Meet our new Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia and her storied past

Newly-elected Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia, who beat JC Planas 56% to 44% in November’s historic race, was sworn in last week as the county’s first elected person to that new constitutional office. The ceremony in Hialeah was also a swearing in of two other constitutional officers, Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez and Property Appraiser Tomas Regalado, who really should know better.

Previous election supervisors were appointed by the county mayor and usually rose up the ranks in the department, like professional civil servants.

Garcia, who left a state representative post to run for elections supervisor, rose up the ranks in politics working with a number of politicians who are most notable because of their troublesome relationship with ethics. They include:

David Rivera — The one-term congressman was accused of secretly bankrolling the primary campaign of a Democrat candidate against Joe Garcia (no relation) who would ultimately beat him in November 2012 (as he expected, which is why his people found the dummy plantidate), spending more than $75,000 on the campaign for Justin Lamar Sternad, who confessed to his part in the scheme and was sentenced to 30 days in jail Last week, the same day Alina Garcia was sworn in, the Federal Election Commission dropped its case against Rivera, who has always claimed it was politically motivated. But he still has some legal troubles. He was re-indicted in December on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent as he lobbied for the Venezuelan government-owned oil company, Citgo, whose profits have been sanctions in the U.S. since 2019. Rivera, who was first charged with this in 2022, was recharged last month in relation to a $5.5 million payment between 2019 and 2020 from a specific wealthy Venezuelan businessman to try to get the sanctions lifted.

Esteban “Steve” Bovo — The Hialeah mayor, former county commissioner and former state rep was ensnared in an absentee ballot case in 2012, when an aide in his Hialeah county office was arrested with 164 absentee ballots in her possession. She said she was told to take them to the post office. At first, Bovo denied any knowledge of Anamary Pedrosa‘s AB collection activities. But later, he admitted that he had been told at least a month earlier that she was working to collect ballots for several judicial and state legislative candidates. Her mother later turned up in the campaign finance reports of three judges who were elected and two state reps, earning more than $5,000 for campaign work.

Frank Artiles — The former Republican state senator forced to resign in 2017 after a racist and sexist drunken rant against two black legislators at a Tallahassee restaurant, was found guilty in November of three charges of election conspiracy — for his role in another sham candidate scheme — and sentenced to a piddly 60 days in jail and five years probation. Prosecutors wanted three years. Artiles was accused of funding his own ghost plantidate in the 2020 race against former State Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez to help Sen. Ileana Garcia win. He was also caught by Political Cortadito living outside his district when he was a state rep in 2011.

Joe Carollo — The longtime politico and sitting Miami commissioner has been accused of abuse of power and violating the first amendment rights of two Little Havana businessmen, who supported his opponent in the election, by weaponizing the city’s legal and code enforcement departments against them. A jury found Carollo liable for violating their Freedom of Speech and awarded the two men $63.5 million, which they are going to have difficulty collecting. He also somehow got the city attorney’s office to interpret the date for a recall petition and create a self-described “cheat sheet” in a way that would help him thwart the effort.

These are the people Alina Garcia has worked with and helped. Shudder.

But, wait. There’s more.

She was sworn in by Sen. Rick Scott, who pleaded the Fifth Amendment 75 times in the Medicaid and Medicare fraud case against Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America, where he was the CEO until he was forced to resign with a $10 million settlement and $350 million worth of stock. In settlements reached in 2000 and 2002, Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and agreed to a $600+ million fine in what was at the time the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

Endorsed by Donald Trump, who will be sworn in as president again today, Garcia is also a defacto election denier because she has refused to say that the 2020 election was won fair and square by Joe Biden. She hedges the question and says that the election in Miami-Dade was fair. But she gives credence to the argument that the election in Georgia and Arizona and other parts of the country were robbed. That’s troublesome.

And now, Garcia is the keeper of voting records. She not only administers all local, state and federal elections. She is in charge of updating voter rolls — adding new registrations and purging or removing voters who are dead or have moved. She will be in charge of sending out mail-in or absentee ballots and making sure they are counted.

It’s not a job for someone as partisan as Garcia. It’s not just partisan. She’s hyper partisan.

During the elections, she was one of the people who heckled and harassed former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell at a polling site, calling her a socialist. Just doesn’t seem like the type of behavior one wants from a supervisor of elections.

And this weekend, she posted photos on her Instagram account of events in Washington D.C. for the inauguration.

“Thank you Ambassador Carlos and Mrs. Trujillo for inviting us to your Pre Inauguration Reception. It was great to see Susie Wiles and Brian Huges, soon to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his beautiful wife Jeanette. Bernie & Claudia Navarro. Our soon to me ambassadors Kevin Cabrera and Benjamin Leon,” she posted. “It was packed with great patriots. You could feel the excitement for our incoming President Donald J Trump.”

And she’s a shameless self promoter. The new homepage for the Miami-Dade Elections Department has her photo in the banner. And there’s a new logo with her name in it.

There is one good thing to report. Garcia has kept former supervisor Christina White, a true public servant who rose through the ranks in the department since July 2006, as her chief executive officer, “managing the day-to-day operations and ensuring that elections in Miami-Dade continue to be accurate and secure,” according to an Instagram video post on Garcia’s feed. White’s words, not Ladra’s.

But does that mean that the new constitutional office is a no-show job? Or a political favor dispenser in waiting? Probably.

Meet our new Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia and her storied past added by Ladra on January 20, 2025
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