Miami voters could say no to political retreads or professional politicians by extending term limits this November.
City Commissioner Damian Pardo wants to put a charter amendment on the Nov. 4 ballot so that elected officials who have served on the commission or as mayor for two terms cannot come back and run for office after a break. Like zombie politicos.
Currently, term limits in Miami are only for consecutive terms. That’s why Commissioner Joe Carollo, who was mayor from 1996 to 2001, can run again this year. Mayor Francis Suarez could, technically, sit this term out and run again in 2027. Former Mayor Tomas Regalado could run again, though he won’t want to now he’s Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. Former Commissioners Willy Gort, Frank Carollo — who is widely rumored to be looking at another District 3 run to take over what is now the “Carollo seat” — and Marc Sarnoff (gasp!) could run for commission again.
But not if voters amend the city charter to establish that anyone who has already served two terms, at any time, is ineligible to run for the same office again, “during their lifetime.” Pardo is sponsoring a resolution a Tuesday’s meeting that would direct the city attorney’s office to prepare the amendment for the Nov. 4 ballot where alongside the mayoral race and contests for commission districts 3 and 5. And District 4 if Commissioner Manolo Reyes runs for mayor, as expected.
Read related: Long list of potential 2025 Miami mayoral candidates starts to take form
Neither Carollo nor Reyes have officially announced or filed any paperwork with the city clerk’s office. Yet.
Is Pardo targeting Carollo, who he has been butting heads with on the commission since he was elected in 2023? Carollo thinks so. But Pardo said it is absolutely not.

“Nobody knows what he’s going to do,” Pardo said. “He keeps saying he’s going to go to Shangri-La. He wanted an appointment with the Trump administration. This is not about Joe Carollo.”
Pardo said it is about opening the city up to new people and ideas and points at how term limits have changed the leadership in Miami-Dade. “We’re looking at a whole new set of commissioners that came in,” he told Political Cortadito. “It changes the entire dynamic.”
The city’s own commission could be an example of how non establishment electeds can shake things up with the change made since Pardo and Commissioner Miguel Gabela, neither of whom have been in office before now, were elected in 2023.
“Miami residents have waited long enough for real change in our city government,” Pardo said in a statement, adding that the legislation “limits the participation of career politicians entrenched in City politics.
“We are committed to a more representative government that advocates for its residents’ interests,” Pardo said. “Holding public office should be about public service, not self-interest or monied interests. This legislation guarantees that our government remains as dynamic, responsive, and accountable as possible. We are ushering in a new era of transformational leadership and democracy in the Magic City—one in which public service is a privilege, not an entitlement.
“We are proud to introduce this measure and look forward to residents making their voices heard in the November general election.”
Read related: 2025 Miami Commission contests could be battles between some known names
All it has to do is get three votes on the commission next week, or two other votes aside from Pardo. Ladra suspects that Gabela will be supportive. And Reyes might want a safety net to take Carollo out if he wins the mayor’s race. But is his vote a conflict of interest? King is out. Not just because she does Carollo’s bidding, but because she honestly thinks that elections are the true expression of term limits.
If they approve next week’s measure, the city attorney’s office will still have to come back within 120 days to get the ballot language approved by September 5 to make it onto the November ballot.
Ladra suspects that, if it gets on the ballot, the amendment will win with an overwhelming majority. Nearly 70% of Miami Beach voters passed a similar measure in 2014, creating “lifetime term limits” for their electeds. It’s why commissioner Michael Gongora was blocked by a judge from running for re-election in 2021.
The amendment, if passed would be retroactive, which means that Carollo, if elected, would be de facto ousted from office. Any Carollo, actually, because if the commissioner’s brother Frank decides to come back and wins, that election would also be invalidated. Pardo said the seat could go to whoever came in second in the race — but he doesn’t really know.
Ladra says there will be lawsuits.
Candidates would be made aware of this at the time they qualify and voters would also be made aware that there are candidates who might be invalidated if the amendment passes. Basically, that they risk throwing their vote away if they cast it for a Carollo.
That makes for a good campaign slogan.
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It may not be a general or mid-term election year, but several cities in Miami-Dade have important elections that can impact the lives of their residents for years to come. The biggest are in Miami and Hialeah, where mayoral contests will be wide open, and Miami Beach and Homestead. Those four are in November.
There are also other elections in smaller municipalities scattered throughout the year with different qualifying periods.
The first two elections in Miami-Dade for 2025 were cancelled.
In Golden Beach, Mayor Glenn Singer and Councilmember Judy Lusskin were re-elected without opposition. Newly elected Councilmember Jessie Mendal, who is filling the seat vacated by Jaime Mendal, who served for eight years, was elected without any opposition. In Hialeah Gardens, Mayor Yioset de la Cruz and two council members — Group 5 and Group 6, but the website doesn’t say who is which group — were also re-elected with no opposition. Which is predictable in these tiny towns.
Read related: Long list of potential 2025 Miami mayoral candidates starts to take form
There could be an election in Bay Harbor Islands, where there are two candidates in one of the council races, so far. And in Miami Springs, where there is some movement based on term limits and personal reasons leaving an open mayoral and three open council seats. Both of those are April 1, but qualifying doesn’t end until Feb. 20 and Feb. 14, respectively.

There is also a special election in Surfside on April 1, where voters will be asked if the charter should be amended to limit the floor area ratio to a maximum 0.50 for new detached single family homes in the H30A and H30B districts. That’s basically half the size of the lot area. The only exception would be made after a unanimous approval from the commission and a 60% vote of the public.
Floor area ratio (FAR) is the measurement of a building’s floor area in relation to the size of the lot/parcel. FAR is expressed as a decimal, derived by dividing the total area of the building by the total area of the parcel. Higher FARs indicate greater building volume. FAR is most often used to express development intensity and has spurred much debate at several municipal zoning meetings.
The first highly-anticipated and contentious election is in Coral Gables on April 8. The truly contested mayoral race is expected to be dirty and full of lies, as Mayor Vince Lago defends his position to a challenge from Commissioner Kirk Menendez. Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson is also up for re-election and is facing a challenge from Felix Pardo and Laureano Cancio. The open seat vacated by Menendez will see a contest between attorney Richard Lara, the handpicked and groomed Lago candidate, FreeBee lobbyist Claudia Miro, who lost a commission race in 2021, and attorney Tom Wells.
Read related: Two more candidates say they will run for Coral Gables commission in April
The Lago/Anderson/Lara slate is being cast as the pro-development, anti-resident ticket. But Lago’s pull is questionable. He was unopposed two years ago but supported two commission candidates who lost. Shortly after that, he lost the majority. Lara is his attempt to get it back. If he and Anderson win, but Lara loses, Lago will still be as paralyzed by the 3-2 vote as he is now.
April 8 is also the date for the Miami Shores election and the special election to fill a vacant commission seat in Biscayne Park.
In May, voters in Sweetwater have an election scheduled for commissioners in Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4. City Clerk Carmen Garcia told Political Cortadito that nobody has registered yet. The deadline to qualify is March 28.
Of course, the big races are in November, and Ladra will have independent stories on each of those as the campaigns roll out.
A relatively new Florida law requires all vote-by-mail ballot requests to be purged after every general and midterm election. But the county elections department has been sending out emails and text messages to get traditional absentee ballot voters to make their requests. As of Wednesday, since 19,113 have requested a vote-by-mail ballot since Jan. 1 of this year, according to the Miami-Dade Elections Department.
To request an absentee ballot for an election in any of these cities, visit the county elections department’s page.
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While there is only one candidate declared to be running for Miami commission, in District 5, there are many potential and rumored hopefuls — and most of them, if not all, are known entities in the community.
Attorney Alfie Leon, who almost beat Joe Carollo in 2017 for the District 3 seat (came within 252 votes) — and then sued him on residency status because he had long lived in D2’s Coconut Grove — told Political Cortadito in October that he was “planning on running again” and would “make an announcement soon.” Tick, tock, Alfie.
Two other 2017 candidates who lost in District 4 are said to be eyeing a second chance, should Manolo Reyes actually run for mayor as he has threatened to do: Urban planner Ralph Rosado, who got 36% of the vote against Reyes, who won with 58%, and Denise Galvez Turros, a marketing boutique owner who works with the Little Havana businessmen that sued Carollo, who only got 7%. Rosado has served on the Friends of The Underline board of directors. Galvez has served on the city’s Historic and Environmental Preservation Board.
Read related: Alfonso “Alfie” Leon could run again for Miami D3 commission seat next year
Both make good candidates but venture capitalist Rafael “Ralph” Cabrera, president-elect of the Latin Builders Association, is apparently the heir apparent with Reyes’ blessing. That is, if he runs for mayor, after all.
Las malas lenguas say that Brenda Betancourt is eyeing the District 3 seat. She is the president of the Little Havana Neighborhood Association, a frequent speaker at commission meetings — where she defends Carollo — and the wife of Miguel Soliman, who ran unsuccessfully against Carollo in both 2017 ad 2020. He got almost 6% of the vote in 2017, with 357 ballots cast in his favor, but did worse in 2021, with less than 5% of the vote and 266 votes.
The most interesting rumored candidate, so far, is Patrick Range, the grandson of Mary Athelie Range — a Bahamian American civil rights activist and the first black elected to the city commission in 1965 — who is reportedly looking at a run in District 5 against Chairwoman Christine King.
There is a park ad a stretch of Biscayne Boulevard named after Athalie Range, who was appointed by then Mayor Robert King High to replace a commissioner who resigned and went on to win re-election twice. In 1971, she was appointed Secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs by Gov. Reubin Askew. She became the first African-American since Reconstruction and the first woman ever to head a state agency in Florida. In other words, she is Black Miami royalty.
Prince Patrick Range is an attorney who once worked for former Miami Commissioner Johnny Winton and now helps run the family funeral home.

He was more recently chair of the Virginia Key Trust Board and has been upset with King — who called voters “mean and miserable” — since she led the dismantling of the volunteer group that dedicated their time and efforts to ensure the beach, park and site of a future museum of Black history in Miami would be protected, and replaced it basically with the city commission.
He discussed it with WPLG’s Glenna Milberg last year. “Nobody has yet to explain why it was necessary to remove the prior board and to do so within the swift nature that we were removed,” Range told her. “This is with little explanation and no plan in place for how they would move forward. That just seems very shortsighted to me.”
He said that Virginia Beach had been the target of several development plans throughout the years, including hotels, private beach pavilions and other amenities and he seems distrustful of the commission (folks say he’s smart), which has floated housing the homeless in a camp there and also swiped the license of a concessionaire last year without any notice.
Read related: Long list of potential 2025 Miami mayoral candidates starts to take form
“This is why the trust was created back in 200o, in order to prevent these things from happening,” he said in the Channel 10 interview.
Range should be a real challenge to King, who has been a disappointment to many of her own constituents and has given half a million dollars in city funds to the non-profit she used to work at before she was elected (and where she’ll likely work after she’s voted out). Marion Brown, the one candidate who has filed to run in D5, got just over 10% of the vote in August’s Miami-Dade District 3 race.
The Miami commission and mayoral election is in November. Qualifying is Sept. 5 through Sept. 20. So we can expect more candidates to come up.
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