Rumblings in Florida
- Thread starter Diogenes
- Start date
Note what year the Democrats took over down there.
Democrats took the Miami-Dade County mayoralty in November 2020.
- Democrat takeover: Daniella Levine Cava (Democrat) was elected mayor on November 3, 2020, and took office on November 17, 2020. She is the first Democrat to hold the county mayor’s office since Alex Penelas left in 2004. She won re-election in 2024.
Elections for mayor and the County Commission are officially nonpartisan, but candidates’ party affiliations are well-known and matter in practice.
County Commission context
The 13-member Board of County Commissioners has also shifted. Democrats gained ground in the mid-to-late 2010s (Levine Cava herself flipped a Republican-held commission seat in 2014). As of late 2025, Republicans held a narrow majority on the commission (7–6), even while a Democrat remained mayor.
Relevance to the spending claims
Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia’s “waste” figures (the ones in the Libs of TikTok post) focus on budget growth in recent years, including the period after Levine Cava took office in late 2020. His earlier review in October 2025 flagged roughly $302–303 million in the then-current general fund; the June 2026 update raised the single-year figure to about $470 million for FY 2025–26 and put the multi-year total (since ~2023) at $807 million.
Budget growth and spending decisions occur under the current Democrat mayor, but they also involve the commission (which has been mixed/Republican-leaning more recently) and longer-term trends that predate 2020. Ingoglia’s method mainly compares overall budget growth against population + inflation + a buffer, rather than attributing every dollar to one party’s exclusive decisions.
Bottom line for Brad’s question: Democrats have controlled the Miami-Dade County mayor’s office continuously since November 2020.
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