Outrage followed Miami's vote to move election. Now some are trying to reverse it
A brazen power grab.
Disenfranchisement. A slap in the face to democracy. The most self-serving non-solution. An absolute disgrace.
Those are some of the things being said about the decision Miami city commissioners made last week to cancel the upcoming November election, where voters would have chosen a new mayor and two commissioners. The change was made to move the city's elections to even years, aligning it with the federal election cycle, starting in November 2026.
Those criticisms are much different from how the item's sponsor, Commissioner Damian Pardo, explained it: a legal and applicable reform. While seemingly fewer, supporters of the change have called it common sense and a victory for future voter turnout.
Just hours after the City Commission voted 3-2 to approve the controversial ordinance, Mayor Francis Suarez signed the measure into law, effectively extending his — and the commissioners' — terms in office for one more year. Outrage, both from residents and candidates who planned to run this November, quickly followed.
As news spread across social media, the commission's vote garnered national attention, with some connecting the local issue to larger concerns about democratic processes and institutions. As debate and interest intensified online, some political leaders became the targets of scorn while others enjoyed a sudden, unexpected swell of support.
Several mayoral hopefuls are already turning their campaigns into crusades to restore the November election.
One of those candidates, Emilio González, has already sued, calling the commission's decision 'an outrageous abuse of power,' and another has threatened legal action. Voters have begun receiving surveys asking if they would support a recall of Pardo. And some are looking toward a possible intervention by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, who both admonished the city against moving the election without first getting voter input through a ballot question.
Activist and mayoral hopeful Michael Hepburn told the Miami Herald he's hoping to 'fight back' with other candidates, including by attempting a recall of Pardo. Hepburn said that, like González, he plans to sue the city, alongside residents from several districts.
As news broke Friday that the mayor had already signed the election ordinance, Hepburn said he wasn't surprised.
'Mayor Francis Suarez has been a self-serving politician in this city for years, and this is just another example of him using his public office to benefit himself,' Hepburn argued.
Suarez did not respond to reporters' attempts to reach him for comment.
Over the last week, González said his campaign has received a sudden boost in support and attention. He shared images with the Herald showing his campaign's average website traffic recently surged by over 10,000%.
'People are energized; folks who in the past couldn't care less, now they care,' González said. 'People usually ask about why you're running — now everyone knows why I'm running.'
In the last week, Miami's election change jumped to the fore of conversations in online forums like Reddit. The social media pages and posts of elected officials were also inundated with debate over the ordinance.
'If it's so popular then why didn't you allow your constituents to vote on it?' read one comment under a video Pardo posted to Instagram addressing objections to the legislation.
'You disappointed me today more than ever,' someone else wrote below a post from Commissioner Christine King, who backed the measure.
While some commenters supported the change, saying it would increase voter participation, others connected the commission's vote to concerns expressed by last month's 'No Kings' protests, responding with references to 1776 and remarks like 'America, we don't do kings.'
'I'm seeing many on social media comparing this to Trump's potential effort to violate term limits,' said Ken Russell, one of the mayoral candidates.
A former city commissioner, Russell said he believes in increasing voter turnout by moving to even-year elections — but only if voters approve of doing so in a ballot referendum.
Many younger voters feel similarly, said Luna Plaza, a student at the University of Miami.
'We want higher turnout, especially for youth voters — but this was undemocratic,' said Plaza, an activist involved with several advocacy groups. 'They stole a year of political participation from an entire cohort of young people. Three commissioners decided that they knew better than the people.'
James Torres, president of the Downtown Neighbors Alliance, echoed those remarks: 'Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with moving the election date, it should be decided by the voters.'
González is banking on his lawsuit ending with the courts voiding the ordinance and forcing the city to reinstate a November 2025 election. 'I know we'll win big, and the city of Miami will have egg on its face,' González said.
Through a spokesperson, Pardo said he was unable to comment on issues tied to current litigation involving the city, which moved swiftly to dismiss González's lawsuit.
In a motion filed this week, the city argued that state law allows cities to align local elections with statewide contests, regardless of whether that extends the terms of current officials. The city argued such changes can be enacted by ordinance and without requiring a public vote.
State officials have disagreed.
'It is wrong for incumbent politicians to cancel elections and unilaterally extend their terms in office,' DeSantis said in a June 26 social media post, threatening a 'swift legal response' if the change was enacted. Uthmeier, the state's attorney general, previously issued an opinion that changing the election's date without voter approval violates the state constitution and county charter.
Since the City Commission's vote, neither DeSantis nor Uthmeier appears to have publicly commented on the decision, and neither responded to inquiries from the Herald.
Commissioner Joe Carollo, who was joined by Commissioner Miguel Angel Gabela in voting against the change, said he expected a judge would rule against the city.
'The courts will agree that this decision can't stand,' Carollo said.
Russell, a Democrat, said he found himself in the odd position of supporting Republican state officials' interpretation of the law.
'It's a real Twilight Zone to find myself agreeing with Governor DeSantis and the attorney general,' said Russell, 'but in this case, I do.'
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Cooley believes the media and politicians are overly focused on attacking the data and not paying enough attention to the conclusions Marbut reaches with that data. "You can certainly note the deficiencies as you see them ... but I think it'd be a pity to miss the higher level order of what's being recommended," Cooley said. Every effort should be made to send people back where they came from, particularly if they've been in Spokane for less than 90 days, according to the report. Those who stay should be cut off from long-term services, which should be reserved only for those with longstanding ties to Spokane. For those who are from Spokane, the report recommends mandatory treatment services in order to receive housing, which city officials claim would violate state and federal law. Marbut has spoken out for at least a decade against policies he believes are "enabling" the homeless with "goodies," including Housing First policies that have been the national standard since 2013, in which homeless people are given stable housing upfront to enable them to then address addiction, mental health and social reintegration. Attempts to relocate the homeless en masse are even older. The phrase "Greyhound therapy" has been used to describe the practice since the 1970s and has been criticized by researchers for just as long for redistributing the social costs of homelessness rather than improving them. Many of America's largest cities have, at one point or another, attempted similar policies; between 2011 and 2017, the Guardian tracked over 20,000 homeless people given bus tickets out of and sometimes between 16 U.S. cities. Proponents, including the Spokane Business Association, argue that such programs reconnect people to families and friends and can lead to a long-term improvement in their situation. Spokane's homeless service providers have engaged in the practice for years, however. If a homeless person requests a bus ticket, and a friend or family member declares they can take them in, they will be provided a ticket. Julie Garcia, who runs the homeless services organization Jewels Helping Hands, which manages several of the city's homeless shelters, estimated her organization hands out around 250 tickets a year. There appears to be little academic research into whether these programs lead to long-term reductions of homelessness or just move it elsewhere. The Guardian reported that, of the thousands being bused from San Francisco through the Homeward Bound program between 2010 and 2015, the city had records of following up with only three people after they reached their destinations. But the Spokane Business Association report goes further to suggest that the city should cut off people who decline these tickets from long-term homeless services and even emergency shelters after 21 days. While much of the study copies nearly verbatim a similar report on King County that Marbut was commissioned to write for the Discovery Institute, Marbut claims that Spokane is unusual in one regard: Homeless people aren't coming to Spokane for its quality services, but for its lax enforcement. "What we got on the street was generally, they treat me nice here, they don't hassle me," Marbut said. "It wasn't that they came here because of the services — many communities I go to, it's, 'Oh, they have great services' — but here it was, 'They sort of let me be.' " This picture notably doesn't match what many homeless people on Spokane's streets have told The Spokesman-Review in recent years, who described being pushed from place to place throughout the day by law enforcement, security guards and business owners. "We literally don't get to sit down like this," said Amber, a 32-year-old homeless woman interviewed under an overpass in August. "We are moving constantly. ... So many people have cracked feet and heels." Cooley dismissed this type of enforcement as an "occasional blow of the horn," and wants to see tougher laws and stricter enforcement — not because he wants them to go to jail, which he says would be ineffective and expensive — but to force people to change their lives. Cooley acknowledged that Washington's involuntary treatment laws are not extensive enough to force a homeless person into drug or mental health treatment. Instead, he argued, the city should use its tougher homelessness laws to offer them a choice: either go to jail, or enter "voluntary" treatment. Or they could leave, Cooley noted. "If you find that a great number of people have no connection to Spokane at all, and you suddenly begin to say you cannot use fentanyl in this community unfettered ... how many of those folks will stick around?" Cooley asked. In an interview, Mayor Lisa Brown dismissed the report as misinformed, arguing many of the report's claims about the city's policies were untrue and some of its recommendations were already standard practice. "I believe this is really about the political campaigns in November," Brown said, noting Stone's longstanding funding of candidates opposing progressive policies and production of high-dollar videos to encourage tougher homelessness policies. "I also believe that, with the resources they are apparently able to mobilize, it would be great if, as a show of good faith, they put them into an actual solution, rather than a propaganda campaign against the city and the majority on the city council," Brown added. But Cooley believes the evidence was clear, regardless of the survey's findings, that what the city is doing is failing to have a significant impact on the city's visible homeless population or its soaring overdose deaths. "I know Seattle really damn well, and I can't believe the rapid turnaround as it relates to enforcement," Cooley said. "And what I don't know is where those people are ... but I know they've made a visible turn in on-street homelessness." The report has started to leak into the broader public conversation on Spokane's homelessness policies. Wendy Fishburne, vice president of the East Spokane Business Association, appeared to quote parts of it verbatim Monday before the Spokane City Council voted to reform its homelessness laws. "Research shows that people do better recovering from addiction when they're surrounded by their families of origin," Fishburne said. "Find out where people actually come from and compassionately send them home ... so that our resources could be used for our folks."
