How 12 voters are set to pick Miami-Dade’s next county commissioner on Monday

An end appears near for the contentious effort to avoid an election to replace Mayor Daniella Levine Cava on the Miami-Dade County Commission, with the remaining 12 board members set to appoint someone to her former District 8 seat on Monday.

Who will replace Levine Cava?

Commissioners agreed to accept applications through noon on Thursday, a formal and brief official window for a process that’s been underway for weeks as candidates and their insider supporters pursue the seven votes needed for an appointment.

Levine Cava gave up her commission seat just before being sworn in as mayor on Nov. 17, and the vacancy can be filled by a special election or appointment.

A minority of commissioners have been pushing for an election in late January. “This is America,” Commissioner Javier Souto said Tuesday before voting against the appointment process. “We believe in elections here.”

The election argument lost out to commissioners who complained of the $1.2 million cost for sending the choice to the 149,000 voters in the South Miami-Dade district. Another factor was the time required to fill a seat during a COVID crisis that has seen some commissioners steering clear of the chambers for health reasons, raising concerns about future quorums.

Some commissioners questioned why they should even wait until Monday for a decision.

“I’m fully prepared to move forward today,” said Commissioner Keon Hardemon, a former chairman of the Miami City Commission who saw his former seat filled by an appointment vote instead of a special election.

Commissioners are holding a special meeting on Monday to fill the District 8 seat. The full list of candidates won’t be known until noon Thursday, the deadline set for would-be commissioners to submit a written application to the commission auditor’s office.

Thursday deadline for District 8 candidates

While the application window only opened Tuesday, there’s already an unofficial list of candidates.

Lawyer Danielle Cohen Higgins has spent a year campaigning as a registered District 8 candidate for the 2022 election, when term limits would have forced Levine Cava to give up the seat had she not run for mayor. Cohen Higgins raised the most money of the four registered candidates and has been reaching out directly to commissioners for their votes.

“I hope you had an excellent Thanksgiving,” Cohen Higgins wrote in a text to Commissioner Sally Heyman on Monday afternoon, according to an image of the text provided through a records request. “Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions.”

Frank Artiles, a former Republican state senator who resigned in 2017 after a diatribe against fellow lawmakers, also is pursuing the seat. Local police chiefs have been promoting Key Biscayne’s chief, Charles Press, for the seat. Press is the son-in-law of Commissioner Joe Martinez, who voted for the election in November and voted against the appointment process on Tuesday.

Press confirmed Tuesday he was pursuing the seat, and had filed Monday for the 2022 election to qualify if commissioners opted to only consider filed District 8 candidates.

“I’ve actually been looking at that seat for a while,” Press said. He said he would rather the commission hold a special election to fill the seat, but that’s he’s eager to be considered for the position and would resign his Key Biscayne post if appointed.

Press said he and Martinez haven’t discussed the seat. “We haven’t talked about it. I don’t want to talk to Joe about it,” Press said.

Joining Martinez on the No side for the appointment motion where Heyman, Eileen Higgins, Jean Monestime and Souto.

The vote for the appointment process, including the provision that commissioners consider all interested candidates, were the remaining seven commissioners: acting chairwoman Rebeca Sosa, Jose “Pepe” Diaz, René Garcia, Oliver Gilbert, Hardemon, Kionne McGhee, and Raquel Regalado.

Garcia, a commissioner on the losing side of the Nov. 19 election vote, tried to get the board to try again on Tuesday. His effort fizzled for lack of support, and Garcia said he later voted for the appointment motion because it opened up the process to any interested candidate.

Officeholders running for a different post in state or local government are required by Florida law to resign their positions in order to qualify for a spot on the ballot. Those resignations must take effect before the winner of the election would assume the office.

Levine Cava resigned in May, with the resignation taking effect on Nov. 16. Candidates to replace her began filing for office in 2019, submitting papers for the 2022 election.

Eileen Higgins won her seat in 2018 after the commission called a special election to replace Bruno Barreiro during his congressional campaign. She seemed to question Tuesday why the commission might look beyond the filed District 8 candidates, which includes neighborhood activist Alicia Arellano; John DuBois, the vice mayor of Palmetto Bay, and counselor Leonarda Duran Buike.

“There have been people who have been running for a year and half,” said Higgins, who, like Levine Cava, shares a campaign manager with Cohen Higgins. “Now we’re going to have people who just want to run for half an hour.”