A two-term Mayor and a longtime nonprofit director are squaring off to be the primary individual in additional than a decade not named Jean Monestime to symbolize District 2 on the Miami-Dade County Fee.

The showdown is between North Miami Mayor Philippe Bien-Aime and social employee Marleine Bastien, whose Household Motion Community Motion gives social providers to low-income and working-class residents.

The 2 are former allies. Bastien endorsed and helped Bien-Aime in prior elections. However she stated he’s proven his true colours since changing into his political opponent final 12 months, the primary time she’s ever run for public workplace.

No matter who wins, the seat will stay within the fingers of a Haitian American. Monestime, who gained workplace in 2010 and Chaired the Miami-Dade Fee from 2015 to 2017, is the primary Haitian American to serve on the Board.

District 2 covers sizable parts of North Miami and Opa-locka, in addition to smaller items of Hialeah, Miami, North Miami Seaside and the unincorporated neighborhoods of Biscayne Gardens, Liberty Metropolis and North Central Dade.

Bien-Aime and Bastien emerged because the No. 1 and a pair of vote earners, respectively, amongst six candidates who competed in an Aug. 23 election for the District 2 seat. Since neither secured greater than half the share of votes forged, Miami-Dade legislation requires them to compete in a runoff that culminates Tuesday.

Early voting is ongoing.

The district leans closely Democratic and is residence to a lot of Miami-Dade’s roughly 470,000 Black residents, a lot of them Haitian.

Success in management

Each candidates had been born on the island nation a roughly 73-mile drive other than each other.

Bien-Aime, 57, was born in Hait’s capital metropolis of Port-au-Prince. He immigrated to America within the Nineties and held a wide range of jobs — journalist, automobile salesman and auto dealership proprietor amongst them — earlier than settling into work in insurance coverage and taxes.

He gained a spot on the North Miami Council in 2013. A 12 months later, he served a brief stint as appearing Mayor, a task he later earned in full following town’s 2019 election.

The town has been on an upward trajectory since, he stated. He cited the work being achieved via its group redevelopment company, which he referred to as one of the best within the county. North Miami additionally loved a monetary turnaround below his management, together with a 15% discount in expenditures and transferring from a $14 million deficit to a $3.8 million budgetary surplus.

“We lowered crime by 22%, lowered property taxes by half, added over $6 million in property and introduced 14 high quality developments to town,” he stated. “The town is best off at the moment than yesterday, and … now I’ve determined to run for District 2 on the Miami-Dade Fee so I can proceed to serve the folks.”

Bastien, 63, was born within the small village of Pont-Benoit to farmer mother and father who constructed a college for kids and grownup literacy. She moved to the U.S. within the early Eighties and labored as a paralegal on the Haitian Refugee Heart and as a social employee at Jackson Memorial Hospital, the flagship establishment in Miami-Dade’s public well being system.

In 1991, she based Haitian Girls of Miami, a nonprofit positioned within the metropolis’s Little Haiti neighborhood, to fill a niche in providers the county gives to residents in want. She later renamed the group Household Motion Community Motion. Its acronym, FANM, interprets from Haitian Creole to “lady.”

At present, FANM operates with about 30 workers and a greater than $2 million yearly funds to offer wraparound providers to some 10,000 South Florida residents.

Her group connections and actions had been and stay myriad. She was the founding treasurer of The Youngsters’s Belief, which at the moment affords sources for being pregnant and parenting, medical health insurance entry, training, kids with particular wants and is a prime funder countywide of after-school, youth enrichment and summer time camp applications.

She co-Chaired the Human Rights Marketing campaign with the late Congresswoman Carrie Meek, one among many elected officers from each side of the political aisle with whom she turned pals. And her experience noticed her testify earlier than Congress, the Group of American States and the United Nations.

Bastien informed Florida Politics she was requested on a number of events to run for public workplace, together with twice by Monestime, who endorsed her after the Aug. 23 election as his most well-liked successor. The timing was by no means proper till this cycle.

“All the celebs aligned. It made sense,” she stated. “We’ve lots of issues. That’s why you want somebody who is aware of of the issues, has administration expertise, competence, braveness, the talent set to do it and the eagerness to serve. And work exhausting — I’m at all times working.”

Priorities and sources

Bien-Aime and Bastien’s marketing campaign platforms overlap in a number of areas. Each wish to assist entrepreneurs and native companies to spice up employment and prosperity within the district, which ranks among the many poorest within the county.

Each additionally wish to handle the county’s mounting housing affordability disaster, assist environmental and infrastructural sustainability, sluggish local weather change, broaden and enhance transit, and broaden the world’s group service choices.

Bien-Aime additionally needs to activate the district’s parks with extra programming and group occasions, tamp down crime and spend money on cleansing up the group with higher sanitation providers, residence rehab applications and training for first-time homebuyers, amongst different initiatives.

Bastien, in the meantime, needs to curb gun violence and enhance pay fairness, notably for ladies. She additionally wish to enhance lighting all through the district and assist discover housing for folks dwelling of their vehicles, a scenario she described as a “new breed of homelessness.”

When it comes to monetary muscle, Bien-Aime was unmatched within the District 2 race, amassing $1.4 million between his marketing campaign account and political committee, Progressive Advocates for Change, via late October. By then, he had $192,500 remaining.

The donations he took skewed closely towards the actual property and improvement sector, together with two-thirds of the $1.1 million he acquired via his PC.

Bastien raised a relatively modest $276,500 since launching her marketing campaign in October 2021. Her donations had been overwhelmingly grassroots, with most private checks coming in at $250 or much less.

The cash she accepted from the well being care and actual property industries composed a small portion of her total positive factors.

Three of the 4 different candidates within the District 2 race — retired paramedic William “D.C.” Clark, former North Miami Mayor Joe Celestin and enterprise guide Monique Barley-Mayo — have endorsed Bastien. Highschool principal Wallace Aristide, who took fourth place total, sided with Bien-Aime.

Bastien additionally acquired nods from Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, North Miami Councilwoman Mary Estimé-Irvin, Hollywood state Rep. Marie Woodson and former Miami-Dade Commissioner Audrey Edmonson.

A passel of native unions and advocacy teams, together with however not restricted to the South Florida AFL-CIO, SAVE Motion PAC, SEIU, AFSCME, Florida Rising, Ruth’s Record, Deliberate Parenthood, Unite Right here! Native 335 and Transport Employees Union Native 291, equally threw their assist behind her.

Bien-Aime has backing from U.S. Reps. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Frederica Wilson, state Sen. Shevrin Jones, state Rep. Joe Geller, Miami-Dade Commissioners Keon Hardemon and Kionne McGhee, and Miami-Dade Commissioner-elect Anthony Rodriguez.

He’s additionally courted assist from Miami-Dade Faculty Board member Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall, Opa-locka Vice Mayor John Taylor, North Miami Vice Mayor Alix Desulme, Miami Commissioner Christine King, North Miami Council members Scott Galvin and Kassandra Tomothe, Opa-locka Commissioner Audrey Dominguez, former state Rep. Barbara Watson, South Florida Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce President Luisa DeRosa, and a dozen or so native religion leaders.

Unpleasantries

Bien-Aime’s political profession hasn’t been with out controversy. In 2018, he was was accused of sexual harassment stemming from an alleged incident two years earlier than, when a former staffer stated he propositioned her. He settled out of courtroom and has constantly maintained he’s harmless of any wrongdoing.

Requested throughout a Florida Politics interview concerning the disproportionate donation sums from actual property pursuits, Bien-Aime alleged that Bastien accepted contributions from the identical teams. The one distinction, he stated, is that she takes the cash via her nonprofit group reasonably than her marketing campaign.

“I obtain donations from them whereas I’m operating for workplace, whereas she receives cash from them via her group,” he stated. “Everyone receives that. The Mayor of the county receives donations from the identical group of individuals. The cities — all these folks discover us each marketing campaign. It’s not distinctive to me.”

Bastien, who collected a wage of $83,223 in 2019 for her work as FANM’s director — $5,000 much less than she earned in 2018, in keeping with the corporate’s tax filings — referred to as Bien-Aime’s accusation “loopy” and stated FANM receives no cash from actual property pursuits.

FANM’s 2019 Annual Report helps her declare. It lists 12 funders and 19 sponsors, none of that are actual property entities. Seventy-seven % of its funding is from Miami-Dade County.

“And it’s all public information, so you’ll be able to see I don’t obtain any cash from actual property,” she stated. “You can not give credit score to something he says. He’s a serial liar.”

That harsh sentiment is a far cry from kinder phrases Bastien had for Bien-Aime when she endorsed him and helped him fundraise in his 4 earlier runs at public workplace. However in operating in opposition to him, she stated operatives from his marketing campaign employed unseemly techniques in opposition to her.

In an interview with Florida Politics, Bastien accused Bien-Aime’s camp of eradicating her marketing campaign indicators from public rights-of-way. She stated operatives engaged on his behalf tried to bribe a few of her supporters into leaving her marketing campaign and disrupted a public discussion board the 2 participated in till police intervened.

On the day voters obtained their absentee ballots within the mail, she stated many individuals in District 2 informed her they acquired luggage branded with the North Miami emblem containing expired cans of beans, sardines, rice and spaghetti. What she described is just like items Bien-Aime and his administration handed out to residents on the onset of the pandemic.

Bien-Aime denied Bastien’s expenses and famous his metropolis has operated a food-distribution program with Farm Share for years.

“This can be a distraction. She campaigned with me for 4 campaigns, and I by no means did any nasty campaigning,” he stated. “It’s desperation. They really feel they should make allegations.”

Put up Views: 0