Bullard swamps Saunders with strong showing in Miami Dade

The second time was not the charm for Ron Saunders.

The veteran state representative and outgoing Democratic House leader cut his tenure short in the state House to take a long-shot chance to become the first senator from the Keys in 40 years and seek the state Senate seat he had sought eight years ago. He lost, again.

Dwight Bullard, the son of the outgoing Sen. Larcenia Bullard, used the strength of his family name and the heft of his vote-rich Miami district to defeat Saunders. Bullard's strength was in Miami Dade County, where he and his parents have served in the state Legislature for 20 years.

The district, one third of which is African American, is dominated by voters in Miami Dade even though it sprawls from Monroe and into Collier and Hendry Counties.

Miami-Dade voters keep pit-bull ban

Pit bulls are still outlaws in Miami-Dade County.

Voters overwhelming opted to keep a 1989 ban on American Staffordshire terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers and high-content mixes of both.

Dahlia Canes, founder of the Miami Coalition Against Breed-Specific Legislation, the group that spearheaded the ban repeal, was disappointed but not surprised.

“We didn’t think it would pass,’’ said the 60-year-old Hialeah paralegal who founded the coalition in 2008. “This was handed to us [by the County Commission] whether we liked it or not and we had to take up the challenge. We only had a few months to reeducate an entire county that has been brainwashed for 23 years.’’

In February, a group of Miami-Dade commissioners short-circuited what appeared to be a winning effort in the state legislature to abolish the ban, calling it an attack on the county’s home rule authority.

Canes also said that putting the words “pit bull’’ and “dangerous dog’’ in the same sentence in the ballot question all but doomed the effort.

More from Elinor J. Brecher here.

Miami-Dade state attorney cruises to reelection

Longtime Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle claimed victory Tuesday over her Democratic primary opponent, effectively clinching her sixth elected term because no balloted candidates oppose her in November.

“It’s about your record. It’s about your performance, the things you do every day working with victims in this community,” she told cheering employees Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. during a spirited gathering of supporters at Miami’s Renaissance Restaurant. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

With the majority of the precincts reporting late Tuesday, more than 60 percent of voters chose her over Miami defense attorney Rod Vereen.

Tuesday’s election capped a short but intrigue-filled campaign that featured a host of storylines: two surprise write-in candidates, a federal legal challenge against a decision to exclude 700,000-plus voters from participating and vitriolic attacks by the incumbent’s critics.

Under a 1998 constitutional amendment, all of Miami-Dade’s 1.3 million registered voters could have cast ballots for Fernández Rundle or Vereen because no Republican or independent filed to appear on the ballot.

But lawyers Michele Samaroo and T. Omar Malone filed to run as write-in candidates, which under a controversial secretary of state advisory opinion was enough to close the election to just 525,890 Democratic voters.

More from David Ovalle here.

Florida Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera defeats incumbent Miami-Dade property appraiser

Carlos Lopez-Cantera, the popular state House Republican leader who pulled strings in Tallahassee to save the city of Miami from a $1.2 million tax burden on parking garages at the new Miami Marlins ballpark, was on his way to victory Tuesday night over Pedro J. Garcia to become Miami-Dade’s second elected property appraiser.

Lopez-Cantera, 38, pushed to victory by repeatedly bashing Garcia for not including foreclosures in the county’s massive $200 billion property tax roll, and for years of neglect in chasing down homestead-exemption fraud.

Reached by phone just before his victory party at the Doubletree Hotel near Miami International Airport Tuesday night, Lopez-Cantera congratulated Garcia for running a great campaign, then promised to be more inclusive and make his office and website friendlier to Dade residents hungering for property tax information.

“I think we were successful because of our message,” Lopez-Cantera said. “We’re going to change the culture of the department, and we’re going to hold everyone accountable. One of the goals is to reduce the number of appeals for 2013.”

More from Charles Rabin here.

UPDATED Most of Norman Braman's slate of Miami-Dade candidates is defeated; commissioner race may go to runoff

Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro appears to have been pushed into an unexpected runoff early Wednesday morning after the county elections department finished counting absentee ballots that arrived on Election Day, which showed the incumbent missed winning an outright majority by 11 votes.

Late Tuesday night, it had appeared Barreiro had won reelection by a razor-thin nine votes over the majority needed to avoid a runoff. On Wednesday, an updated count showed Barreiro with 49.94 percent of the vote.

But the tally — and a runoff election — will not be certain until after the elections department counts provisional ballots — those cast by voters who didn’t have photo identification on Election Day. Provisional ballots are checked by the elections department’s canvassing board to see if the signatures match those in the department’s database.

“The only thing pending are the provisionals,” said Christina White, deputy supervisor of elections. “They won’t be added until the canvassing board meets Friday and determines if they’re good or bad.”

Barring any changes in the count, Barreiro, a 14-year incumbent, would head to a runoff against Luis Garcia, former fire chief and commissioner in Miami Beach and a former state representative, on Nov. 6. The election results will become final after the county’s elections canvassing board certifies the vote counts on all the races. The board meets at 9 a.m. on Friday.

More from Charles Rabin and Lidia Dinkova here.

Diaz de la Portillas roll dice, divide their luck on primary night

Miami's Diaz de la Portilla family was poised for a complete comeback but, on Tuesday, fell short.

While Miguel Diaz de la Portilla walked into a second state Senate term with no opponent, his younger brothers, Alex and Renier faced a fight. After two bitterly fought primaries, the brothers broke even. Alex won. Renier lost.

Alex, the fiesty former state Senator who tried and failed to get the Senate to rework a Senate district to favor him, jumped into the open Little Havana-based House seat against former state Rep. Gus Barriero. Diaz de la Portilla called Barreiro a “pornographer” because he had been fired from a state job after investigators found someone had used his state computer to log into the singles-and-swingers website, Adult Friend Finders.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez wins reelection; rival refuses to concede

The Miami-Dade mayor’s race, which had recently gotten a dose of intrigue over an absentee-ballot fraud investigation, ended without any mystery Tuesday night when Mayor Carlos Gimenez cruised to victory.

But his chief rival, County Commission Chairman Joe Martinez, wouldn’t give in.

Martinez refused to concede late Tuesday despite returns that showed Gimenez winning by nearly 25 percentage points, with all precincts reporting.

Gimenez, apparently awaiting a Martinez concession, delayed his appearance at a campaign rally, even though results showed he had won the election outright, without requiring a runoff. Gimenez won just over 54 percent of the vote, compared to Martinez’s 31 percent.

“I’m very honored to have been given this vote of confidence by the people of Miami-Dade County,” Gimenez said in an interview late Tuesday night.

Of Martinez’s refusal to concede, Gimenez said, “I think it’s up to him. I think this is a pretty resounding victory. I would hope that he would [concede] and we would move forward as a community.”

The nonpartisan race, the most prominent county contest, was overshadowed over the past two weeks by the voter-fraud probe that indirectly brushed Gimenez, the state attorney and a county commissioner. But the probe appeared to do little to hurt Gimenez at the polls.

Gimenez’s victory gives him a mandate to continue the philosophy he followed over the past year, in which he shrank the county budget, got commissioners to approve lowering the property-tax rate by 2 percent this year and nearly 12 percent last year, and reorganized the county bureaucracy, reducing the number of departments to 25 from 42.

More here.

It was a bumpy ride for 'retreads' in legislative races

Tuesday's primary election saw a bumper crop of former legislators seeking comebacks, most of them forced out by term limits. Some did better than other.:

Alex Diaz de la Portilla, the ex-Senate majority leader from Miami, easily defeated ex-Rep. Gus Barriero to win the GOP nomination in House District 112. But his brother, Renier Diaz de la Portilla, faltered and finished a distant second in a primary for another Miami-Dade seat. A DLP dynasty will have to wait.

The dominoes didn't fall right for former Rep. Carl Domino of Jupiter. He saw his comeback chances dashed in a loss to Tea Party favorite MaryLynn Magar in the Treasure Coast's House District 82. Another T-Coastie, former Democratic Rep. Adam Fetterman, lost to Larry Lee Jr. in House District 84.

In Southwest Florida's House District 76, ex-Rep. Michael Grant, a Port Charlotte Republican, finished a distant second to long-time GOP activist Ray Rodrigues. But former Rep. Frank Farkas of St. Petersburg cruised to a nomination win in District 68 in Pinellas, while former Rep. Kevin Rader, a Democrat, won his party's nod in Palm Beach County's District 81, knocking off one-term incumbent Rep. Steve Perman.

A close one: Former Rep. Randy Johnson of Sebring is in a neck-and-neck race for a rural inland seat (House District 55). In unofficial returns, Johnson trailed fellow Republican Cary Pigman by 26 votes of nearly 12,000 cast, which would definitely require a recount under Florida election law.   

Gaetz's slate runs table in Senate GOP races

Celebrating victory Tuesday night, Sen. Don Gaetz said his candidates were superior. But it didn't hurt to have more than $3 million for mail, TV ads and ground support, much of it from corporate interests in Tallahassee such as utilities, doctors, health care companies and agribusiness.

In race after race, Republican Senate candidates backed by Gaetz and his leadership team vanquished their rivals. Aaron Bean beat Mike Weinstein in Jacksonville, John Legg crushed two rivals in Tampa Bay and Tom Lee beat Rachel Burgin convincingly in east Hillsborough.

Like his predecessors, Gaetz openly played favorites and steered massive amounts of money to favored candidates in party primaries. If even one Gaetz-backed Senate hopeful lost, it would have hampered his momentum as he prepares to take the reins of the Senate in November. But they all won. The candidates who railed against "insider politics" and "Tallahassee special interests" lost. 

Gaetz, R-Niceville, could not resist a little gloating, and he took a dig at Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, who backed Weinstein and another unsuccesful Senate candidate, Rep. Jim Frishe, who lost to Rep. Jeff Brandes.

"It doesn't help to lose every primary that you engage in," Gaetz said. "But Jack Latvala is an experienced political operative." Latvala did not return a call seeking comment on the election results.

In the fourth race, Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, defeated Frishe, a Latvala-backed candidate. It was no coincidence that Latvala's chief rival for the 2016 Senate presidency, Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, was invited to Brandes' victory party.

"I'm very proud to support Jeff Brandes," Negron said. 

-- Steve Bousquet

Miami Beach elects Florida's first openly gay state legislator

Democrat David Richardson, a CPA from Miami Beach, was elected the state's first openly gay state representative Tuesday, narrowly defeating three opponents in the open primary race.

Richardson, a forensic accountant, defeated rivals Waldo Faura, Jr., an insurance adjuster and activist; Adam Kravitz, an attorney and entrepreneur who co-founded the popular Jewish dating website JDate.com; and Mark Weithorn, husband of Miami Beach City Commissioner Deede Weithorn.

Richardson sailed past two opponents whose supporters snared each other in competing ethics allegations. 

Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith congratulated Richardson for making history, saying he "represents the rich, diversity that makes Florida great and we are pleased to welcome him to the state Legislature. He has the real world experience to help businesses create jobs, grow our economy and get this state working for the people again. From day one he’ll be a voice for Florida’s middle class families and a strong advocate against the extreme Tea Party agenda of Rick Scott and the Republicans.”

Because there was no opponent on the general election ballot, the primary was open to all voters regardless of party affiliation.

For more on the race, read here.