Observations on the August 2026 primary election

Now that the fields are set for the November midterm election, some surprising plotlines emerged from the Aug. 18 primary. The most obvious one being Jacksonville State Rep. Angie Nixon clobbered Democrat establishment candidate Alex Vindman for the party’s U.S. Senate primary. Helping propel Nixon’s unexpected victory was Miami-Dade County Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, who won the Democratic primary for the 24th Congressional District currently occupied by Frederica Wilson. Gilbert finished first despite late polls showing him down by nearly double digits to State Sen. Shevrin Jones.

The August primary also again raised doubts about the political muscle wielded by Christian Ulvert, the campaign consultant who primarily works with Democrat candidates. For this recent election, added a notable Republican to his clientele, running point for Vicki Lopez, who sought an outright win for the District 5 County Commission seat she was appointed to last fall. Instead, Lopez, who raised roughly $1.3 million, is headed for a runoff against Rob Piper, a military veteran with a $2,000 warchest.

And the August primary also proved that crossing President Donald Trump comes with a heavy price. Attorney Destiny Alvarez, bankrolled by a legion of lawyer acolytes of the 45th and 47th president, narrowly defeated incumbent Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Mavel Ruiz. The race got nasty with an opaque political action committee, New Vision For Our Courts, spearheading an online and text smear campaign against Ruiz, who had the temerity to temporarily block a controversial land giveaway for a Trump presidential library project.

Let’s break down these developments:

In Tallahassee, Jacksonville and the northern part of Florida, Nixon is a highly regarded field organizer who has earned voters’ trust and respect as a fighter in Tallahassee for working class people and the voiceless. She’s also a favorite foil of Republicans in the State Legislature who has elicited their scorn through her attention grabbing tactics like staging a sit-in at the Governor’s mansion and using a bullhorn to condemn gerrymandered redistricting that eliminated traditionally Democrat seats.

But now she’s in the national spotlight after taking Alexander Vindman to the woodshed, defeating him by double digits via a perfectly executed ground game that nullified her opponent’s money advantage. Vindman, famous for being a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment trial tied to the Ukraine-Russia scandal, and his team got cocky. They believed Nixon was just another fringe Democrat Socialist candidate who couldn’t match up against his Trump antagonist credentials.

But Vindman and Democratic Party leaders learned a vicious lesson about underestimating Nixon, who earned her victory by running a well-oiled Get Out The Vote engine.

According to an analysis by political consultant Vanessa Brito, who primarily works with Democrats, Nixon won due to strong voter turnout in her favor in her homebase of Duval County, Orange County (where her allies like U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost and State Rep. Anna Eskamani deployed ground teams), Broward County and Miami-Dade County (where she aligned herself with Olver Gilbert and Ashley Gantt, who secured a victory for a state senate seat). Those four counties combined accounted for 76 percent of Nixon’s 152,418-vote margin over Vindman.

Precincts where voters cast ballots for the 24th Congressional District gave Nixon an advantage of 22,798 votes in Miami-Dade. “Without FL-24, Vindman would have won the remainder of Miami-Dade by roughly 1,700 votes,” Brito said. “FL-24 is what delivered Miami-Dade to Nixon.”

The Broward portion of the 24th Congressional District gave Nixon an advantage of 13,069 votes in that county. “That means all of FL-24 generated 19.6 percent of Nixon's statewide margin of 152,418 votes,” Brito said.

Indeed, Nixon won virtually every precinct in the Miami-Dade side of 24th Congressional District, capturing 78 percent of voters compared to Vindman’s 22 percent.

To keep the District 5 County Commission seat she was appointed to, Lopez turned to the guy who ran the successful campaign of her predecessor, Eileen Higgins, who left her second term early when she ran and won the Miami mayoral election last year. Lopez represented Ulvert’s first Republican client for a non-partisan county commission seat.

Although the duo have helped each other out in the past. For instance, Ulvert was instrumental in shutting down the political aspirations of a female staffer working for Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava who briefly flirted with running against Lopez when she was still a state representative. Ulvert is Cava’s longtime political guru, credited with her ascent from community lawyer to county commissioner to Miami-Dade’s first female mayor.

He also guided Higgins in her improbable win for the District 5 in 2018 and her most recent election as Miami’s first female mayor. Naturally, if anyone could clear a path to victory for her, one would assume it would be Ulvert. Instead, Lopez must be asking herself if the nearly $370,000 her political action committee paid Ulvert’s firms Edge Communications and Win Canvass justifies the result.

As the Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks recently noted, Lopez spent roughly $183 per vote to get 7,061 votes while second place finisher Rob Piper spent about 42 cents per vote to nab 4,928 votes. And now Lopez is forced into a runoff against Piper because she failed to reach more than 50 percent of the vote.

The vindictive reach of Donald Trump and his minions now extends into Miami-Dade’s judicial system. Coral Gables lawyer Destiny Alvarez took Mavel Ruiz’s judicial seat by 2,100 votes, but barely surpassed garnering 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff. Now the Federalist Society member who has yet to argue a case before a judge will now be donning the black robes thanks to her Trumpian connections.

As I reported for Florida Bulldog, Alvarez’s first round of fundraising featured a gallery of Trump-aligned lawyers and lobbyists that pretty much confirmed the 30-year-old attorney was recruited to run against Ruiz. Last year, the judge granted a temporary injunction blocking the transfer of a prime downtown Miami site from Miami-Dade College to the state of Florida to the non-profit entity spearheading the Trump presidential library project. The injunction forced the board of trustees for the college to hold a new public hearing and a vote redo for the land giveaway.

Boosting Alvarez’s campaign was New Vision For Our Courts, a PAC that was primarily funded by other Republican-aligned committees that share the same Coral Gables address and the same treasurer, Anthony Fiore. New Vision bankrolled the creation of a website in English and Spanish that highlighted bar complaints and reprimands against Ruiz, prompting her to sue Alvarez, New Vision, other PACs and Republican campaign consultant Alex Miranda.

Miranda recently established an entity called Order 66 that received $63,270 in payments from New Vision, which raised roughly $97,000. Among the work Order 66 was paid for included website hosting, digital advertising and voter outreach.

The Order 66 reference is familiar to anyone who is a big fan of Star Wars. The saga’s main villain, Emperor Palpatine aka Darth Sidious, uses the code word Order 66 to initiate the mass murder of all the Jedis in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

If you are receiving The Miamian that means that you genuinely care about staying up to date about true crime, corruption and controversy that infects daily life in the Magic City and across the Sunshine State. The Miamian’s purpose to serve as a source of news and analysis about the machinations going on at city halls, government centers, civil and criminal courts.

The Miamian is also a resource where you will find a steady diet of deep-dive, longform journalism about powerful people and how they wield their influence, crime capers involving shady colorful characters and volatile topics that have a direct impact on the daily lives of South Floridians.

Thank you for coming on this journey as a subscriber. Your support will help The Miamian continue growing in reach. We hope you will share The Miamian with your friends and neighbors.

Francisco Alvarado

Share The Miamian!