‘This election was incredibly taxing.’ How Miami-Dade voters are ready to move forward

When Liz Zaney got a text message that Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, she first felt relief, then elation. Then she went out and bought a bottle of champagne.

That night, Zaney, 43, who moved to Florida from England 19 years ago, joined her neighbors to celebrate. The mixed group of Brazilians, Colombians, Nicaraguans and Spaniards — plus Zaney — poured wine, danced in one of their Miami Upper Eastside apartments and stumbled over the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner they tried to sing as their children ran through the condo building hallways.

“I’m just excited. I don’t know if I could have handled another four years of mayhem,” Zaney said. “To me, it’s been chaotic mayhem. Lies, fake news, all of that stuff. It was exhausting.”

Across Miami-Dade County, another voter, Angelo Ramirez of Kendale Lakes, contemplated whether or not he would ever cast a ballot again. It had been a long election season and his candidate, President Donald Trump, had just lost reelection.

“Unfortunately, this election was incredibly taxing,” Ramirez said. “It’s strained relationships inside of families, and communities across the country. And it’s gonna take a little bit for that to heal. Hopefully, Joe Biden will do a good job.”

In Miami-Dade County, Trump’s strong showing with Hispanic voters — he lost the left-leaning county by just 7 percentage points — helped push him over the top in Florida. But Biden still won, and in the aftermath of a tight election with record turnout, Miami-Dade’s voters, like voters in much of the country, are trying to see the way forward.

Some Trump supporters in Miami-Dade remained skeptical of the results, even as Democrats felt a new sense of optimism. Many voters — both Democrats and Republicans — hoped a Biden administration would help unify the country. But often, as they contemplated the future, they worried that the divisions are too deep.

Zaney, a toxicologist for the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Department, said she sees an opportunity now for the country to return to a sense “normalcy.” She proudly painted her fingernails blue, for her party, and said she’s confident in both Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

“I told my daughter, ‘I love Joe Biden, I think he’s great. But for a woman to get this position, a woman has to be twice as good as any male candidate,’” Zaney said.

Emma Ladson, 59, knows the weight of Harris’ victory. Ladson is a Black woman and a Howard University graduate. So is Harris — and she’s the first woman elected to the job of vice president.

“I was happy for Kamala,” she said, through tears. “But I was happy for the United States, and that we will return back to civility with a president that is for all the people, not some of the people.”

She said she thought about President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, “but this was even bigger. In her speech, [Harris] said she was a Black woman first. Black women are never first. Then she said Asian. Black and Asian women are never first.”

Ladson, a public school teacher and a Democrat, has hope that the country will come together again.

“We have to reunite the United States no matter what race, what class, because we’re all one big melting pot... I teach all students. I don’t treat one student different than the other,” she said. “Doesn’t matter where you’re from, if you speak English or not. I’m going to treat you the same.”

Her Howard alumni group is planning to try to attend the inauguration in January. After that, it’s back to work.

“What’s next for me politically, is to remain a strong Democrat and to work all I can to help our community in any way I can,” Ladson said.

In Miami Lakes, Alberto Delgado, 30, sat on his back porch as the sun began to set behind him a few days after the election. As a Trump voter, he had accepted the loss and Biden as the president-elect. He was just happy the election was over but worried that many Trump supporters wouldn’t be as quick to accept the loss.

“I think the division is here to stay. A lot of people think that Biden winning means that people are going to be more united. I don’t think so,” Delgado said. “The same people are wanting everyone to be united now, they were divided for the last four years.”

He hopes Biden will prove him wrong, but he fears the country and voters in Miami-Dade are still far apart.

“I think we just need time. We just need time to heal,” Delgado said. “That’s not going to take a year or two or three or four.”

Delgado was raised in Cuba and moved to Miami when he was 14. An independent voter, he cast ballots for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Unlike some other Cuban Americans, Delgado said his heritage hasn’t impacted his political beliefs. He didn’t grow up in a political household and his parents didn’t instill particular political beliefs in him. While he said he’ll never forget how Fidel Castro took over Cuba, he thinks the fears and rhetoric that Democrats are communists or socialists is over-hyped.

“Of course coming from Cuba, there’s always that history about communism. And you always have that in the back of your mind when you are born there,” Delgado said. “But I personally don’t think that influenced my decision.”

What did influence Delgado’s political choice was the economy. For the senior compliance analyst for an international private bank, the economy and taxes were critical in his decision to vote for Trump. He said he liked what he saw Trump do for the economy in his first four years and was ready for another four.

In Westchester, Eli Sabatier, 41, sat in front of the Westchester Regional Library parking lot with a blue-and-white mask dangling from his folded hands. It had been a week since election night, and almost two weeks since Sabatier cast his early vote for Biden at the library.

The scene was far different from the last time he was there. The hundreds of campaign signs and volunteers handing out fliers were now gone. The blaring Latin music was replaced with the sound of wind blowing through trees. And instead of sunny skies, there were billowing clouds from a tropical storm over the weekend.

Like Delgado, Sabatier moved to Miami from Cuba. He was a year old. He calls himself a Republican at heart, believing in global markets, free trade and fiscal conservatism. But with Trump as the candidate, he felt the party had left him behind. That’s why Sabatier became a Democrat and voted for Biden.

“I felt that the Republican Party moving away from free markets and moving away from being fiscally conservative, put a lot of straining on the relationship I had with the party,” Sabatier said. “I knew at that point it was time to move on because it doesn’t reflect who I am.”

Like many other Cuban Americans, Sabatier grew up in a conservative, Republican household, due in part to the memories of what happened in Cuba. But when Sabatier went to college at Florida International University, he began to form his own political views.

“I’m probably going to be disowned for this,” he said, with a laugh. “My dad, no matter what you tell him, he’ll just look at you and call you a communist. I expanded my mind and saw the world for what it is, and I make up my own opinions. I don’t live in the past of what happened in Cuba.”

Sabatier’s seen the country’s political division firsthand, in his own family, and while he’s relieved to have Trump out of office, he’s still not sure that Biden is the candidate to heal the national rifts. He said he thinks Biden will only be in office for four years, but those four years will be critical. He hopes the two parties can learn to meet in the middle.

“Everybody wants this country to move forward. That’s what we’re here for,” Sabatier said. “That’s why we immigrated here. That’s what my family immigrated here for, to work, to move the country forward.”

Ruth Moreno, 27, an organizer with Florida for All Education Fund who voted for Biden, said she was energized by his win but also under no illusions about the work that remained to bridge a divided country.

Moreno, who moved to Miami from the Dominican Republic when she was 7, said that as an immigrant and the mother of a 2-year-old, she had been fearful for the United States in the last four years.

“There were moments where I genuinely felt scared for the future of the country because of Trump’s rhetoric,” Moreno said.

She said while Biden was not the Democratic candidate she would have selected, she’s feels an even greater call to action now that he has been elected.

“We keep organizing. This doesn’t mean we’re going to get all the problems solved. It doesn’t mean we end racism, sexism and all these other forms of oppression that we see in day-to-day life that people feel,” Moreno said. “So I think, now, we push. We hold all our elected officials accountable.”

In Kendale Lakes, Angelo Ramirez, 55, who voted for Trump, said he’s accepted Biden as the winner of the election but isn’t sure he believes Biden’s messages of unity.

“If Joe Biden could bring the country together, that’s going to be great,” he said, a few days after the election. “But unfortunately, he will be the 46th president who has tried to do that. And I don’t necessarily hold that much hope that he’s going to do any better than the previous did.”

Ramirez is from the Bronx but his mother immigrated from Cuba, and he said he was raised in a conservative household that taught him the importance of exercising the right to vote. He voted for Trump because he was happy with the measures he saw the president take on the economy. He said since Biden was announced as the winner, he’s been trying his best to have faith in the system and to look forward.

But his politics are uncertain now. He’d like to support a Libertarian candidate, but knows it’s unrealistic to vote third-party. Back in 2016, he hadn’t even been planning to vote, but felt motivated when he saw Trump step in.

“My frustration with voting is encouraging politicians to be politicians,” Ramirez said. “Voting for Donald Trump, for me, the strategy was to show to the American people that you didn’t always have to elect the politician.”

And in 2024? He doesn’t know if he will vote, even if Trump were to run again.

“I’m a little concerned that he hasn’t conceded yet,” Ramirez said. “I don’t know if I would vote for him in 2024 because I’m not really sure how he’s going to wrap up 2020.”

This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 7:00 AM.