Three Miami-Dade County commissioners won re-election to new four-year terms Tuesday after a filing deadline passed and no one filed to challenge them.
Automatically re-elected at noon were: Oliver Gilbert, current board chairman and District 1 commissioner; Eileen Higgins, the District 5 commissioner; and District 9 Commissioner Kionne McGhee.
Gilbert, 51, and McGhee, 46, were both elected in 2020 when the two-term limit went into effect and forced the first wave of resignations from the 13-seat board. Gilbert represents a north Miami-Dade district that includes Miami Gardens. McGhee represents an area of South Miami-Dade that includes parts of Homestead and the Goulds and Perrine neighborhoods.
Higgins, 59, first won her seat in a special election in 2018 after former District 5 Commissioner Bruno Barreiro resigned to run for Congress. She was re-elected in 2020 and is the senior board member. Her district includes Biscayne Bay and covers parts of Miami and Miami Beach.
Miami-Dade term limits make this the last commission election for the three re-elected incumbents before they must leave office in 2028.
Although three commissioners were re-elected Tuesday, four others face an Aug. 20 election. The elections are nonpartisan and end in August if one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. If not, the top two finishers will compete in a November runoff on Election Day.
The 2024 Miami-Dade committee races are:
Audrey Edmonson is challenging Keon Hardemon for her old District 3 seat
Miami-Dade’s county statute requires commissioners to leave office after two consecutive four-year terms, but there is no rule prohibiting participation in future elections.
Audrey Edmonson, 71, a former District 3 commissioner who left office in 2020, is the first to benefit from that rule after voter-approved term limits went into effect that year. She is challenging Commissioner Keon Hardemon, 40, who won election to the open District 3 seat in 2020 after serving seven years on the Miami City Commission.
District 3 covers the northern portions of Miami and adjacent suburbs, including parts of the city center and the Liberty City and Brownsville neighborhoods.
Edmonson, a former mayor of El Portal, held the District 3 seat for 14 years before voters changed the charter in 2012 to require commissioners to leave office after two consecutive terms.
The current and former commissioners are also running against Marion Brown, 59, a construction company owner.
Raquel Regalado gets a rematch with Cindy Lerner in District 7
Commissioner Raquel Regalado, 49, narrowly won her District 7 seat in 2020, and the runner-up in that race is back to try again.
Cindy Lerner, 71, who has served as mayor of Pinecrest and as a Democratic member of the Florida House, lost to Regalado by 1,301 votes when the seat in south Miami and adjacent suburbs was vacated by term-limited Xavier Suarez.
Regalado, a former school board member, is also being challenged by Richard Praschnik, 28, a police officer with the county school system who also holds an elected seat on the Kendall Community Council zoning board.
Roberto Gonzalez will face two challengers from District 11 in his first election to the County Commission
Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, 37, is the incumbent in the District 11 race, but this will be his first election for the seat that represents a suburban area that includes West Kendall.
In November 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Gonzalez, an attorney and former Republican candidate for the Florida House, to fill the vacant District 11 seat. It had been open for two months after DeSantis suspended former commissioner Joe Martinez following Martinez’s arrest on corruption charges. Martinez, whose two-term limit expires in November, is a Republican candidate for sheriff as he awaits trial.
Gonzalez has two challengers: Bryan Paz-Hernandez, 28, a high school teacher; and Claudia Rainville, 42, an elementary school teacher.
René Garcia gets a challenger who says he jokingly ran for president
Commissioner René Garcia, 49, won his District 13 seat in 2020, and four years later he faces a challenger seeking his first elected office.
Ian Anthony Medina, 30, said he is pursuing a master’s degree in business while seeking a seat on the commission. A Federal Election Commission database shows he registered a committee in March to run for U.S. president in 2024, but Medina said Tuesday “that was just a joke.”
Medina was in the news in 2022 during a failed election for Miami Lakes City Council when he was arrested on charges of practicing law without a license. Court records show the case was closed under a diversion program that allows suspects to avoid convictions. Medina said he had to take legal ethics courses and volunteer for community service.
Although Medina was the only challenger not listed as qualified on the county election website after the noon deadline, he was in the agency’s Doral office with the final paperwork needed to earn a spot on the ballot to secure.
