Herald recommends: In Florida House District 113 Republican primary, one candidate is better qualified | Editorial

The Republican primary in District 113 pits political and criminal-justice activist Vicki Lopez against property manager Alberto Perosch. The top vote-getter will face the Democratic primary winner in the November general election.

The district includes Key Biscayne, Brickell, the Roads, Shenandoah and Little Havana.

Perosch, originally from Venezuela and a member of the Venezuelan American Republican Alliance, has focused much of his campaign on being pro-capitalism and anti-socialism.

He said he was motivated to run after appearing with Gov. Ron DeSantis and other top Republicans during the signing of the “Big Tech” bill last year, a law touted as a way to defend against social-media companies removing conservatives from those platforms. (The law was later blocked by the courts, though an appeal is pending.) Perosch, who told the Editorial Board in his candidate questionnaire that he was a “Republican activist” in 2020, said he sees parallels between what happened in Venezuela — and also in Cuba and Nicaragua — and what could happen here if socialism were to take hold.

According to campaign-finance records, he is mostly self-funded, loaning himself $150,000. Lopez has also loaned herself a hefty sum, though much less — $50,000.

Lopez’s unusual path to becoming a legislative candidate goes back to 1990, when she was elected to the Lee County Commission on Florida’s West Coast. She resigned while under investigation before completing her term. In 1997, she went to prison under the federal “honest services” mail-fraud statute, a charge stemming from her romantic relationship with a Washington, D.C., lobbyist, Sylvester Lukis, who had clients with projects before the commission. (They later married him; they now are divorced.) She served about 15 months of a 27-month sentence before then-President Clinton, in 2000, commuted her sentence. In 2011, a U.S. District Court vacated her conviction.

She told the Editorial Board in a candidate questionnaire that she was “wrongly accused and wrongfully convicted” but that “justice did finally prevail.”

That experience led her to work on criminal-justice reform efforts, including as chairman of former Gov. Jeb Bush’s Ex-Offender Task Force. She is a consultant, has been on the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce board of directors and is a registered lobbyist in Tallahassee.

On the issues now facing District 113, Lopez identified affordability as a driving factor in housing, gas and property insurance, noting that rent on her Brickell one-bedroom apartment had gone up $450 last year and another $450 this year.

“The pandemic brought all of these people down to Miami who had larger salaries and larger pocketbooks and have been starting to push some of us out of our own homes, and the salaries haven’t kept up with it,” she said.

Perosch, who renovates and flips homes as well as managing property, said he also has seen the anger people feel because of rising prices. He said his areas of focus, should he be elected to the Florida House, would include pushing for more workforce housing, so that first-responders don’t have to live far from their work, and helping small businesses, especially those that were hurt by the pandemic.

Lopez brought up workforce housing as well, displaying a deeper understanding of the issue, including her desire to restore full funding to the state’s Sadowski affordable housing trust fund. She pledged to work with Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and others to figure out ways the state could help create more affordable-housing opportunities.

The two candidates differed slightly on other key issues. On abortion, Perosch said he would consider only very narrow exceptions, while Lopez said she believes there should be exceptions for rape, incest, human trafficking and to save a woman’s life.

And on gun reform, Lopez believes Florida’s red-flag laws are working, while Perosch said he thinks Florida’s laws are working, but that the state needs to focus on mental health as well.

Lopez is the better informed candidate in this primary. Though some may say she brings baggage to the race from her time in prison, her conviction was vacated and she used her experience to become an advocate for criminal justice reform. In the end, we think she’s the most qualified.

In the Republican primary, the Herald recommends VICKI LOPEZ for Florida House District 113.

This story was originally published August 4, 2022 at 9:40 AM with the headline "Herald recommends: In Florida House District 113 Republican primary, one candidate is better qualified | Editorial."