While the race for the District 5 commission seat in Miami-Dade County is technically non-partisan, whichever candidate wins will give the 13-member commission a majority of either Democrats or Republicans.
The district includes some of the most economically important regions of all of South Florida. Within the boundaries of the district lie the tourism havens of South Beach, Port Miami and Little Havana’s Calle Ocho as well as downtown Miami and the financial sector hub Brickell.
Facing off in the run-off election are Rob Piper, a progressive Democrat, and Vicki Lopez, a Republican former state representative who is currently serving as commissioner after being appointed to the role last year.
Lopez has been in politics for decades, going back to her time as a Lee County commissioner on Florida’s Gulf Coast. She raised $1.5 million for the primary election, an astronomical number compared to Piper raising a mere $3,000. Some observers were shocked when Lopez did not win 50% of voters, allowing Piper to bring the race to a runoff.
For his part, Piper has been involved in local community groups and progressive politics for years, and he drew on word-of-mouth, Democratic Party and grassroots support to reach the second phase of the election.
As voters get ready to select their chosen candidate for a 4-year term, WLRN conducted in-depth interviews with both candidates.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. The full conversation can be heard in the audio above. Click here to read and listen to the interview with Vicki Lopez.
WLRN: How are you thinking going into this race in terms of the stakes for the county?
PIPER: Well, I think the stakes are huge because my opponent is heavily funded by special interests, moneyed interests, developer interests. And if she were to win, it is hard to say what would happen with county policy regarding the individuals and the entities that have funded her. I'm a very pessimistic individual, and I don't think that she will do what's in the best interest of the county as a whole in that regard if she were to be elected.
You've run till now as an outsider candidate, and you just spoke against special interests and the way that they sway county decisions. Can you define that for me? What is a special interest?
A special interest is any entity that has an interest, whether it be in terms of development, getting favorable legislation to build things that may not be in the public interest, whether it be a data center or whether it be a high-rise in a residential area. And those interests, they have ways to influence our county elected officials, or elected officials in general, by either donating a great deal of money to their campaigns or by showing them favorable treatment that can help them advance their interests, the interests of the elected officials to either more political power or more electoral wins.
A neighborhood association that doesn't want development in a neighborhood – would that be a special interest?
Well, it all depends on what that neighborhood association is fighting for and who they're representing. My particular neighborhood association, I would not consider that a special interest because: A, it doesn't have a great deal of money compared to the type of money that my opponent is raising, and B: Since I'm a member of that association, we just want what's best for the neighborhood.
I mentioned neighborhood associations because one of the things many of them have been confronting is the impacts of the Live Local Act.
Absolutely.
"If we are developing affordable housing for actual Miami residents and not letting real estate speculators, corporate landlords and luxury seekers determine what type of housing gets built, we can build the units we need."
And that is something your opponent, Vicki Lopez, pushed for in the state legislature. And this is essentially a law that lets developers leapfrog over local governments and communities when they're building denser developments if those projects include some amount of workforce housing. Local governments and some residents and neighborhood groups are frustrated with that law. What do you think should happen with Live Local?
I would like to see it completely repealed. But if that is not possible in the current political environment, it needs to be severely reformed. The communities were not brought into the input process when that law was being drafted. It needs to have more input, needs to be obtained from the municipalities, particularly the ones that are getting affected by these projects. Though these projects might be interfering with the quality of life that went roughshod over current zoning that each municipality went to great deals to put into place.
You've also taken a position against expanding the urban development boundary and against continuing to build residential housing that pushes out further out to the Everglades. Those two things seem a little bit in tension with repealing the Live Local Act because if we don't want to keep building out to the Everglades, how do we build more housing in other areaswhen a lot of the local residents and governments don't want to allow it?
Well, there are ways to solve the affordable housing crisis without building more, developing past the urban development boundary. We have naturally occurring affordable housing that can be converted. We have lots in certain neighborhoods that for-profit developers want to avoid. So we don't have to continue to keep building residential areas past the urban development boundary and putting at risk all our natural resources, putting at risk the endangered species that live in the Everglades. We can do that without continuing to push past the urban development boundary.
I feel that if we are developing affordable housing for actual Miami residents and not letting real estate speculators, corporate landlords and luxury seekers determine what type of housing gets built, we can build the units we need to solve our affordable housing crisis without continuously developing, developing, developing and straining our infrastructure and threatening our environment.
District 5 includes the Shenandoah neighborhood and parts of Little Havana. Now, these two neighborhoods are interesting because they're single-family residential neighborhoods, and interspersed in them you have apartment buildings that some of them are around 100 years old. They have up to 20 units in them, things that would not be allowed under current zoning. Someone might look at Live Local and say, "Well, that's just allowing this to happen again." How would you respond to that?
That's a fair assessment. And obviously, the buildings that are there now, they've been there, and, many of them are, lovely buildings, and they should be grandfathered in. So using that as an excuse to continue doing what may be the wrong thing — I don't see that as being valid. The critical thinker part of me thinks that, okay, well, just because it was done in the past, there's no reason why we should keep doing it. Let's find another way to preserve the natural occurring affordable housing that we have in order to solve this problem, because it's there.
There's an interesting dynamic in this race. You have the support of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party –
Yes.
And the Democratic institutions in Coral Gables, for example, and Miami Beach. But some elected Democrats like Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava have endorsed your opponent, Vicky Lopez, who is a former Republican state representative and a sitting county commissioner after appointment. What do you make of that dynamic?
You didn't mention that I've also been endorsed by the Miami Herald editorial board.
Correct.
So to answer your question, what do I make of it? Well, I find it very interesting that so many Democratic elected officials have endorsed my opponent, but it's not really gonna change my approach to this race. I mean, I made it to the runoff because of grassroots support and grassroots energy. That's despite the fact that my campaign managed to spend just 42 cents per vote, while my opponent spent anywhere from $40 to $65 per vote or up to $100 if you count all the PAC money that went there.
So I really can't comment on why the Democratic elected officials were so quick to endorse my opponents. I'm not inside their head. I can only speculate. But either way, it doesn't make a difference. I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing because I feel that progressive voices need to be heard at the local level, and I feel that there's too much money in politics.
Do you feel like being a vocal progressive has in some way affected the amount of funds you've raised? Your opponent has raised exponentially more dollars than you have.
Well, she has a vast amount of experience. She's been in this game since the 1990s, when she served on the Lee County Commission, and then she has her own political consulting firm. So she is well-versed in the game of raising money. She has allies who are also well-versed in the game of raising money.
So maybe my progressive bonafides are why I don't raise as much money. I mean, I guess you could, look at the Angie Nixon race. She was out-raised 10 to one. Very, very progressive, fantastic candidate. I am pleased that she was able to do what she was able to do. And yeah, I am firmly behind her. I will say that. I did in fact vote for her.
Do you feel like you being on the ballot in November at the same time someone like Angie Nixon's on the ballot helps you?
It could. I mean, I hope it does.
And you were active 23 years as a Marine. You were deployed three times to Iraq. How did that experience influence your political outlook, your personal outlook and philosophy, if at all?
It complemented my ability to detect, let's say, for lack of a better word, BS. Because my commanders did such a good job at detecting when I was BS'ing them, I was able to absorb that from them. It made me a critical thinker. But my political ideology was with me – from the time when I was growing up in Virginia, living with two progressive parents. The experience, the exposure I had in the Marine Corps to different, different countries, different cultures, just kind of informed that. It gave me the foundation to go on to achieve a PhD in international relations.
And I was on active duty during the Great Recession, and I witnessed — what I felt, what I was appalled by, what I saw, was greed. And that did a lot to inform the things I value now, now that I'm retired, now that I've been out for about 10 years.
The roots that I planted down here were very, very strong, and they continue to keep me here. If it's one thing the Marines taught me it's that when they send you to someplace, you leave that place better than it was when you found it. And I want to leave Miami-Dade County better than it was when I found it, and that's why I'm looking to make things better for my fellow Miami-Dade County residents in this race.
