The Trump factor looms over Miami-Dade races — and Democrats are on defense

Six months into her campaign for Miami-Dade County sheriff, police administrator Rosanna “Rosie” Cordero-Stutz had challenges: a crowded Republican primary race and mediocre fundraising totals. Then came last week’s stunner: Donald Trump’s endorsement.

“Our phones blew up,” said Tania Cruz-Gimenez, whose family has ties to Trump and is helping run Cordero-Stutz’s campaign. “All of a sudden people just started calling, offering donations, offering to hold a fundraiser.”

The former president’s April 24 endorsement of the assistant director of the Miami-Dade Police Department was his first in a county race this year. But it’s only the beginning of a political cycle where Trump’s name, and all of the devotion and repulsion that comes with it, will be a wild card for local races through November — and beyond.

His attempt to overturn the 2020 election and deny President Joe Biden his win hasn’t been enough to preserve the Democratic president’s past advantage in Miami-Dade, where he beat Trump by 7 points in 2020.

On Monday, a Republican political committee released another poll showing Trump ahead of Biden in Miami-Dade, albeit with a narrow lead within the margin of error.

His pledges to pardon people who defied police to violently storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and briefly interrupt the nation’s peaceful transfer of power hasn’t made his endorsement less of a prize for Republican candidates in the Miami-Dade sheriff’s race.

“Am I disappointed in the endorsement? Yes, because I wish he would have given everybody an equal opportunity to earn that endorsement,” said Ignacio Alvarez, a lawyer and a retired Miami-Dade Police Department major who once oversaw the agency’s sexual-assault investigations.

Here are five questions surrounding Trump’s political standing in Miami-Dade.

Will Trump help or hurt Miami-Dade Republican candidates in November?

Michael Dukakis was the last Democratic nominee for president to lose Miami-Dade, and an opportunity for Republicans to ride presidential coattails after 36 years would come at a particularly unwelcome time for local Democrats.

READ MORE: DeSantis win in Miami-Dade comes just in time to give Republicans hope for sheriff in ’24

A change in the Florida Constitution is requiring partisan elections in November for sheriff, elections supervisor and tax collector — county posts that currently report to Miami-Dade’s Democratic mayor, Daniella Levine Cava.

At a party event Sunday, local Democratic leaders didn’t minimize Trump’s prospects to flip Miami-Dade red but expressed confidence that Biden’s accomplishments and Trump’s baggage would motivate local voters as November gets closer.

“We have a hill to climb,” said state Sen. Shevrin Jones, the Democrat recently elected to lead the party’s organization in Miami-Dade. “It’s a climb that I don’t believe is as steep as Republicans are trying to make it.”

Does Trump plan other local endorsements for county races?

Bryan Calvo, a Republican candidate for tax collector, said he recently sent an email to the Trump campaign’s website with his pitch for an endorsement. That includes the Hialeah city council member’s role in getting a street there named after the former president and his support of Trump’s first presidential run.

“I was door knocking back in 2015 and 2016 for Donald Trump back in New Hampshire,” said Calvo, who said he also interned in the Trump White House in 2018. He said he hasn’t heard back yet from the campaign but is hoping that will change as the Aug. 20 primary gets closer. “I think it would be an enormous game changer getting an endorsement from him.”

Democrats don’t mention the same kind of strategies for Biden, who didn’t get involved in local races in 2020 and hasn’t since becoming president. Trump, who owns a golf resort in Doral, backed a pair of local candidates in 2022, future Miami-Dade commissioners Kevin Cabrera and J.C. Bermudez, after they requested his endorsement in their Republican-heavy districts.

On the same day Trump agreed to back Cordero-Stutz during an April 7 introduction at the LIV Golf tournament at his Doral resort, the former president offered an endorsement to at least one other local politician he had just met who was there for the festivities.

That was Maureen Porras, a member of the Doral City Council, which has final say on expansion plans at Trump’s property in the city.

“He welcomed me. He was very open and nice. ... We talked about the city,” said Porras, a Democrat in a nonpartisan office who isn’t up for reelection until 2026. She said Trump told her to contact him if she needed an endorsement. “I said, ‘Well, thank you very much, but I’m not up for election.’”

Levine Cava faces mostly Republican challengers in the officially nonpartisan race for county mayor, offering Trump the chance to cause trouble for the county’s leading Democrat. Republican challengers include two municipal leaders — Miami Lakes Mayor Manny Cid and former Surfside mayor Shlomo Danzinger — as well Alexander Otaola, host of a Spanish-language YouTube show that got credit for boosting Trump’s local Cuban American support in 2020.

Though Florida Politics reported that Roger Stone, a Trump political guru, helped Otaola launch his campaign, the candidate said he’s not pursuing a Trump endorsement.

“I don’t need that,” Otaola said through a Spanish interpreter during a brief interview last week. “If he does, I’ll be proud of that. But my intention is to keep my campaign separate from anyone in the political establishment.”

Can Biden bring local Democrats back home?

Miami-Dade is the canary in the Florida coal mine for Democrats, where Republican strength signals much wider problems. Two years ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis became the first Republican since Jeb Bush in 2002 to win Miami-Dade in a gubernatorial election when DeSantis took the county by 11 points.

While no reliable poll suggests Biden can win Florida, Miami-Dade still seems within reach.

An April 9-13 text poll of likely Miami-Dade voters by Miranda Advocacy released Monday by Cabrera’s Dade First political committee showed Trump up by 3 points against Biden — a lead within the 4.5% margin of error.

A statewide poll of Florida voters by Emerson College in early April found big gains from Trump’s 4-point win over Biden in 2020, with the former president now leading the president 51% to 38%.

Emerson didn’t have enough data for a Miami-Dade estimate but found the candidates roughly even in South Florida, the more reliably Democratic region of Florida, said Matt Taglia, senior director of Emerson College Polling.

“We are seeing younger voters defecting more to Trump. And Black voters as well,” Taglia said of the results. The reason? “Among young voters, it lights up as a Christmas tree: economy and housing affordability. For Black voters, it’s very similar.”

Will Trump’s presidential run upend Miami-Dade politics after November?

U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, whose son, C.J. Gimenez and daughter-in-law, Cruz-Gimenez, are running the Cordero-Stutz campaign, is a leading Trump surrogate from Miami with a chance for a Cabinet post in a second Trump term. Should Gimenez give up his District 28 seat, Cabrera has told supporters he would consider running for it.

Since she was elected in 2020 as Miami-Dade’s first Democratic mayor in 16 years, Levine Cava has embraced Biden and traveled multiple times to the White House, including for a state dinner. In a Biden second term, she could be on the list for Cabinet appointments, too.

Privately, she’s also not ruling out a run for governor in 2026. Trump returning to the White House could prompt the kind of “blue wave” year that in 2018 had Democrat Andrew Gillum finish a half-point behind DeSantis for the open governor’s seat.

A vacancy in the mayor’s 29th-floor office would require a special election, a contest likely to attract interest from multiple members of the current county commission. Among those talked about as future mayoral hopefuls: Bermudez and Cabrera, along with Danielle Cohen Higgins, René Garcia, Oliver Gilbert and Raquel Regalado.

In an interview, Levine Cava laughed off a question about running for governor.

“I am hyper focused on winning my race for reelection. I’ve got work to do. I need four more years,” she said during a Sunday reception to open an office in Miami Gardens that her reelection campaign is sharing with Florida’s Democratic Party. “My plan is to serve four more years. I do not have any other plans.”

Will a Trump endorsement make the difference for Republican voters in Miami-Dade?

While on trial in New York on charges of falsifying corporate records, Trump used a Truth Social post to endorse Cordero-Stutz.

Now her campaign, which reported about $125,000 in the bank as of April 1, is spending its limited dollars getting the message out — first with a Spanish-language text campaign last week, and this week with one in English touting the Trump endorsement.

“Only in America could a Hispanic woman receive an endorsement from a former and future President of the United States,” the text message read. “I’m humbled for the faith and trust that President Trump has placed in me to protect the residents of Miami-Dade.”

The race’s leader in fundraising, Florida state trooper Joe Sanchez, released a video addressing the endorsement without mentioning Cordero-Stutz.

He referenced a recent WLRN report pointing out that Cordero-Stutz and other sheriff candidates live in Broward County in a race that doesn’t have a local residency requirement. Sanchez said he stood with DeSantis and Trump but emphasized the need to have a sheriff not tied to politicians.

“I am the only candidate who can bring true independence to the Miami-Dade County Sheriff’s Office,” said Sanchez, a Republican former Miami commissioner who reported about $290,000 in the bank on April 1. “While other candidates have been spending their time looking for all kinds of endorsements, the only endorsement I want is yours.”

Alvarez, the retired Miami-Dade Police Department major running for sheriff, said the Trump endorsement left the other candidates appearing “deflated” at a Sunday forum but that it won’t deter him from making his case to voters.

“Does it give you a leg up? Yes,” he said. “But you still have to sell yourself to the Miami-Dade public.”