Alyssa Crocker: mother, advocate, fighter — and Miami mayoral candidate

Part of a series of profiles about the Miami mayoral candidates
Alyssa Crocker says she’s not a politician — and she’s right. She’s a mother of two, an advocate for families with special needs kids, and a newcomer to Miami’s political circus. But she’s also one of the 13 people running for City of Miami mayor this November, hoping voters will see something different in her story.
To be sure, she is one of the lucky seven candidates considered long shots in this crowded clusterbunch that includes experienced, known (read: tainted) frontrunners like Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, former City Commissioner Ken Russell and former City Manager Emilio Gonzalez, as well as oxygen-sucking parasites like Commissioner Joe Carollo and former City Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla, whose campaign is really a redemption tour after public corruption charges against him were dropped last year. Former Miami-Dade Commissioner Mayor Sir Xavier Suarez — who was the first Cuban-born mayor of Miami in 1995 — wants his old job back, too.
So, there’s very little room in the clown car for relatively unknowns like Crocker, who is one of the candidates that has not been invited to a number of forums or the Downtown Neighbors Association debate with CBS Miami because she polled under 5%. She has only raised $1,500, and no contribution is bigger than $350. So, there’s very little campaign presence. And she has zero endorsements.
But this is likely not the last time we’ve heard from her.
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Crocker, who lives in Little Havana but says she has family ties to Liberty City, claims she has spent the last decade working remotely in business development, though she didn’t list a primary or secondary income source in her qualifying papers. She’s been something of a nomad over the past five years — with addresses in Ponte Vedra Beach, St. Augustine, West Palm Beach, and Miami Shores — before settling in Miami, where Crocker now wants to take on City Hall. She had a business in St. Augustine, LJG Staffing Solutions, but it went inactive in 2021.
She might look like a bombshell on Love Island or like she just walked off a fashion runway, but Crocker’s got a lot going on behind that show-stopper smile.
Her campaign website paints the picture of a woman forged by adversity and driven by purpose. A proud mom of two boys with special needs — one with a rare genetic disorder and the other with autism — Crocker says her life has been defined by “resilience, compassion, and relentless determination.” She’s been an advocate for equal access to healthcare, affordable services, and better support for children and adults with disabilities.
Crocker’s previous address in Liberty City is also home to Jay’s Learning Center, an after-school, day-care and tutoring space for under-served children in the community. It is owned by Beverly Crocker-Johnson.
But her personal story goes much deeper — and darker. Crocker’s father, Dr. Derek Crocker, died as a result of medical negligence at North Shore Medical Center, she says — a tragedy that pushed her into the world of legislative advocacy. She’s testified and worked on state bills this year that focused on medical accountability in the case of negligent death.
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“I still hear my father’s death rattle in my ear,” she testified in Tallahassee six months ago for a law that modified the state’s medical malpractice laws repealing restrictions on wrongful death lawsuits, allowing certain family members to sue for non-economic damages like pain and suffering and removing exceptions that prevented adult children from suing for a parent’s death and parents from suing for the death of an adult child due to medical negligence.
“I haven’t slept very much since he died. In every other setting, senseless murder leads to a trial and incarceration,” Crocker said, standing at the podium in the state capitol. “In a medical setting, as an adult child of divorced parents in Florida, it’s led to my grief, fear and my soul irreparably shattered in microscopic fragments, near remnants of what it once was.
“Beyond fear and grief, I feel festering rage and indescribable pain,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion.
“Nobody should have to go through this, but here we are. Florida citizens will continue to endure devastating and senseless loss if we do not pass this bill,” she said. “My father’s death should not be in vain.”
And she’s not shy about naming that same motivation in her campaign — “justice, accountability, and community reform.”
But it might just be in her DNA.
Her uncle Jay was the victim of a hate crime that she says helped shape national precedent. Her grandfather and another uncle served in the military, and that sense of duty shows in her campaign platform, which pledges to support veterans, survivors of domestic violence, and families struggling to make ends meet in an increasingly unaffordable city.
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If elected mayor Crocker promises to demand accountability and transparency, strengthen domestic violence prevention, prioritize veterans’ housing, and tackle climate resilience and youth crime. It’s an ambitious to-do list for someone who’s still relatively new to Miami politics — and to Miami, period.
But maybe that’s the point. Crocker is selling herself as an outsider — someone untainted by the political games and pay-to-play culture that has dogged the city for decades. Her campaign pitch is personal: she’s not running as a politician, she says, but as “a mother, a neighbor, and a fighter who believes Miami can and must do better.”
Ladra doesn’t really believe that Crocker can turn her life story into a viable mayoral campaign. Voters will see her as just another earnest long shot in a crowded field. But she’s got heart, hustle, and a message about accountability that might just resonate with Miamians tired of the same old song. In a race this crowded, a little sincerity might be refreshing.
And memorable.
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