Bryan Calvo breaks the Hialeah machine, wins mayor’s race outright

The youngest mayor — and maybe the hungriest — pulls upset
Well, well, well. Turns out you can still beat the machine in Hialeah.
Bryan Calvo, the 27-year-old former councilman who once sued the city’s own leadership and knocked on thousands of doors himself, pulled off what nobody — and I mean nobody — expected Tuesday night. He didn’t just make it to a runoff. He won outright, becoming the youngest mayor in the history of the City of Progress.
With 53% of the votes, Calvo left the political establishment eating crow pastelitos.
Council President Jesús Tundidor came in a distant second with 21%, and the incumbent mayor, Jackie Garcia Roves, who became the first woman mayor in Hialeah after former Mayor Esteban “Steve” Bovo jumped ship to lobby in D.C. (from his living room in Hialeah, las malas lenguas say), limped to third with 19%, and the rest barely registered.

Garica Roves was first elected to the Council in 2019 as part of then-Mayor Carlos Hernandez’s slate, and reelected four years later unopposed. This was supposed to be Jackie’s seat to lose — and, well, she did just that. But she is not the only one.
Make no mistake: this wasn’t just a local election. This was an old-guard cage match — and the upstart beat them all.
Read related: Accusations vs two Hialeah mayoral candidates only benefit Jesus Tundidor
Garcia Roves had the backing of all the big boys — former mayors Bovo, Hernández, and Julio Robaina— not to mention Miami-Dade Commissioner Rene Garcia, who stabbed Tundidor, his onetime protegé, in the back. That’s basically the Hialeah version of a royal family endorsement. Tundidor, who many assumed would be the other half of a runoff, had the unions and Miami-Dade Property Appraiser Tomas Regalado.
But Calvo? Calvo was out there in the heat, knocking on doors, shaking hands, talking water bills and garbage pickups with abuelas on their porches.  No machine. No dynasty. No major endorsements. Just hustle.
Oh, and some secret sauce courtesy of former Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, who served as a campaign advisor.
Oh, and some last minute help from populist podcaster and former Miami-Dade mayoral candidate Alex Otaola and his grupito of Proud Boy wannabes. Otaola did well in Hialeah last year and had one of his famous, traffic-stopping caravans outside Westland Mall last week.
It all paid off.
This is the same Bryan Calvo who made headlines two years ago for taking on then-Mayor Bovo — even suing him for blocking an investigation into the city’s emergency call center. The court threw the complaint out and the city council condemned him for it, 6–1.
Guess who gets the last laugh now?
Read related: Dueling tax cut proposals in Hialeah means campaign season is in full gear
Calvo didn’t return calls and a text to his phone from Ladra. Getting a big head already, perhaps. Or he was busy fielding dozens of calls and visits to his victory party from well wishers and wished-they’d-wished-wellers who are now in the precarious position of looking like they always supported him. Even Hialeah Housing Authority Director Julio Ponce, who was openly supporting Garcia-Roves, showed up to say congrats between his teeth. He’s just hoping to keep his job.
But earlier in the campaign, Calvo — who resigned his council seat last year to make a failed run for Miami-Dade tax collector — told Ladra that he wanted to bring “real change” to Hialeah. Looks like voters finally agreed.
In a city where mayors are usually minted in backrooms and blessed by padrinos, Calvo built his own path, block by block.
He ran on fiscal discipline — no more fake rebates that drain millions from city coffers while potholes and parks rot. He warned that Hialeah “doesn’t print money,” and that taxpayers would end up footing the bill. He promised to end the retirement plan that Bovo got passed right before left, provide property tax relief to seniors and find a way to lower increasing water bills.
Turns out the voters were listening. And they believed him,
Read related: Three former Hialeah mayors ‘host’ quiet fundraiser for Jackie Garcia-Roves
The result isn’t just an upset. It is a repudiation of Hialeah’s political elite — the mayors-turned-kingmakers who have kept their grip on the city since the Hernandez and Robaina era. It iss a rejection of the longtime Hialeah campaign spinmeisters like Ana Carbonell, who did Garcia-Roves, and David Custin, who worked with Team Tundidor, but mostly phoned it in between pickleball matches.
This time, the voters didn’t follow the slate cards. They didn’t salute the same old banners. They picked the guy who actually knocked on their doors and came to see them.
That’s what happens when people are fed up with the price of everything going up and the streets still flooding.
At 27, Calvo becomes the youngest mayor in Hialeah’s long, colorful history — and maybe the first in a long time who doesn’t owe his job to a padrino.
He’s got a lot to prove. But if Tuesday’s results said anything, it’s that voters want him to try.
Now ,we get to see if the kid who took on the machine can actually run it — or if the machine starts looking for ways to get even.

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