It's Commissioner Eileen Higgins in Miami-Dade win vs Zoraida Barreiro

A partisan campaign likely made the difference

Even though Zoraida Barreiro was ahead for a tiny little bit in the special shotgun wedding election to replace her husband on the Miami-Dade Commission, she was never winning. The tiny 45 vote lead she had after absentee ballots were counted wouldn’t hold.

Democrats, who had made this nonpartisan election a grudge match, own early voting and election day results, for the most part. And this held true Tuesday as Eileen Higgins soared over Barreiro, matching her lead and getting a 277 vote gap in la gringa‘s favor with early voting for a 51 to 49 split. And that only grew as the night continued.

Partial election day results just before 8 p.m. showed Higgins with more than 53% to less than 47% for Zory, a 913-vote gap. By the end of the night, when all 60 precincts reporting, Higgins kept the 53% vote with a 955-vote lead. So, as expected, Zory Barreiro won ABs — though with an insufficient gap — and la gringa won early voting and Election Day. A closer look shows that la gringa barely lost ABs while arrasando with the early and day of votes.

In the end there were 2,000 more people motivated to vote than in last month’s first round (13,943 t0 11,905 total votes) even though there were four candidates then, including former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who came in third ut still got more than 3,300 votes.

But even though two dynasty names were beat by a relative newcomer, the race was more a partisan thing than a dynasty thing.

This ain’t the first time that Miami-Dade Democratic Party gets involved in what is traditionally a non partisan race (Daniella Levine Cava was the first time), but this is the best time. Or, rather, the most intense time. We’re talking a reported 34,000 handwritten postcards sent to Democrat voters in District 5 from progressives all over the country! We’re talking a paid political consultant who took time from the heated Florida gubernatorial election to help Higgins get over the well-oiled machine of GOP veterans!

By the time the Miami-Dade Republican Party got involved it was too little, too late. That Marco Rubio mailer and robocall would have been far more effective three weeks ago, before absentee ballots went out. They got involved only a couple of weeks ago.

“It’s also been a bad year for Republicans. It also happened eight years ago and eight years before that,” said Miami-Dade GOP Chair Nelson Diaz.

But most political observers in the 305 said this race was unprecedented because of the dem involvement.

“Higgins’ election win was more about winning the battle of expectations by the Democratic Party,” said Hector Roos, a political analyst and consultant who did not work for either campaign. “It was not just the result of three months of negative campaigning, criticizing ‘dynasty politics.’ That’s actually a very common and unusually unsuccessful campaign message.”

No, Roos said, this campaign was about whipping your base — Patrick Murphy beat Rubio by seven points in District 5 — into a frenzy.

“Like it or not, hyper-partisan strategies combined with limitless outside resources and funding in small turnout special elections win, as seen in examples across the country,” Roos said.

Higgins did not return a phone call and text message, but it may have been buried in a hundred other texts and calls.

A “very disappointed” Zoraida — wife of Bruno Barreiro, who resigned to run for Congress and thought he had this in the bag — said that the attacks on her as a dynasty candidate and the hyperpartisan rhetoric drowned out any debate on the issues.

“This woman has a mind of her own,” she told Ladra late Tuesday night, as she laughed, patted backs and said good night to volunteer poll workers who have been with the Barreiro campaign machine for 20 years.

“Unfortunately, this campaign wasn’t too much about District 5,” Barreiro said, “and these are the results.”

It’s Commissioner Eileen Higgins in Miami-Dade win vs Zoraida Barreiro added by Ladra on June 19, 2018
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