In the battle for the mayor's office in Miami-Dade County, incumbent Daniella Levine Cava is heavily favored to reach a Nov. 5 runoff, if not potentially win the primary election in August outright.
But an intriguing battle between two very different brands of conservative is taking place for the number two slot in a second round. The technically nonpartisan race features two prominent Cuban-American Republicans — one is a restaurant owner and mayor of a small city, the other a firebrand social media influencer who is campaigning only in Spanish.
Manny Cid, the mayor of Miami Lakes, has racked up endorsements from the Miami Young Republicans — a partner group of the Florida Republican Party — and endorsements from development groups and small business owners.
"The reality is that the top thing we need to do is lower taxes. We're at the point where the county budget is over $12 billion — more than entire countries in the Caribbean and Central America," said Cid.
On the other side, Alexander Otaola, a firebrand Cuban-American anti-communist social media influencer, has written off endorsements of any kind. He told WLRN that he is running against the “establishment” and that he owes politicians or political parties nothing.
“I am running this campaign with the people and for the people,” Otaola, 45, told WLRN in Spanish during an interview at his Redland ranch.
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Otaola benefits from the far reach of his various YouTube shows that draw in audiences across Cuba and across the entire Cuban diaspora, from Miami to Madrid.
By one important measure of grassroots support, Otaola is blowing all the other candidates in the race out of the water, suggesting there is a large pool of voters waiting to cast ballots for him and potentially propel him into the second round.
Through late July, Otaola’s campaign has received a whopping 14,003 individual donations, often just $1 or $5, totaling $120,650.
That’s compared to a mere 394 individual contributions collected by Manny Cid’s campaign. They gave more on average, totaling $178,414. Levine Cava’s campaign has collected 4,099 individual donations from residents and businesses, giving her a campaign war chest of $1.3 million.
“The way that people see and interpret politics has changed. People are looking for representatives that reflect themselves, and that’s what’s happening with me. I’m an outsider,” said Otaola. “I come into politics with no kind of agreements or baggage with the big businesses, with political powers or big donors.”
WLRN recently spent time with the campaigns of both Cid and Otaola, and while among Republican voters Cid received strong support for his policies, some residents told WLRN that Otaola seemed to have the edge just on name recognition.
“When he talks about lowering taxes, that’s where he gets my vote. That’s what we need to solve our problems,” said West Kendall resident Maria Castrillo, a Cuban immigrant, speaking of Manny Cid. “But he needs a lot of promotion. A lot of promotion.”
“Otaola has a huge amount of people who support him, even though he talks nonsense. At my house, everyone watches Otaola every single day,” she said.
She likened Otaola’s brand of politics in the Cuban-American community to the music of Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, a kind of magnetism that simply doesn’t make sense to her, a 70-year-old.
“Young people love Bad Bunny. But who is Bad Bunny? He’s not a singer or a composer or anything. But what are you going to do? They love him,” she said.
Otaola: The anti-communist candidate
The central message of the Otaola campaign is to rid Miami-Dade County of communists. He sees a county infiltrated by communist agents who run businesses connected to the authoritarian governments in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, specifically with companies that offer travel and package deliveries to those nations.
He claims that many of those companies are communists because they receive licenses to operate from oppressive governments, and that no vocally anti-communist business owners would be allowed to receive those licenses. There’s no evidence for many of his claims; those companies fulfill a strong demand for those services here in South Florida.
A central campaign promise is that if he is elected, Otaola will pressure the county commission to create a series of panels to investigate, identify and shut down those alleged communist businesses.
“If your work, if your words defend the repression of your own people, then you will have to explain yourself. You will be forced to explain yourself, if the investigation finds you are doing that,” said Otaola. “It’s not persecution or a witch hunt, it’s simply to clarify what is happening.”
Otaola is a registered Republican, but he said he will take the Republican state government to task when necessary. For example, he speaks passionately against the Republican-dominated state government for imposing strict new condo laws after the Surfside condo collapse in 2021 that left 98 people dead. Those laws are driving up the cost of living for condo owners, and forcing some residents to sell their homes.
“If I have to camp out in Tallahassee, the mayor of Miami-Dade will camp out in Tallahassee with the people. So the people know their voices are being listened to,” he said. “It is what it is. I want to do things for the people. The party did not get me where I am – neither of the parties.”
His brand of pitchfork politics cuts many ways. If he needs to lead protests against the Miami-Dade School Board over any given policy, he will do it, even though it is an autonomous board, separated from the county government, he said.
When it comes time to negotiate a new contract with the more than 30,000 county government employees, Otaola said he will mobilize to fight employee unions if they ask for higher pay in order to lower taxes. He argued that current Mayor Levine Cava has failed to lower taxes, in large part because she has given into pressure from the labor unions that have supported her.
“The unions have historically kept pressure with support from the people,” he said. “I will be the first representative to become mayor with more people than the unions.”
"I am the representation of [immigrant] voices like mine. My intention is not to separate myself from them. My intention is to come into politics with them."Alexander Otaola
Otaola has chosen only to speak Spanish in his campaign, a choice he made so that he can speak clearly and not stumble on his words in English. If he makes the second round in the election and has to appeal to African-American and Anglo voters, he said he does not see it being a potential liability.
He told WLRN he was inspired by Dominican-born Democrat Brian DePeña, who in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 2021, after campaigning in Spanish. In public events, DePeña speaks almost exclusively in Spanish, using an interpreter to translate his message into English. Similar to Miami-Dade, the city is over 80% Latino.
“I want people to concentrate on the points of my campaign and what I bring to the county,” said Otaola. “Not if I mispronounce something, or if I conjugate a verb incorrectly.”
On his YouTube shows, Otaola has from time to time drawn outrage for things like appearing in blackface and for dismissing Puerto Rico as an island that offers nothing more than residents who receive food stamps. He has apologized for those episodes.
What perhaps most distinguishes Otaola from other Cuban-American politicians is that he is a relatively recent arrival, who came in 2003; virtually all Cuban-American politicians come from the "historic exile" of the 1960s, or they are children of those who fled during the early Cuban Revolution years.
of Cubans have arrived in the US since the 1990s, and more people have fled the island over the last few years . Miami-Dade remains a top destination for those new immigrants. But relatively new arrivals have never found a political voice that matches their own experience of having lived much of their lives under Communism.
Otaola hopes to be that candidate to open the door for their voices to be represented.
"I am the representation of those voices like mine. My intention is not to separate myself from them. My intention is to come into politics with them," he said.
"Most of our politicians theoretically know how things work in Cuba. But none of them have lived it. None have lived it in their own skin," said Otaola, slapping his forearm as he spoke. "I have. I have suffered the discrimination. I have suffered the persecution of the Communists, and I still suffer their threats. That's why I have private security, because I have death threats."
The regime named him on a list of 61 "" released last year, due to his activism. It's a label he wears as a badge of honor.
Luisa Rodriguez is a Cuba native from Camagüey who lives in Austin, Texas, who was visiting family in South Florida. Amid her family obligations she made sure to visit an event with the Venezuelan American Republican Club, in which Otaola spoke. She proudly wore a hat signed by the influencer, and sang praises for the candidate that were echoed by her daughter Isel, who plans to vote for him.
"I got it signed to show it off to a friend of mine, to show that I hugged and kissed him," said Luisa Rodriguez, showing the cap. "He thinks of other people and I pray that he has good health and that he wins this election, because we need it."
The defiantly independent streak of Otaola is a large part of what attracts his supporters.
“What attracts me to the Otaola campaign is what his campaign is saying: that he wants to make Miami-Dade a communist free place,” said Fernando Bayas, an immigrant from Ecuador who is volunteering for the campaign. “He’s going to be like in a blank position, that he’s not with the right, not with the left, he’s going to try to come inside Miami-Dade County to see: where are the issues.”
Cid: The cutting-taxes candidate
For Miami Lakes Mayor Manny Cid, the pocketbook is the central theme of the campaign. Nearly all parts of his pitch to voters point to the need to lower taxes on residents.
On a recent Saturday, WLRN trailed him as he knocked on doors and visited two West Kendall restaurants to talk to potential supporters. The high cost of housing was a common thread in the discussions, and for Cid, lowering taxes is at the heart of the issue.
“Every single year when you’re a renter, your rent goes up because it’s a pass-through. The guy who owns the building, or the woman who owns the building — they get that tax bill and they increase the rent,” Cid told potential supporters over Cuban sandwiches. “Over the last several years our taxes have gone up so much that you’ve seen rents balloon.”
Longtime residents have been leaving the county because of the high cost of living, many have found. Public polling has found in particular are the largest complaint among residents. The county has lowered property tax rates over the last few years, but because property values have increased so much, residents are in fact paying more taxes than ever before, even as rates have been technically cut.
“We’ve always looked at other states and ahh – ‘Look at them, no one wants to live there anymore.’ And now it’s starting to happen here. You’re starting to get that feel of a northeast county where you have failed services and just runaway taxes,” said Cid. “I think that’s not the dream of what Miami-Dade County is.”
Miami-Dade County has more than doubled the amount of public money going to affordable and workforce housing development during Levine Cava’s administration. Cid says this is fundamentally a waste of money, because that money goes towards rental housing.
“I’m gonna use all the money that we have for affordable housing and create a program with every single community bank, to give loans on a low-interest basis to our kids, to our grandkids, to be able to buy their homes,” he said. “That’s the only way that you start changing a community, is through ownership.”
“There’s more than enough money not only to lower taxes but to improve services. The reality is that there’s nobody there ... that’s ever owned a business."Manny Cid
Speaking to resident Carlos Bahamon after knocking on his door, Cid assured the Colombia-native that he is the best conservative candidate in the race. He promised to improve elderly services and extend the Metrorail towards the west. Transportation issues have been a frequent talking point of his campaign.
Cid passed Bahamon a campaign flier with a photo of his wife and three children. “I need an updated photo, because last week I got another son,” Cid joked.
“Best of luck with the newborn,” said Bahamon. “I think I will support you.”
Cid owns a restaurant in Miami Lakes, and he says that gives him perspective on how the government should work, on how to balance budgets and restructure when necessary. It also gave him perspective on hands-on, hard work. “When the pandemic hit I had to start working in the kitchen to save money,” he said. The county needs to elect a mayor that has that kind of real world experience, he argued.
“There’s more than enough money not only to lower taxes but to improve services. The reality is that there’s nobody there that has the wherewithal to be the administrator. There’s nobody there that’s ever owned a business. Let’s just be real,” he said.
Mayor Levine Cava founded the nonprofit group Catalyst Miami and worked as an attorney before being elected county mayor, he acknowledged.
“There’s nothing wrong with that, I have a lot of friends who are attorneys, but there’s nobody who’s owned a real business, who’s ever created a job,” Cid said.
Cid's parents fled Cuba decades ago, before the 40-year-old was born in Miami-Dade. He speaks critically of the large number of migrants arriving in the US under the Biden Administration, a large number of whom are Venezuelans and Cubans.
"We all came from different countries, but we came with a process. My parents had to wait three years, they had to go to Spain first," he said. "You can't let so many people in at the same time, especially if you don't let them work, because that creates a secondary problem."
Arlene Rivas, a Republican voter in West Kendall, knew nothing at all about Cid before meeting him over lunch, but she told WLRN he now has her vote. She liked his business background, his focus on pocketbook issues, and that she found him to be an approachable, likable person.
“I was blown away by who he really is and I feel he will make a difference,” said Rivas.
Rivas acknowledged that there’s little a mayor can do to stop a constant inflow of out of state residents that have accounted for much of the upward trend in housing costs. Many newcomers have higher wages, and that has pushed housing costs up.
“It literally is becoming another New York, and at the same time that concerns me because I don’t want it to become another New York. I want it to stay like it once was,” said Rivas. “But I feel like whatever he does — he’s gonna look out for what’s best for the people living here.”
