‘That’s a squeaker’: Homestead Mayor Losner secures reelection in razor-thin race
Homestead Mayor Steve Losner just barely secured a second two-year term Tuesday night after a down-to-the-wire contest in which less than 10% of eligible voters participated.
With all precincts reporting, Losner, a lawyer whose family has been in Homestead for more than a century, captured 50.87% of the vote. Just 9.47% of the 35,408 registered voters participated in the election, a lower turnout than the 10.37% of voters who cast ballots in 2019.
Losner, 60, beat former Homestead Councilman Elvis Maldonado, a 48-year-old software engineer, by just 68 votes, according to unofficial results from the Miami-Dade County Elections Department.
“A win’s a win, but that’s a squeaker,” Losner said from his home, where he watched the results with his family. “Was it a referendum on him or me?”
Losner served on the City Council from 2001 to 2007 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2011 before he won in 2019.
He said his next term will focus on “repairing the code and becoming more efficient with our city operations.”
“We have to work on local roads infrastructure and figure out what is going to happen to the old City Hall site,” he said.
Like Losner, Maldonado also has roots in Homestead. He was born in Connecticut to Colombian parents and moved to Homestead as a young child. Maldonado was a city councilman for a decade before he resigned to run for the Miami-Dade County Commission last year.
“I don’t feel like I lost,” Maldonado said. “I ended up winning, even though today he walks away as a mayor. We are the underdog and the message here is that he is on notice. .... We don’t know what tomorrow holds for us, but I know we’re not going anywhere. This didn’t start in 2009 when I came into office. I have been working in this community since I was 18 years old.”
Councilwoman Jenifer N. Bailey also won reelection Tuesday, defeating challenger Valnecia “Val” Brown by 1,228 votes to represent Homestead’s southwest area. Bailey was first elected in 2017 and runs Smart Start Preschool.
“I am incredibly happy to be able to continue the good work I’ve been trying to do,” said Bailey, who celebrated with supporters at ShowBiz Cinemas near downtown Homestead. “I want to continue supporting the mentoring programs and after-school programs and make sure kids have all the tools they need to get on the right track.”
Voters also chose Julio Guzman to serve as vice mayor. Guzman, a former councilman, was automatically elected last month when he was the only candidate to make the ballot to represent the city’s northwest area.
Losner and Maldonado competed in a primary election last month and were forced into a runoff when neither netted more than half of the vote. A third candidate, former Mayor Jeffrey Porter, was eliminated.
The contest between Losner and Maldonado at times centered on Homestead’s rapid expansion and whether to embrace that growth or reject it. Both of the candidates have made growth or development central to their messaging, be it on campaign sites or in Homestead voters’ mailboxes. The two have also traded barbs over who was taking money from developers,
Losner, whose family founded the 1st National Bank of Homestead nearly 100 years ago, promised to bring balance to development, with an emphasis on redeveloping older neighborhoods with single-family homes to “balance out” the higher-density housing that has popped up in the eastern part of the city. Facebook ads for his campaign make promises of “combating overdevelopment.”
He outraised Maldonado by about $19,000 and snagged endorsements from state Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez and the South Florida Police Benevolent Association.
Maldonado ran fewer ads on social media but called the mayor “Lying Losner” for his votes on development as mayor. At a candidate forum, Losner punched back, accusing developer donors of “buying access” to Maldonado.
Maldonado was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police and Porter, who ran in the primary but was not one of the top two vote-getters.
Voters care about traffic, development
Brandy Ramirez, 45, voted early last Thursday at Homestead’s William F. Dickinson Community Center. She said traffic is the most important issue to her, and she hopes the mayor and city council help work to resolve congestion that chokes parts of the city during peak hours.
She also hopes the city council advocates for more jobs to be created. She recently had to take a job with Miami-Dade County because she was unable to find employment locally.
“That’s really important to me,” she said.
Henry Mejia, 55, also voted early at the Community Center.
For Mejia, the most important thing is that the candidates he chooses agree with his political leanings, even though the race is nonpartisan.
“I want them to have more conservative values,” he said.
Peggy Jacobsen, 80, was born and raised in Homestead and has voted in every election, usually on Election Day.
She was waiting out the rain Tuesday but planned on making a last-minute decision when she arrived at her polling location, which is also the Community Center.
Jacobsen, who still manages her family’s business, Jacobsen’s Antiques and Collectibles, lives on the west side of town where she says the streets have been plagued with illegal dumping. Jacobsen, who was undecided ahead of going to the polls, said she hopes Homestead’s leaders address neighborhood beautification, as well as traffic. She planned on choosing a candidate after talking to friends and the candidates themselves later in the afternoon.
“Been in Homestead all my life,” she said. “I don’t like the way this city is going down the tubes.”
Voters weighed in on 8 charter amendments
Voters in Homestead also voted on eight separate proposals to amend the city’s charter.
Here’s what they supported:
▪ Extending the mayor’s term in office from two to four years, starting in 2023
▪ Limiting consecutive years in office to 12 years total, instead of the current rules that allow 12 years as council member or eight years as mayor. The new rule would be applied retroactively.
▪ Requiring an elected official to resign before they run for another elected office, and to give the city 30 days’ notice.
▪ Requiring a special election instead of appointments to fill vacant council seats if one year or more is left in the term. Appointments would be made if the term has less than a year left.
▪ Making the council member who won the second-highest number of votes in the previous vice-mayor election the vice mayor in event of a vacancy. Currently, the council designates one of its own members to fill the role if left vacant.
▪ Changing the Charter Review Committee so it’s made up of seven members, one appointed by each council member. Currently, the mayor appoints five members, who are subject to the council’s approval.
Here’s what they rejected:
▪ Amending the charter to provide that mayors or council members who complete more than half of their term be deemed to have served the whole term.
▪Changing the window for the mayor to fill a vacancy by appointment from 60 to 90 days.
This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 8:45 PM.