Citing coronavirus challenges, Jean Monestime leaves 2020 race for Miami-Dade mayor
Jean Monestime, the county commissioner who hoped to turn his focus on Miami-Dade’s prosperity gap into a grass-roots run for mayor in 2020, said Thursday the economic hardship brought on by the coronavirus crisis made it too difficult for him to stay in the race.
“A large segment of the constituency I depend on for this campaign is amongst the hardest hit,” he wrote in a statement announcing his withdrawal from a race he joined in October. “Many of them are now laid off and uninsured. Some are either ill, hospitalized or worry about a sick family member, while others continue to mourn the death of loved ones.”
Monestime, a Democrat, was one of four sitting commissioners running to succeed a term-limited Carlos Gimenez, a Republican who is running for Congress. He trailed the other major candidates in fundraising with less than four months to go before the Aug. 18 primary for the race.
Two of those commissioners, Esteban “Steve” Bovo and Xavier Suarez, must leave office in November anyway under term limit rules. The stakes were higher for Monestime and fellow candidate Daniella Levine Cava, whose current terms don’t expire until 2022.
Florida’s resign-to-run law sets a mid-May deadline for Levine Cava and Monestime to give up their seats in order to qualify for the 2020 ballot. Candidates have already filed to replace both commissioners in 2022, with the assumption they would shift those campaign dollars to special elections held in 2020 to fill the vacant seats.
With Monestime’s withdrawal, he can hold his seat until 2022. Levine Cava recently filed more than 14,000 petitions to qualify for the 2020 ballot, the first candidate to go that organizing-heavy route instead of paying the $2,800 qualifying fee.
Of the current or former officeholders running for mayor, Monestime’s exit leaves two Democrats in the nonpartisan contest: Levine Cava and Alex Penelas, the former Miami-Dade mayor seeking a return to his old office. Suarez is an independent and Bovo is a Republican.
Monestime trailed those candidates in fundraising, with about $350,000 to spend, according to the latest reports. That’s compared to about $3.2 million for Penelas, $1.7 million for Levine Cava, $1.5 million for Bovo and $1.3 million for Suarez.
A real estate broker, Monestime, 57, became the commission’s first Haitian-American member when he defeated incumbent Dorrin Rolle in 2010 for the board’s District 2 seat. He went on to serve as its first Haitian-American chairman when fellow commissioners elected him to that post in 2014.
As a commissioner, Monestime has pushed legislation to boost prosperity for residents with lower incomes, including more public dollars for affordable housing, mortgage assistance and eliminating requirements that applicants for county jobs list prior arrests on employment applications.
In statements, fellow candidates praised Monestime. “His ideas, experience and vision were important and needed in the debate concerning the future of our county,” Bovo said. Levine Cava said: “Jean is right — there are deep systemic issues that must be addressed and solved. I’ll work my heart out every day with you until we get it done!”
Monestime was not available for an interview.
In his statement, Monestime did not mention the coronavirus by name but referred to the “current socio-economic environment” and the unemployment crisis that has his supporters running “from food drive to food drive.”
“I want to thank those who’ve carried me this far,” said Monestime, who came to the United States on a boat from the Bahamas as a teenager and cleaned floors at a doughnut shop. “My life has been the American dream. And my life’s work has been ensuring that the dream endures.”
