Voters smell mischief in Miami’s attempt to move elections. So do we | Opinion

Give Miami credit. The city is trying to address some of the rampant dysfunction and low community participation in local government by considering lifetime term limits for elected officials and switching elections to even-numbered years to better align with national elections, when voter turnout is higher.

Great. But moving city elections from November 2025 to November 2026 means extending the terms of the current commission by a year. Commissioner Damian Pardo is sponsoring a proposal to do just that. A vote is set for Tuesday.

Moving the elections back a year doesn’t sit right with a lot of people, including us, because it would essentially disenfranchise voters, who wouldn’t get to decide if their commissioners should get an extra year in office. It would be more reasonable to find a way to shorten their terms instead, which would have the added benefit of helping City Hall rebuild trust with constituents.

To further complicate matters, on Wednesday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier weighed in. He said the commission cannot legally push back the election without a voter referendum.

Uthmeier jumped into the debate in response to an inquiry from Commissioner Miguel Angel Gabela, who has said moving the elections to November 2026 would be “unfair” to the candidates who have already filed for the November election this year. That would include former Commissioner Ken Russell, who’s running for mayor.

Uthmier’s boss, Gov. Ron DeSantis, also isn’t a fan of changing the election date, apparently. On May 6, he said during a Miami press conference that he was “ highly skeptical” of the plan.

The city’s attorney, George K. Wysong on Thursday issued a contradictory opinion, stating Florida statute allows cities to move elections and change “terms of office necessitated by such changes in election dates” without a referendum.

The conflict in legal citations may set up a fight between the city and the state.

Pardo has connected his proposal to another he wants to put on the November ballot to create lifetime term limits. That measure is a good idea because it would limit Miami elected officials to two terms as mayor and two terms as commissioner for their lifetime. Pardo has said that if voters were to approve term limits in November while also electing people who surpass that lifetime limit, those candidates could sue the city to try to take office. So the solution is to postpone the elections until 2026.

Given the legal wrangling taking place, a lawsuit by 2025 candidates also seems inevitable if the commission moves the elections.

In the end, it’s Miami voters we are most concerned with. We think they should be allowed to decide whether the people they elected to represent them should stay in office longer. Moving city elections to November 2026 would extend the terms even of those who are term-limited out of office this year, including Mayor Francis Suarez and Commissioner Joe Carollo.

Suarez, the Miami Herald reported, has been lobbying behind the scenes to get the proposal passed. That would give Suarez, a former city commissioner, a 17th consecutive year in Miami City Hall and more time to leverage his high-profile elected office to land his next gig, perhaps in the Trump administration as the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Suarez doesn’t have a vote on the commission but he does have veto power as mayor.

The measure to delay the elections will get at least two hearings. That’s good — because if there’s one thing we know about Miami, it’s that people here take a long time to notice what their government is doing. That’s true even when commissioners are voting to benefit themselves by staying in office an extra year. That includes Gabela, Carollo and Pardo along with Commission Chair Christine King and the newly elected Commissioner Ralph Rosado.

Here’s the craziest part of this whole thing: The effort to stop Miami’s dysfunction is, so far anyway, causing more of it.

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This story was originally published June 12, 2025 at 4:26 PM.