A quiet force in Miami-Dade, Lt Gov. Jeanette Núñez now one choice away from real power

For the fourth time in Florida history, a lieutenant governor could be poised to take the place of a sitting governor — a historic situation that would be made possible if President-elect Donald Trump picks Ron DeSantis as his defense secretary.

If DeSantis joins Trump’s Cabinet, Miami’s own Jeanette Núñez would be first in line to become governor, a position that would not only make her the state’s first Cuban-American and the first female governor, but a frontrunner to win a four-year term after the 2026 gubernatorial race.

Núñez, 52, has also been floated as a possible DeSantis pick to fill the U.S. Senate seat that will soon be vacated by Marco Rubio, nominated to serve as Trump’s secretary of state. Another scenario on the political radar: DeSantis appoints himself to the Senate, leaving Núñez to succeed him.

All these possibilities mark the peak of potential for Núñez’s political career so far — one that’s been decades in the making.

From a prominent state legislator to DeSantis’ running mate, Núñez has been a steady player in state politics as the one-time battleground state has become the home to the type of conservative populism that now dominates the modern Republican Party.

She went from carrying legislation that allows children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state college tuition rates to working under the governor who fought to repeal that law. She worked as a lobbyist for major hospital chains and now helps oversee the state’s health agency. And she has built a broad policy portfolio chairing the state’s aerospace agency and cybersecurity task force, and serving on the Statewide Council on Human Trafficking.

When asked what to expect from Núñez if she were to become governor, supporters and former colleagues pointed to her experience in Tallahassee — from legislative aide to lobbyist to lawmaker to executive officer — her knack for building consensus and her devotion to her Christian faith.

“She has been around for a while. And she knows what she is doing,” said Alina Garcia, Miami-Dade’s incoming elections supervisor and a former Republican lawmaker who worked with Núñez when both were legislative staffers in Tallahassee. “She is serious, and she is professional, and she is inclusive.”

Miami-Dade School Board member Joseph Geller, a Democrat who served in the Florida House with Núñez, says her approach to policymaking has earned the respect of leaders, on both sides of the aisle.

“I think the state would be in pretty good hands with her,” Geller said. “She is someone who always struck me as always willing to at least hear what the other side had to say and that is not necessarily typical.”

Miami-Dade Commissioner René Garcia, a former state senator and past chair of the county GOP, said he would expect Núñez to embody compassionate conservatism.

“The thing with Jeanette is she is a true fiscal conservative, but she understands communities have needs, ” Garcia said. “She believes in giving someone a fishing rod and teaching them to fish. She’s a compassionate person.”

A kingmaker in Miami-Dade County

Núñez, a mother of three adult children, started dating her husband of 30 years, Adrian Núñez, in 10th Grade when both attended the Westwood Christian School in Kendale Lakes. She was a student there since kindergarten, and in a 2022 video recalled her teenage years with two working parents who saved up for regular trips with their three daughters.

Núñez and her family live in the Miami-Dade suburb of Westchester. She has kept that home base even while serving as lieutenant governor.

Her statewide post under DeSantis has also made her a leading Republican in Miami-Dade politics — a status she’s used to play kingmaker in local races and to help push through funding and legislation that’s been cheered and jeered locally.

She is the point person for DeSantis on local matters, said Hialeah Mayor Steve Bovo, a former Miami-Dade commission chair and a longtime Núñez friend.

“Things that happened in Miami-Dade — in my honest opinion — ran through Jeanette,” said Bovo, recalling his time on the County Commission. “I think the governor gave her deference on how things were done in Miami-Dade County. And her fingerprints were all over it.”

When school boards became political battlegrounds in recent years, Núñez called donors as she worked to oust Republican incumbent Marta Perez in 2022 to insert a DeSantis-backed candidate.

Perez, who was ousted after 24 years on the board, believes she was targeted after a 2021 vote endorsing LGBTQ+ month in Miami-Dade schools.

In an interview Friday, Perez said her longtime campaign treasurer, Jose “Pepe” Riesco, came to her home during the campaign with bad news: he was dropping her and going to work for Perez’s opponent, Monica Colluci, who was backed by Núñez.

“He said: ‘Marta, I love you. We’ve been friends forever,’” Perez said. “‘But I have to do this. It’s a business decision.’ He said it was Jeanette Núñez who asked him to drop me.”

Riesco was not available for comment Friday. Colucci said that is not her recollection of the events. Núñez did not comment for this story.

In an interview Friday, Colucci said she considers Núñez a friend and a mentor, and that her endorsement in the school board race carried a lot of weight.

“She is very well-known locally, and she is able to have people get behind her, and when people saw she was endorsing it mattered,” Colucci said.

In 2022, Núñez also was influential in DeSantis’ decision to fill a vacant seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission that year. The governor picked Roberto Gonzalez, a conservative Florida House candidate, who describes Núñez as a mentor.

Before the governor’s office called Gonzalez to tell him he had been picked to represent the District 11 seat — left vacant by the arrest of Joe Martinez on corruption charges — Gonzalez had an extensive interview with Núñez.

Gonzalez, 37, said he has appreciated the advice Núñez shared on public life.

“She told me, ‘Rob, the day you’re not getting pushback is the day you’re not making an impact,” he recalled in an interview with the Herald this week. “If you really want to do good, the pressure and the pushback comes with it. So stick with it.”

Help not offered in race to defeat Miami-Dade’s mayor

While Núñez played an outsized role getting Republicans elected to the Miami-Dade School Board, she has faced criticism for not doing enough in another key race.

She largely sat out of the 2024 race to oust Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat. After facing poorly funded GOP candidates, Cava easily won the August non-partisan primary, allowing her to avoid a run-off in November with the second-place finisher, Manny Cid, the Republican mayor of a small suburban town, Miami Lakes.

Had Levine Cava been on the November ballot, she would have had to outperform Vice President Kamala Harris by 11 points to win a second term — an uphill task that had the Cid camp complaining about a lack of support from one of Miami-Dade’s most connected Republicans and her local allies to get Cid into a run-off he probably would have won.

“She, and a lot of people around her, were not helpful at all,” said Emiliano Antunez, Cid’s campaign manager. “They should have been.”

Núñez herself was mentioned as a potential challenger to Levine Cava, and the kind of well-known Republican with the fund-raising mettle to defeat the incumbent mayor’s formidable sway with donors doing business with Miami-Dade.

But Núñez passed on the mayor race, with her political consultant, David Custin, telling the Miami Herald last year that the position “was beneath her.”

Powerbroking at the state level

Núñez’s political ascent in recent years can be traced back to her time as a legislative aide to former state Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, and later as a lawmaker in the Florida Legislature, where she rose through the ranks of a male-dominated Florida House.

Elected four times to the Florida House, she reduced a fee charged to car-sharing services; removed the statute of limitations for certain sex crimes in which the victim was under 16; and was tapped by former Gov. Rick Scott to sponsor a polarizing proposal that let undocumented immigrants pay in-state tuition rates at Florida colleges and universities.

“She comes from the hard knocks of politics,” Custin said on Friday. “She knows boundaries. And she knows how to cut deals and honor deals.”

Perhaps the most controversial issue linked to Núñez involves changes to who would run the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, the county’s defunct toll agency commonly known as MDX.

Last year, the power over Miami-Dade’s toll roads was shifted from a toll board controlled by County Commission appointees to a board controlled by DeSantis appointees. The change was credited to Núñez, who clashed with the agency when she was a member of the Florida House and the board was chaired by Maurice Ferré, a former Miami mayor who died in 2019.

After Miami-Dade lost a court fight over the state law passed in 2023, the state-controlled Greater Miami Expressway Agency (GMX) took over five toll highways, including the Dolphin and Don Shula Expressways.

Gene Stearns, a Miami lawyer who has been leading the fight against the GMX takeover, laid much of the blame on Núñez for what’s been an historic weakening of Miami-Dade’s unique protections in the Florida Constitution as a home-rule county.

“It’s all been coming from the lieutenant governor. She’s the one who has been driving this whole issue,” Stearns said Friday. “It’s very unfortunate for the county.”

Looking ahead

Her time as DeSantis’ lieutenant governor shows glimpses of how she would comport herself as his successor.

This year, Núñez joined DeSantis’ push against a ballot measure, Amendment 3, that would have legalized recreational marijuana, accusing supporters of the initiative of being motivated by “corporate greed.” She also campaigned against Amendment 4, which would have broadened access to abortion in Florida.

Núñez appealed to Christian voters as she urged Floridians to vote against Amendment 4 in November.

“They can call abortion whatever they want, the left can call it whatever they want. The radicals call it healthcare, they call it compassion, they call it women’s rights,” she said during an October interview with God’s Way Radio in Miami. “If you look at the actual definition of abortion it is the intentional killing of an unborn child. It is intentional murder.”

A majority of Floridians voted for Amendment 3 and 4, but they both failed after falling short of at least 60% of the vote.

In 2020, Núñez introduced herself to a national audience at the Republican National Convention by urging Americans to reject a “socialist takeover” by Democrats.

Núñez’s late father, Victor Sanchez, fled Cuba in 1961 out of fear of political persecution, also warned the RNC audience about Democratic policy goals, which she said mirror the socialism and communism of Cuba. At the time, she framed the election as America’s choice between “chaos and government control” or “freedom and opportunity.”

“The radical left systematically chisels away at the freedoms we cherish,” Núñez said at the time. “They peddle dangerous ideologies, cower to global progressives and normalize socialism to dismantle our Constitution.”

Once an anti-Trumper, Núñez’s path in the new Republican party has been forged alongside DeSantis and has helped the GOP make inroads with Hispanic voters.

Núñez, for instance, was named as the co-chair for Trump’s Latino outreach coalition, despite her history of criticizing Trump, who she called a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan during the 2016 election cycle.

“Wake up Florida voters, Trump is the biggest con-man there is. #nosubstance #anti-Israel #supportsKKK #nevertrump VOTE @marcorubio #RUBIO,” Núñez posted on Twitter, now X, in 2016.

She has since walked back those statements, saying the remarks were made in the midst of a heated primary contest, in which she had originally supported Rubio for president. The tweet was also deleted.

In November, when Trump was elected president, she congratulated him on social media.

“Americans chose strength over weakness. Americans chose greatness over failure,” she posted on X.

“The best is yet to come.”