Miami-Dade County Cultivates The RINOs That It Elects – JP

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Doral, Florida – In the upcoming general elections, a RINO is better than a Donkey. The Democrat party has been captured by globalists, communists and jihadists, led by Barack Hussein Obama. Democrats are no longer Jack Kennedy’s party, or even Bill Clinton’s party. They have veered too far to the left, so that they no longer offer an acceptable alternative option in general elections. As a result, the only acceptable candidates are Republicans.

In many cases, however, these Republican candidates are hardly shining examples of conservatives, much less libertarians. Nevertheless, the place to challenge these RINOs is during the party primary elections. By the time we get to the general elections, conservatives must vote for them. This means that, especially in majority-Republican States like Florida and Texas, the main battlegrounds for choosing conservative candidates are in the primary elections of the Republican party.

For example, Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, representing a majority-Hispanic district in South Florida, has recently produced ads attacking President Trump’s enforcement of immigration law. She claims that closing the border is a good thing, but that some illegal aliens should be allowed to remain. She claims that Trump’s policy of deportations is excessive, and that some illegal aliens are entitled to be treated with dignity.

President Trump and his administration obviously disagree, but Trump has been careful about attacking her too vigorously, because he needs her to win her general election. Then she can form a part of the Republican majority, vote for the Republican Speaker, and vote against any motion to impeach the President.

President Trump, however, has called for her to be primaried in two years, which gives candidates and their supporters an opportunity to prepare a challenge for 2028. Your correspondent must admit to having conducted a search for such a challenger over the last two years, without success. A big part of the problem is that Republicans in Miami-Dade County have a tradition of stifling competition in primary elections, as follows:

1. The Women’s Republican Club of Miami, Federated, meeting in Coral Gables, hosted Congresswoman Salazar to speak at one of their regular meetings shortly before the primary election day. At this meeting, the Congresswoman’s challenger in the primary, Michael Areas, a registered Republican in good standing, was denied the opportunity to speak at all. This denial reflects a culture of protecting incumbents and the establishment, and stifling competition among candidates. These denials eliminate the opportunity to elect the best candidate.

2. A few years ago, this same Club hosted Congressman Carlos Gimenez from a neighboring district. At this meeting, questions for the Congressman had to be written down on index cards and handed to the moderator to review and read out if found appropriate. This is how questions were asked of political leaders in the Soviet Union, and we know how that worked out. You would expect that the Cuban community of exiles from communism would want free expression, but they have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.

3. Four years ago, another local group, the Old Cutler Republican Women’s Club, which meets in South Miami, invited Alexis Calatayud, the only Republican candidate in the party primary for an open seat in the State Senate. The evening before that meeting, the president of that club called your correspondent and warned not to ask any probing questions. The next evening she harassed everyone who asked probing questions at the meeting. It was clear from the way Ms. Calatayud expressed herself, and from the photo of her marching with Black Lives Matter, that she is a leftist progressive.

Nevertheless, for some unexplained reason, State Senate President Kate Passidomo, the RINO Queen of Collier County, and Wilton Stimson, former Senate President and current Commissioner of Agriculture, had decreed that Ms. Calatayud should be the sole Republican candidate for that seat in the State Senate. She had worked as a legislative assistant in Tallahassee, where she met these benefactors. As a result, the entire Republican apparatus in Miami-Dade County fell into line and supported her as instructed.

Senator Calatayud has indeed been a progressive voice in the State Senate, and one of the leaders of the OCRWC asked this summer: Why hasn’t any candidate challenged Calatayud in the party primary? Of course not! Look how she had been protected by the establishment. In addition, this club leader had previously expressed her view that there should be no challengers to the establishment and incumbents in Republican primary elections. See also: https://miamiindependent.com/politics/2024/02/26/party-primaries-should-be-won-with-a-majority-not-a-plurality/?shem=aimgspe%2C.

4. Another example of this stifling of electoral competition comes from the County Commission, where vacancies are routinely filled not through special elections, but by the Board itself voting for the replacement. There is one Commissioner who was appointed to her seat, then this year faced no competition to retain her seat. Incumbent candidates in Florida had an over 90% success rate in 2024. As a result, this Commissioner does not really have “the consent of the governed,” as required by the Declaration of Independence. See: https://miamiindependent.com/politics/2026/07/07/support-joe-sanchez-for-county-commissioner/.

This stifling of electoral competition has resulted in Miami-Dade County, where 55% of the votes went to President Trump in 2024, having re-elected in the first round of the same year a woke progressive County Mayor. The main ideology of voters in this County is said to be anti-communism, but their practices suggest that they embrace totalitarian tactics.

Political Competition Matters
The political culture of stifling competition produces suboptimal outcomes for citizens. In business, competition among businesses benefits consumers, and in politics, competition among candidates benefits citizens.

Imagine if Florida had only two chains of grocery stores: (1) Aldi’s; and (2) Mayor Mamdani’s grocery shacks. How would citizens respond if the Board of Directors of Aldi’s decreed that on Wednesdays, the only food that would be made available to purchase would be lutefisk? Surely consumers would rebel, and shoppers might even burn down the Aldi’s stores in mostly peaceful protests!

That is what Republican voters in Miami-Dade County are facing today. The Republican party stifles competition for the establishment and incumbents, and as a result we get candidates that do not reflect the conservative MAGA positions of its voters. We cultivate our own RINOs, and then we complain when we have to vote for them in the general elections. Fine, but let’s create a culture of making Republican candidates prove themselves in the primary elections. That way we will wind up with fewer situations where we have to hold our nose when we vote for the Republican candidates in the general elections.

We need to promote dissent and competition within the Republican party, as well as free expression and toleration for the loyal opposition. There is no place for cancel culture.