Despite criticism, top Miami prosecutor Fernández Rundle wins in resounding fashion
After 27 years in office, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle is getting four more.
Despite withering attacks from opponents over her record on police-shooting cases, voters on Tuesday delivered Fernández Rundle a resounding victory, giving her a seventh elected term as Miami-Dade’s top law-enforcement officer.
By 9 p.m., with early and absentee votes counted and 80 percent of precincts tallied, Fernández Rundle led with 61 percent of the vote.
Fernández Rundle bested Melba Pearson, a former Miami-Dade prosecutor who ran on a campaign of criminal-justice reform. Both are Democrats. The state attorney won despite bruising criticism, including from leadership within the local Democratic Party, over her record during nearly three decades in office.
“We ran and we won on the strength of our record,” Fernández Rundle told followers at a small watch party held at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers hall near the Miami-Dade criminal courthouse.
Fernández Rundle, 70, has been in office since 1993, when she was named to replace Janet Reno, who left to become the U.S. Attorney General under President Bill Clinton.
Pearson, also the former deputy director of Florida’s American Civil Liberties Union, had hoped to capitalize on national calls for justice reform spurred on by the death of George Floyd. Since Floyd died in May, at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, unprecedented protests against police brutality took place in cities across the United States — and became a flash point across the political spectrum.
Before 9 p.m., Pearson called Fernández Rundle to concede. In an interview, Pearson said it was “an honor to chat with people all over the county about their concerns and making them feel heard.”
“While the results are not what I wanted, I think we had a valuable discussion around very critical issues like policing, juvenile justice and criminal justice reform,” Pearson said.
In Miami, Black Lives Matter protesters have taken to the streets for weeks, and increasingly called for voters to oust Fernández Rundle because of her record over her many years in office. One group, last week, even showed up outside the gated complex in Coconut Grove where Fernández Rundle lives.
Recent events were not lost on Fernández Rundle, who as she declared victory announced the formation of a task force made up of academics, activists, police officers and others to examine the inequities raised by the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I am completely committed to seeding this movement for meaningful, bold reforms in the social justice and criminal justice arenas,” Fernández Rundle told the Miami Herald on Tuesday night.
As Pearson’s campaign did, protesters had ripped Fernández Rundle for having never charged a police officer for a fatal on-duty shooting, and for not charging any prison officers in the hot shower death of a mentally ill Dade Correctional Institution inmate named Darren Rainey. Pearson vowed to revisit many of the major cases in which no police officers were charged.
Pearson repeatedly described Fernández Rundle as being emblematic of failed tough-on crime policies of the 1980s and 1990s that have unjustly sent Black men to prison. One of her social media hashtags: “#27YearsisEnough.”
During the campaign, she picked up support from some members of the Black clergy, who have traditionally supported Fernández Rundle, and from some high-profile people such as rapper Luther Campbell and documentary filmmaker Bill Corben, who produced a series of web videos ripping the state attorney’s record.
But Pearson’s campaign, like those of all candidates, was stunted because of the COVID-19 crisis that made meeting with many voters in person next to impossible. Instead, Pearson turned to Zoom meet-and-greet events, radio interviews and social media.
Perhaps most challenging: Because Pearson and Fernández Rundle were the only candidates in the race, the election was open to independent and Republican voters.
Analysts said the open election gave the Cuban-American incumbent a decided advantage with Hispanic Republican voters in the overwhelmingly Hispanic county.
Political observers had long expected a “write-in” candidate — some obscure lawyer whose name wouldn’t actually appear on a ballot — to jump into the race, a move that would have closed the primary to just Democrats. That would have dramatically narrowed the voter pool and boosted the odds for Pearson. But no write-in candidate ever appeared.
Pearson’s campaign message did resonate with voters such as 25-year-old Sarah Rifkin, 25, who voted Tuesday at the Wynwood Community Resource Center.
“I think that in her tenure as state attorney, Kathy Rundle has done very little to protect citizens from certain violent crimes and the fact that she hasn’t prosecuted as many police as she should have is an issue to me,” said Rifkin, a Democrat. “I just think that she’s held the office for too long and that’s a ridiculous thing.”
But not everyone was sold on Pearson’s approach.
Bonnie Rust, 61, voted Tuesday at the public library in Coral Gables. She said she wanted to vote “conservative all the way” and cast her ballot for Fernández Rundle.
“I voted for Rundle because she’s tried and true and I see what’s going on all over the country with liberal judges and liberal prosecutors letting people out and not prosecuting people,” she said.
Criminal defense lawyer Rick Yabor, 53, cast his vote on the first day of early voting.
“I initially welcomed a candidate against Ms. Rundle,” Yabor said. “However, after analyzing what she stood for — and her anti-police rhetoric — I cast my vote for Ms. Rundle.”
Miami Herald writer Haley Lerner contributed to this report.
