Raquel Regalado Makes Her Case to Voters

The District 7 County Commissioner is running on her record. “You make an omelet, you break a few eggs. Happy to be held accountable for my broken eggs.”

This year’s District 7 County Commission race features a three-way contest between incumbent Commissioner Raquel Regalado, former Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner and Richard Praschnik, a public schools police officer. Regalado, 50, is the daughter of former Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado. A single mother of two neuro-divergent children, Regalado served on the county’s school board before being elected to the County Commission. She represents District 7, a waterfront district that stretches from Coconut Grove to Pinecrest and west into Kendall. Regalado sat down recently with the Spotlight’s Don Finefrock to talk about several hot-button topics, including the Coconut Grove Playhouse, South Bayshore Drive, and her vote to expand the county’s Urban Development Boundary. During the interview, Regalado blasted Lerner for linking her to the recent scandals of other Cuban-American politicians, calling it racial “bullshit.” The election is August 20. Early voting began this week. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.   

SPOTLIGHT: This year’s District 7 race represents a rematch of the 2020 contest between you and former Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner. You won that election by the slimmest of margins. You’ve had four years to prove yourself. Why do you deserve a second term?

REGALADO: I think we’ve done so much in this district. This district really needed so much attention, in terms of infrastructure, and in terms of policy. We have restructured Water and Sewer, changed how DERM (environmental regulation) works, and focused on everything from changes to zoning that help the everyday person to our road work. And, we finally have affordable (housing) units. We have them in South Miami, we are going to have them here in the West Grove. This had not happened in this district, and I’m very proud of that achievement.

You make an omelet, you break a few eggs. Happy to be held accountable for my broken eggs.

SPOTLIGHT: Are you the best candidate to represent Coconut Grove at County Hall?

REGALADO: 100 percent. I live in Golden Pines. This is my neighborhood. I think I represent the Grove from a place of knowledge, not a place of making promises that haven’t been kept. Coconut Grove and the West Grove have been a victim of broken promises and I refuse to be just another politician that promises and doesn’t deliver.

SPOTLIGHT: You opposed the creation of a Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) in the West Grove, saying the agency wouldn’t build capital fast enough to be effective, given the pace of gentrification. Since then, you’ve worked to redevelop the neighborhood’s public housing (by soliciting private development proposals through an RFP) but the project has been beset by delays. In the meantime, the community of Little Bahamas is being erased. If re-elected, what would you do to save this historic neighborhood?

REGALADO: The RFP was challenging. It took longer because we had neighborhood meetings and neighborhood input. Phase 1 (of the project) has been cleared, and will be announced soon. The second piece, there was an issue with one of the bidders, and we’re hoping to resolve that (shortly). Now remember, I can only deal with the county-owned properties. There are two other county-owned parcels that could also provide housing (at a price point residents can afford). As soon as we are done with this RFP we will move to that piece. When we talk about keeping people here, and bringing people who have been displaced back, we’re talking about a different price point. And it is difficult in this area. There is no one solution, and that was kind of my problem with the CRA. There are a series of solutions, and I’m working with the city to figure out what comes next.

SPOTLIGHT: You’ve defended the county’s plan to resurrect the Coconut Grove Playhouse as a smaller 300-seat theater, saying the plan represents a necessary compromise. Still, a lot of people oppose the plan, saying we should restore the entire building as a larger theater. Is there room for compromise, or should the county’s plan be pushed through, despite the opposition?

REGALADO: The folks who talk about this issue say we’re going to demolish the playhouse. That’s not true. We are maintaining and restoring the original playhouse, which is a building. It’s not a façade. It’s the original playhouse. It has rooms, it has offices, it has bathrooms. The addition that was done that added the seats, the auditorium, is what will be demolished.

I will say, on the pragmatic side, there are two things to consider. One, the Arsht Center is the Arsht Center. We can’t get in a time machine and eviscerate it. Broadway will not come to the Coconut Grove Playhouse. It will go to the Arsht Center. So, the question is: what will the playhouse be? The fact that someone says I went there when I was 17, I get it. You’ve got nostalgia. But right now, there are these other venues (and) Main Highway is already a parking lot. The same people who are saying “save the playhouse” are going to lose their minds (over) the amount of traffic that is going to come there. Do you want our neighborhood to look like the Arsht and the (Miami Heat) arena when there’s a game and a show? That’s the amount of traffic you are talking about.

SPOTLIGHT: The county has an opportunity to address a series of community concerns – pedestrian safety chief among them – with the South Bayshore Drive roadway project. But many fear the county’s final design plan will favor cars over pedestrians and cyclists. Will you support a plan that shrinks the width of car lanes to create separate, safer pathways for bike riders and pedestrians?   

REGALADO: Look, I’m happy to keep having meetings on this and to see where we can come to a consensus. However, the narrowing of the street creates another problem, because what we are saying then is we can never have a trolley go down Bayshore, we can never have a bus go down Bayshore. Are we willing to say this is a street that can never have public transit? I understand that a shared path (for pedestrians and bike riders) is not ideal. We all agree. I’m happy to look at alternatives, but people have to be willing to consider alternatives. If the answer is no, not anything, then we’re going to get what we’ve got today, which is a funded project that has been sitting on the books for 15 years because none of the stakeholders would approve it.

SPOTLIGHT: You voted to expand the county’s Urban Development Boundary (UDB) in 2022 for the first time in nine years to accommodate a warehouse project near Homestead Air Reserve Base. The county’s planning staff opposed the expansion. Critics say the development may harm Everglades restoration. Initially, you opposed the UDB expansion. Why did you change your vote?

REGALADO: The project changed. The project changed dramatically. I love how people say you moved the UDB. I didn’t move the UDB. A super majority of the County Commission moved the UDB. I happen to be a person who negotiated something. And what I negotiated was that for every acre they (the developers) developed, I got two acres of environmentally endangered lands, as a donation. And that allowed us to take the land and make it part of our bid to lower flood insurance (premiums) in unincorporated Miami Dade. It also allows us to go to our federal partners and present a watershed project. This was an opportunity for me to protect what needed to be protected. I was the only one who extracted an environmental benefit, and I think that should be recognized.

SPOTLIGHT: Critics have questioned your integrity given your willingness to accept campaign contributions from special interests. The UDB vote is one example. The lobbyist for the project has donated $15,000 to your political action committee since 2022. How do you respond to those critics?

REGALADO: I am a lot of things, but I am not corrupt. My father is not corrupt. And to say that we are corrupt, and that there are other Cuban-Americans who are being investigated and because those Cuban-Americans are being investigated, that I am corrupt, that’s 1980’s racial English-only Miami bullshit. And it’s not OK. If Joe Carollo is being investigated, what does that have to do with Raquel Regalado? The only thing we have in common is that we live in the City of Miami and we’re Cuban-American. If you look at the campaign she (Lerner) is running, she’s talking about other people’s investigations and then she’s saying you have to say “no” to Raquel Regalado. And there’s no nexus there. I would love to know what the nexus is, other than bigotry. And that’s very sad.

Read the Spotlight’s interview with former Pinecrest Mayor Cindy Lerner.

(Editor’s Note: During our interview, Regalado also pushed back on the suggestion that she and her father represent a political dynasty in Miami).

REGALADO: My last name doesn’t make me a member of a dynasty. It gives me the opportunity to work on things that other politicians don’t have the guts to work on. The fact that I can do this infrastructure work is because I have name recognition. If I didn’t have name recognition, I would be out there kissing babies and cutting ribbons and creating committees. Talking about things that everybody loves. I don’t talk about those things. I don’t do easy things, and I’ll end with that, because that’s really the take-away. If you want a politician that does nothing, or does easy things, I’m not your girl. But if you want someone who gets things done and tackles difficult issues, and is able to create consensus, then I’m your candidate.