Herald recommends: In Florida House District 113 Democratic primary, across-the-aisle experience helps | Editorial

In the Democratic primary for Florida House District 113, an open seat, Andres Althabe, president of the Biscayne Neighbors Association, is vying with lawyer Alessandro “A.J.” D’Amico to represent an area that includes Brickell, Key Biscayne, Shenandoah, the Roads and Little Havana.

There is also a Republican primary in this race.

Althabe is a retired attorney originally from Uruguay who worked in New York before coming to Miami in 2013. He has demonstrated his commitment to his community with hard work, serving on the Miami code enforcement board, the Quality of Life Committee of the Miami Downtown Development Authority and Miami’s planning and zoning board.

And for the past seven years, he’s been president of the 14-building Biscayne Neighborhoods Association, an umbrella association of condo boards and homeowners’ associations. He calls this work his “second career.”

Althabe said he has chosen in his retirement “to try to improve this community, which I have done with major results.” He has worked on complex issues, such as homelessness and public safety; he cited his efforts to prevent pollution in Biscayne Bay, getting the city to invest almost $1 million in parks and pushing for creation of a new police commander position for the Edgewater area as among his accomplishments.

D’Amico, an attorney at Mase Mebane Seitz in Coconut Grove, has across-the-aisle credentials, having worked as a legislative aide to former state Sen. Rene Garcia, a Republican, and also as a legislative intern for Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in 2014.

He has also gone through something of a political metamorphosis, registering to vote with no party affiliation until 2014, then registering as a Republican for three years and then as a Democrat when he started law school in 2017. He attributes those changes to “gaining life experience” and added that he was considered “the office lefty” even when he was a Republican.

A member of the Cuban American Bar Association, he says climate change and accessible healthcare are among his top concerns. He doesn’t live in the district now, although he did until recently, and he said he’ll move back there before Election Day.

D’Amico’s work with Garcia brings up the issue of the Proud Boys’ influence in Miami-Dade’s Republican Party. At least six members have been charged by federal prosecutors in last year’s Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. D’Amico said he was disappointed in the response from Garcia, the Miami-Dade GOP chairman, who has publicly tried to brush off the group’s influence by calling them “fringe elements” in the GOP and saying there are “different points of view in our party.”

D’Amico called that a “lukewarm response . . . to this rise of this alt-right fascist wing of the Republican Party” and said he believes Florida is on the frontlines when it comes to saving democracy in the United States.”

He said he did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016, though he remained in the party for another year. (He says he voted for Hillary Clinton.)

“Our government during the Trump administration, and just prior to that, decided that they wanted to hold on to power at the expense of certain principles that transcend politics, like decency and empathy and compassion. And that was not a direction that I was willing to go,” he said.

Both candidates stressed that environmental concerns are key in the district. D’Amico focused directly on climate change, saying that “Florida and, specifically, Miami is Ground Zero for the climate crisis, and I view it as an existential threat not just to our economy and our community but, honestly, our way of life.”

Althabe noted that the worsening flooding in Brickell — and drainage, in general — must be addressed: “Climate change is something to be very vocal about and [we need to] bring federal help to the state and especially this district that is disproportionately affected by sea level rise.”

The housing crisis, not surprisingly, is also a concern for both candidates, with Althabe noting that it isn’t just rent that has increased, but also condo fees and insurance costs — which often hit those on fixed incomes the hardest. He believes developer incentives could help jump-start construction of more-affordable housing and he’d work to stop legislators from taking more money from the state’s affordable housing fund. He also pledged to work on housing insurance costs.

D’Amico said Medicaid expansion, a topic he worked on as a legislative aide, is among the top issues he wants to focus on if elected, saying it could result in insuring an additional 800,000 Floridians — “a tremendous public good.” He said that, on his first day, he’d refile the same Medicaid expansion bill that passed the Senate in 2015 with bipartisan support to help “set the tone for the type of healthcare policy that we want to address in Florida.”

He also identified two other bills he wants to file, one that would require landlords to provide functional air-conditioning for tenants — an idea proposed last year without success — and another that would encourage solar power production on Florida waters.

Both candidates are pro-choice on abortion. On guns, both would support banning assault weapons.

Voters have good choices here. But D’Amico had the more sharply articulated vision for the job. We think his clear-eyed assessment of the political climate, partly from his own experiences crossing the aisle, will help him to be a more-legislator.

The Miami Herald recommends ALESSANDRO “A.J.” D’AMICO in the Democratic primary for House District 113.

This story was originally published August 4, 2022 at 9:32 AM.