not see that in the way that I write my bills and get co-sponsors on my bills,” Junquera said.
“I would not be a rubber stamp for the Democratic Party,” he added.
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 8:22 PM.
