Richard Lamondin challenges Maria Elvira Salazar with ‘town hall’ in CD27

Congressional candidate Richard Lamondin must be feeling pretty good this week. His campaign’s first community town hall was drew a nice crowd Tuesday night at St. James Baptist Church in Coconut Grove. That already puts him ahead of Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, who hasn’t faced her constituents without a teleprompter or studio lighting in, well, ever.
The Miami-born entrepreneur and first-time candidate, a Democrat running to replace Republican Salazar, actually sat in front of real, live people — no Fox filter, no pre-recorded video, no carefully cropped backdrop of Little Havana cafecitos. Just him, a microphone, and a group of voters who have been waiting five years for their congresswoman to stop hiding behind a camera.
Read related: Democrat candidate Richard Lamondin steps up for absent Maria Elvira Salazar
Lamondin took questions from an audience of about 50 people on everything from housing costs to health care to small business survival, answering directly from the pews where voters packed in. It was the kind of event people in District 27 haven’t seen from their actual congresswoman in her five years of duck-and-cover representation.
“I would not be here if we had proper leadership,” Lamondin told the group. “We are a time right now where we have a congresswoman, Maria Elvira Salazar, who is viewed as elitist, because she is. She does not come into the community.
“She is viewed as out of touch, because she is. She only speaks to us through a camera,” Lamondin continued. “And when I knock on doors she is viewed as scared, because she is. She is scared of looking us in the eye and explaining to us, why some of us do not have healthcare… why, during hurricane season, she is supporting cuts to FEMA and to the flood mitigation that will lower our property insurance.
“She is afraid to look us in the eye and explain, especially to our seniors, why there are cuts to food assistance, housing assistance, the type of lifelines that this community needs… to pay the tax cuts for billionaires who don’t need the money.”
He also mentioned the cruel immigration policies that Salazar has supported with her silence — the ripping apart of families, sending teenagers into ill-prepared detention centers. “This is not the country I want my son to grow up in,” Lamondin said.
Read related: Maria Elvira Salazar’s ‘Dignity Act’ is about zero dignity and all a big act
The candidate told the crowd what they wanted to hear: that he’ll show up, that he’ll listen, and that he won’t disappear when the community needs him. But the biggest applause line wasn’t his. It came when someone pointed out the empty chair that would have been Salazar’s if she ever bothered to come.
In fact, dozens of attendees filled out question cards addressed to their absent congresswoman. Lamondin says he will personally take them to Salazar’s Miami office himself. Ladra can already see the campaign video.
Of course, this isn’t just about the Q&A. It’s about optics. And the optics were clear: Lamondin looked like the candidate who actually wants the job, while Salazar looked like she couldn’t be bothered. He looked like someone running toward the community, while Salazar continues to run away from it. And the optics of a packed Grove church versus a green screen studio are not good for a so-called “voice of the district.”
That could be a problem for the incumbent, especially since the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already put her on their target list. While Salazar enjoys incumbency in a GOP stronghold district that has about 30,000 more Republican voters than Democrats, her constant taking credit for things she didn’t do and the lack of spine on the immigration policy issue in a community full of immigrants, has made her increasingly unpopular within her own base.
Salazar beat former Miami-Dade School Board Member Lucia Baez-Geller last year by more than 20 points. But she won’t have Donald Trump’s coattails in 2026.
The Grove church crowd wasn’t just polite applause, either. They were fired up, laughing at the empty chair where Salazar would have sat if she had the guts. And if Lamondin can keep filling rooms like this, María Elvira may have to start doing more than reading carefully-crafted scripts in her journalist voice and recording dramatic kitchen-table monologues for Twitter.
Because the one thing voters in Miami hate more than corruption is being ignored.

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