Democrat Eileen Higgins is fighting to keep the District 5 County Commission seat she won in a surprise 2018 victory against her predecessor’s wife, Zoraida Barreiro. Now in a heated campaign against Renier Diaz de la Portilla to be decided on Nov. 3, this is the second time in just over two years that Higgins is trying to fend off candidates from local Cuban political dynasties. One of her current opponent’s brothers, Alex Diaz de la Portilla, ran against her in that same 2018 special election, performing poorly.
She won over Hispanic voters last time, besting her two politically connected rivals by embracing the “La Gringa” moniker she was given by residents. She’s now running on her record and has picked up a slew of progressive endorsements.
Renier Diaz de la Portilla
During her tenure, Higgins said she’s secured funding for the construction or renovation of 4,600 affordable housing units within her district, obtained COVID-19 relief money for renters and businesses, and helped start a county fund for low-interest loans for small businesses suffering from the pandemic crisis.
“There’s not a single week where I’m not in Little Havana, not out in Grapeland, not out in Shenandoah, not out in Silver Bluff, not in Brickell and not in The Roads,” said Higgins, a 56-year-old Ohio native and former State Department employee who has lived in Miami for the past seven years.
Renier Diaz de la Portilla is a 49-year-old Republican attorney and former Miami-Dade Public Schools board member who unsuccessfully lobbied for prayer in schools during his tenure.1 His older brother, Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, was a county commissioner from 1993-2000, in District 11.
The younger Diaz de la Portilla is running a bare-knuckle campaign against Higgins for what he says is a failure to do her job.
“She [Higgins] has been an absentee landlord in all these issues [effecting District 5], in my opinion,” he said, adding, “I will represent all of District 5 because I know District 5. I was born and raised in District 5.”
Home to 106,947 voters, District 5 includes a large share of Miami Beach and several neighborhoods in the City of Miami, such as a segment of downtown’s central business district, a large sector of Brickell, The Roads, Little Havana (including Shenandoah), Grapeland Heights, Silver Bluff Estates and a chunk of Allapattah.
The two candidates previously faced off on Aug. 18 in a primary fueled by a string of negative mailers on both sides that stuffed residents’ mailboxes. In that contest Higgins, a downtown resident, received the most votes: 13,387 out of 28,360 cast. In contrast, Diaz de la Portilla, who resides in Allapattah, took 11,194 ballots. Since neither candidate got more than 50% of the vote, the race will be settled in a runoff.
So far, Diaz de la Portilla has raised more money than incumbent Higgins. According to the latest campaign reports, he has amassed $593,950 in his campaign account. Another $1.3 million has been raised by Proven Leadership for Miami-Dade County, a political committee run by another of Renier’s brothers, District 1 Miami City Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla.
New Classrooms & A Cleaned-Up Bay2
Ernesto Cuesta, president of the Brickell Homeowners Association, wants whoever occupies the District 5 seat to address issues affecting Brickell, a realm of high-rises that the Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA) projects will have a population of 38,172 by 2021. One of Cuesta’s main concerns is cleaning up Biscayne Bay and stemming pollution caused by fertilizer runoff, leaking septic tanks and crumbling sewer lines that’s been causing algae blooms.
Diaz de la Portilla said he would take care of the problem by demanding to be placed on committees overseeing water and infrastructure issues.
“The Biscayne Bay issue … is really a symptom of a much larger water problem that exists countywide … I would ask to be part of the infrastructure and public works committee that oversees all those issues,” he proclaimed, adding that Higgins “can’t monitor these issues because she doesn’t sit on the committee that oversees those issues.”
“Commissioners don’t get to pick the committees they are on. The chair [of the county commission] decides the committees they’re on,” Higgins retorted.
She asserted she’s been pushing for the completion of a series of reports that will help the county address its sewage infrastructure and septic tank challenges.
“We’re collecting data, but we’re not turning that data into information we can work on,” said Higgins. “I don’t know what the heck is going on with the administration.”
In the meantime, she said she’s pursuing legislation to regulate fertilizers countywide. Higgins also believes there should be a Biscayne Bay Authority, much like the Chesapeake Bay Commission in Washington, D.C., which will enable the county to acquire grants to help clean and maintain the bay.
Cuesta also told Biscayne Times that with more than 100,000 people living in Brickell and the rest of Miami’s greater downtown area, there’s a desperate need for more schools. Higgins advocates using county land near the Government Center to create mixed-use projects with both affordable and workforce housing and classrooms.
“We have approximately 23 acres of county-owned land in and around Government Center. A lot of that is underutilized,” she said.
Diaz de la Portilla favors the construction of more charter schools.
“They’re more efficient, you don’t spend as much money, they don’t need as much land,” he insisted.
Diaz de la Portilla said he’s more than willing to “work with people next to the school board building” in Omni to create schools with fields for children to recreate. He’ll also push developers to build schools in exchange for greater building rights.
“We’re having a building boom in Brickell and downtown,” he said. “We need to take advantage of it and extract more [from developers].”
Pains, Trains & Automobiles
Gary Ressler, a Miami DDA board member and a Miami Beach resident, said traffic is a persistent problem affecting District 5 and the rest of the county.
“And until the county embraces the value of mobility options other than automobiles, we are going to continue having traffic problems,” he said.
Higgins, who sits on the Transportation and Finance Committee, said some traffic congestion relief will come in the form of smart traffic lights which are being installed at 2,900 intersections across the county. In Brickell particularly, those lights should alleviate gridlock when the Brickell drawbridge is up.
“That will help a lot of the congestion in Brickell,” she said.4
In the longer term, Higgins, who asserted she is the only county commissioner who rides all forms of alternative transit, said county staff is drawing up plans to expand Metromover as far north as the design district. She also believes that rapid bus transit is a viable alternative in places where rail is far too expensive.
“The only thing that matters is that we get cars off the road … so, we just have to be more flexible,” Higgins said.5
Additionally, she said the county is in “tough” negotiations with Brightline “to see if we can bring commuter rail up and down [the FEC tracks from Miami] to Aventura.” To help make commuter rail along the Biscayne Corridor a reality, Higgins wants to see property owners wishing to have a station near their land to underwrite part of the cost.
“We, as taxpayers, expect them to participate in the project,” she said.6
Diaz de la Portilla thinks the county is wasting time and money on “pie on the sky ideas” for “everyday transportation problems.” He blasted the county for removing bus routes in District 5, arguing that Miami-Dade should be expanding routes instead so that working people and retirees without cars can commute. He also questioned why the county plans to give millions of dollars to Brightline to establish a commuter line, or why the county commission allocated $76 million last year to build a Brightline-operated train station west of Aventura Mall.
“Why is Aventura Mall a destination? Are people clamoring to go to Aventura Mall during COVID-19?” Diaz de la Portilla asked. “How is that an option for the future moving forward? People don’t have disposable income to spend at malls. They’re out of work.”
He is likewise critical of the county giving $770 million over 30 years to the Genting Group so it can build a monorail between the Omni area, where the company owns around 30 acres of property, and South Beach. A better solution would be to simply expand Metromover to South Beach, Diaz de la Portilla said. Plus, he believes there is a “lack of transparency” surrounding the Genting monorail.
Higgins agrees, and pointed out that she withdrew her support of the project after the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust issued a report in May revealing that Mayor Carlos Giménez held undisclosed meetings with Genting executives in Hong Kong two years ago and, during that same trip, county staff used burner phones to communicate. She even referred the matter to the Office of the Inspector General, which recommended that the previous bidding process be reconsidered.
Following the county commission’s rejection of Giménez’s monorail report on June 16, the mayor’s office will now reevaluate Genting’s proposal and look at other methods of connecting Miami to Miami Beach. Higgins said that connection “will probably be a Metrorail extension.”
County & City Conflicts
Diaz de la Portilla, though, claims that Higgins “flip-flopped” on the Genting monorail issue, and only went against Giménez after the Commission on Ethics report came to light. He also accused Higgins of being a “rubber stamp” of the mayor, especially when it comes to the issue of CARES money from the federal government for COVID-19 relief, saying that the mayor hogged more than $400 million in funding while only providing $35 million to all 34 municipalities. (After several municipalities, including Miami and Miami Beach, threatened to sue the county for more funds, the county commission later mandated that $100 million in CARES funds be allocated to cities.)
Eileen Higgins
Eileen riding Metro
Diaz de la Portilla pointed out that the City of Miami alone has racked up more than $35 million in pandemic-related relief efforts, including rent abatement for people laid off during the crisis.
“Why don’t Mayor Giménez and Commissioner Higgins want to help Miami and Miami Beach?” asked Diaz de la Portilla, who accused Giménez of using CARES funds as a “slush fund.”
Higgins said she goes against the mayor all the time. But she doesn’t go out of her way to vote against him, either.
“I was not elected to hate Mayor Giménez. I was elected to represent residents of District 5 and the county,” she said.
Regarding the CARES money, Higgins said it’s actually more efficient if the county distributes the bulk of it for COVID-19 relief, including rent abatement, adding that there are other federal funding sources, such as FEMA, that municipalities can tap into.
“Every single resident of the county can apply [for CARES grants], including every resident of the cities of Miami and Miami Beach,” Higgins said. “In District 5, we have businesses that received help [and] residents that received help.”
But the conflict between the City of Miami and Miami-Dade isn’t limited to COVID-19 funds. Ressler said differing regulations between the city and county have harmed the downtown area, citing conflicting orders on whether or not bars that serve food should reopen as well as the slowed-down Flagler Street renovation project, as examples. Media reports have blamed a personality clash between Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Giménez for the impasse.
Higgins said she has been able to work around the Suarez-Giménez conflict by crafting countywide rental relief legislation and creating the RISE Miami-Dade Fund, a program that utilizes $25 million in county money to help provide low-interest loans to small businesses – stipulated as those that earn less than $2 million a year and have fewer than 25 employees – affected by COVID-19. That same program will also seek an additional $25 million from private sources.
“While the men are fighting, I helped design the rental relief program. I helped develop the RISE program,” she said.
Diaz de la Portilla said if elected he can help mend relations between the City of Miami and the county, touting his good relations with Suarez and all the members of the Miami City Commission, including his brother, Alex.
“It’s a plus to have a good relationship with the City of Miami, and it doesn’t matter if it’s my brother or anyone else,” he said.
But Higgins warns that having one brother on the county commission and another on the city commission could erode “checks and balances.”
“The question for the voters is: How much power do they want one family to have? Let’s remember that the third brother [Miguel] is a lobbyist,” she said.