By the Miami Herald Editorial Board
August 12, 2024, 5:15 PM
Voters in Miami-Dade County’s District 7 have three candidates for the County Commission in the Aug. 20 election. They are, from left to right: former Pinecrest mayor Cindy Lerner, Commissioner Raquel Regalado, and Richard Praschnik, who holds a seat on a county Community Council. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com
Miami Herald Editorial Board’s 2024 Election Endorsements
In advance of the upcoming primary elections on Aug. 20, 2024, the Editorial Board interviewed and researched candidates to better understand their views on various issues and how their policies will affect their constituents. The goal is to give voters a better idea of who’s the best candidate for each race.
The nonpartisan race for Miami-Dade County Commission District 7 is a rematch filled with bad blood.
In the district covering the southern portion of Miami, Key Biscayne, Pinecrest, South Miami, and part of Coral Gables, incumbent Raquel Regalado faces the opponent she beat by a thin margin in 2020, former Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner. Miami-Dade Schools Police Officer Richard Praschnik is also running in the Aug. 20 primary.
Her opponents accuse Regalado, a lawyer and former School Board member, of receiving too much campaign financial support from developers with business in the county, which is an unfortunate, yet common, practice among elected officials. Regalado has threatened to sue Lerner over mailers that try to link Regalado to other local Cuban-American officials accused of corruption or wrongdoing, even though she’s never faced similar accusations.
Regalado is from a political family. Her father, Tomás Regalado, is a former mayor of Miami running for Miami-Dade property appraiser.
Regalado, 50, has worked to accelerate the removal of septic tanks that pollute Biscayne Bay, to pass a moratorium on the sale of county property that isn’t connected to a sewage system, and new septic-tank standards that make them less likely to leak waste into waterways. She sponsored legislation to allow accessory dwelling units (aka efficiencies) in single-family homes in unincorporated Miami-Dade to create more affordable housing options and co-sponsored a “Tenant Bill of Rights” to grant more rights to renters. She advocated, albeit unsuccessfully, for larger property tax rate cuts than Mayor Daniella Levine Cava proposed in the past two years.
Regalado faced backlash for voting to allow the controversial conversion of the Calusa golf course into a 550-home development. She said she helped negotiate a requirement for the monitoring of a rookery on the property that was an environmental concern.
Lerner and Praschnik said the Calusa vote represented a betrayal to voters.
Praschnik, 28, said he’s running partly because he worries about over-development, especially in Kendall, which he said does not get the same attention as other parts of District 7. He holds an elected seat on an advisory zoning board known as a community council.
Lerner, 71, touted her environmental record in Pinecrest, including a climate action plan to reduce carbon emissions, the introduction of a free transit service, improvements at Pinecrest Gardens, and upgrades at the Banyan Bowl amphitheater. She said she was running again because of what she called Regalado’s broken promises.
In the 2020 elections, an attack ad compiled footage of Lerner berating citizens during Pinecrest village council meetings. Her ability to deal with opposing views remains a concern for the Editorial Board.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Raquel Regalado speaks during a forum debate with challengers Cindy Lerner and Richard Praschnik, running against her for the County’s District 7, hosted by the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations, on Thursday, June 27, 2024. Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com
Regalado’s record has not been free of blemishes. She flipped her vote to approve a concerning plan to expand Miami-Dade’s Urban Development Boundary (UDB) to allow a logistics and warehouse district near Homestead that environmentalists said interfered with Biscayne Bay restoration. She said she changed her mind after developers agreed to donate more than 200 acres to the county’s environmental lands program.
Lerner and Praschnik said opposed the UDB expansion. They are right.
At the same time, Regalado has been actively pushing for important issues. She and the mayor are trying to evict the Miami Seaquarium from county property on Virginia Key after the federal government found repeated animal welfare violations at the aging marine animal park.
A concern, if the eviction goes through, is that the property could be sold or leased to private developers. Regalado told the Herald Editorial Board she would not support that — “Absolutely not,” she said — and pointed to county requirements that the property remain recreational.
We hope she lives up to that promise if reelected. Her record is not above criticism, but she has plenty of good to highlight.
The Herald Editorial Board endorses RAQUEL REGALADO for County Commission District 7.
