Daniela Jean, a 34-year-old government employee seeking political office for the first time, defeated Margaret “Margie” Love Tuesday in a runoff for a North Miami Beach city commission.
Jean got about 59% of the vote versus 41% from Love, according to results released by the Miami-Dade Election Department shortly after 9 p.m. The turnout was 11.4% with 2,770 votes cast.
Jean, an administrative coordinator in North Miami’s Risk Management division, will replace Phyllis Smith, who is absent after nearly 14 years on the Commission.
68-year-old Love was running for the fifth time for the North Miami Beach Commission. Her previous runs were also unsuccessful.
Jean will become the city’s only new commissioner when she is sworn in later this month. Mayor Anthony DeFillipo and Commissioners Michael Joseph and McKenzie Fleurimond each defeated a challenger on November 3 to stay in office.
Jean took first place in the November 3rd general election with about 34% of the vote in a six-person field. Love came in second with 19%. The race went to a runoff because no candidate received a majority of the votes.
During her campaign, Jean touted her status as a millennial, telling the Miami Herald in an interview last week that she was a “born leader” and a “problem solver”. She teaches American sign language to school-age children and has authored a self-help e-book entitled “5Gs of Success”.
“I’m a millennium old, I’m innovative, I’m a leader,” she said.
Jean has refused to speak publicly about how she would have dealt with two critical recent city commission decisions: one to terminate a contract to run the city’s private water company and one to approve a 1.5-hour redevelopment of the Intracoastal Mall Billion dollars.
Instead, she said she’d rather look ahead and make sure residents benefit from these changes.
Jean, along with Joseph, Fleurimond and Paule Villard, becomes the fourth Haitian-American commissioner on the seven-member panel. Fleurimond and Villard publicly touted their support for Jean while the four white elected officials of the commission fought for love.
According to US census data, about 20% of the population in North Miami Beach are Haitians. The city in northeast Miami-Dade County “is a real melting pot,” Jean told the Herald last week. “That’s what I want to focus on: serving my community as a whole.”
Aaron Leibowitz is a city government reporter for the Miami Herald. He writes about local politics in every city, village, and town in Miami-Dade County and sometimes beyond.
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