The D5 County Commission Race: This Time, Voters Decide

After being appointed as Miami-Dade’s District 5 commissioner less than a year ago, Vicki Lopez is running for a full four-year term in the August 18 election. Potentially standing in her way are two challengers and a complicated past.

Editor’s Note: This story was first published on July 6 by Biscayne Times. The Spotlight is re-publishing the story under a content-sharing agreement with Biscayne Times.

With a string of endorsements and a campaign chest of more than $1 million, Vicki Lopez may seem to be well on her way to being elected to a full four-year term as the commissioner of Miami-Dade County’s District 5 seat.

Yet Lopez, a Brickell resident who was appointed to fill the seat last November, faces two challengers on Aug. 18 who feel they’re better qualified to represent District 5, an area that touches downtown Miami, Brickell, Shenandoah, Silver Bluff and The Roads.

At least one of those challengers is willing to hit Lopez on past controversies including a stint in prison for an honest services fraud charge that was later vacated by a federal judge.

In statements provided by her campaign manager, Christian Ulvert of Edge Communications, Lopez said she’s running to continue the work she started after she was “honored with a bipartisan appointment to the vacant District 5 seat.

“I made a simple promise — I would show up, listen, and do the job. That’s exactly what’s I’ve done — and it’s exactly why I’m running for a full term,” Lopez, 68, wrote.

Her opponents, former Miami City Commissioner Joe Sanchez and Coral Way Democratic Club president Rob Piper, who both live in Shenandoah, say Lopez is more beholden to special interests and her own agenda. 

They also feel there should have been a special election to replace the previous District 5 commissioner, Eileen Higgins, who resigned to run for mayor of the City of Miami.

“There have been three [commission] appointments in the last five years,” said Sanchez, a 61-year-old retired Florida highway patrolman who served as a Miami city commissioner for 11 years from 1998 to 2009. “The county commission has basically denied the people the right to elect their own representative.”

Piper, a former state legislative aide and a retired Marine, said via email that “based on her well documented history, I don’t trust Commissioner Lopez to do the right thing unless it is politically convenient.” 

He said Sanchez shouldn’t be elected either.

“I give Commissioner Sanchez tremendous kudos for throwing his hat in the ring and challenging Lopez, but with his very public embrace of Donald Trump during the 2024 County Sheriff race, I don’t necessarily trust him either,” wrote Piper, who ran for the city of Miami’s District 3 seat last year and chaired a special committee that attempted to recall Miami City Commissioner Joe Carollo in January 2020.

As a state representative of House District 113, Lopez had a reputation as a moderate Republican who could build coalitions with Democrats. More than half the bills Lopez sponsored in her first term passed, Florida Politics reported. 

Among the new laws Lopez backed was the Live Local Act, which grants developers extra building rights if 40% of their units are reserved for affordable housing for the next 30-plus years. She also co-chaired a special committee on property tax reform and sponsored laws to reform condo safety in the wake of the Surfside condo collapse.

Although Lopez still had about a year left on her second term as a state lawmaker, she was among five people who applied to replace Higgins on the county commission.

Sanchez also sought an appointment. But on Nov. 18, when the appointment was on the county agenda, Sanchez asked commissioners to hold a special election instead. 

Commission Chairman Anthony Rodriguez blocked that effort and nominated Lopez to fill the seat. Her appointment passed by a vote of 7 to 5, with both Democrats and Republicans supporting Lopez’s appointment and opponents mainly objecting to there not being a special election. 

Prison time and school bus cameras

Sanchez contends that Lopez’s reputation as a community fighter is a façade. On his Instagram page, Sanchez displays his response to a cease-and-desist sent by an attorney representing Lopez when he brought up her past conviction for honest services fraud in 1997 after she tried to hide her romantic relationship with lobbyist Sylvester Lukis when she was a Lee County commissioner between 1990 and 1993.

This was after federal prosecutors tried to charge both Lukis and Lopez for multiple charges including bribery. Except for the mail services fraud charge against Lopez, a jury cleared the couple of the other charges. (In 1994, prior to their trial in 1995, Lopez resigned her Lee County seat and married Lukis. The two have since divorced.)

Sanchez wrote that Lopez was sentenced to prison because she “encouraged her colleagues to support the bids of her lobbyist boyfriend’s clients while she concealed that relationship and did not disclose the conflict of interest.”

But Lopez countered that she was sent to prison because “25 years ago, I was wrongly accused and wrongfully convicted of lying to a newspaper reporter about my relationship with a lobbyist when I was a Lee County Commissioner.”

“I served more than 15 months of a 27-month sentence before my sentence was commuted by President Clinton in November 2000,” wrote Lopez.

Lopez’s campaign stated that legal counsel advised that a cease-and-desist letter be sent because Sanchez’s campaign used “false and inflammatory language” which was “not only inappropriate, it was against the law.”

Lopez’s conviction was vacated in 2011 by a federal judge following a Supreme Court ruling that honest services fraud can only be used for bribery and kickbacks and not lying to the public about a relationship.

“This personal experience with the criminal justice system is what led me to engage in criminal justice reform efforts, which I led as Chairman of Governor [Jeb] Bush’s Ex-Offender Task Force,” Lopez wrote. “I became a subject matter expert and, as a result, I have been extremely successful in advancing criminal and juvenile justice policy reform issues at the state and local levels.”

But Sanchez said he didn’t “think Lopez learned her lesson.” 

He pointed out that Lopez co-sponsored legislation to allow private companies to install cameras on public school buses to photograph, and later fine, vehicles that illegally pass them when the vehicles are parked with the stop-arm down. 

The bill, which also allowed these camera companies to keep most of the fines, was pushed by Virginia-based BusPatrol America. After the bill was passed in 2023, BusPatrol hired Lopez’s son and her former stepson.

The bill enabled BusPatrol America to obtain a no-bid contract to install cameras on Miami-Dade County Public School buses and issue $255 fines. In just the first six months of BusPatrol’s program, which started in May 2024, the company raked in $19.5 million in fines, according to an investigation by the Miami Herald and The Florida Trib. 

Hundreds of those fines were issued to drivers who passed stopped buses safely without violating the law, including those traveling on the opposite side of a raised median, the investigation found. 

After enforcement of the violations was suspended by the Miami-Dade sheriff in 2025, the program was relaunched in May 2026, BusPatrol announced in a release.

“For crying out loud, this was sold to us as a safety issue, but it was a money grabber for the company she promoted,” Sanchez said.

BusPatrol’s chief growth officer, Steve Randazzo, told the Herald and FloridaTrib that the hiring of Lopez’s son, Donny Wolfe III, as vice president of government relations had nothing to do with her support for the bus camera bill.

As for the former stepson, Adrian Lukis, a former chief of staff for Gov. DeSantis, his father Sylvester Lukis told The Florida Trib that he doubted his ex-wife had anything to do with him working for BusPatrol since they stopped speaking with Lopez after the divorce.

Endorsements, money and issues

Regardless, Lopez has still received endorsements from various unions including the Fraternal Order of Police’s Miami and Miami Beach chapters, SEIU Florida, the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, Metro-Dade Firefighters IAFF Local 1403 and Firefighters of Miami Beach IAFF Local 1510. 

Lopez also claims to have the support of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, Miami City Commission Chairwoman Christine King, Miami Commissioner Miguel Gabela and the entire Miami Beach City Commission.

Lopez also has a lot of campaign money at her disposal. As of June 29, Lopez’s county commission campaign reported raising about $244,811. Her political committee, Common Sense Government, raised another $887,486 between Nov. 18 of last year and June 28.

In contrast, Sanchez told the Biscayne Times that he raised $130,000 in campaign money from “friends and people who believe in me.”

As of deadline, Miami-Dade Elections records list no money being raised by Rob Piper so far. He told the Biscayne Times that he aims to close that gap by “leveraging the grassroots infrastructure and networks that I have either built myself or have built over the last ten years to recruit volunteers, access resources, and spark as much turnout as possible.”

And what do the candidates hope to accomplish if elected?

Lopez said she is running for a full four-year term so she can continue to address three “critical issues” — housing, quality of life, and assisting small businesses. 

To address “affordability challenges” Lopez stated she would work “across governments” to speed up the construction of workforce and affordable housing. 

To improve quality of life, Lopez wrote that she would “continue to bring stakeholders together to improve quality-of-life issues like park beautifications and cleaner and safer streets.

“Finally, I will be a strong champion for our small businesses as they are the backbone of District 5 and deserve our full support and attention,” Lopez added.

Sanchez said he will push to regain the county’s autonomy that has been lost to Tallahassee, support ways to boost the economy and oppose any westward advance of the Urban Development Boundary (UDB) that would enable developers to build farther into the Everglades.

“The UDB line will stay exactly where it is as long as I am a commissioner,” he vowed.

Sanchez also trashed Lopez for helping to craft the Live Local Act, which allows developers to circumvent local zoning rules to build taller buildings with more housing so long as 40% of that housing is deemed to be “affordable.”

In a statement, Lopez said Live Local Act had “bipartisan support across the state,” though she now feels that the governor is using that legislation “in ways that were never intended” to weaken local governments.

“Which is why I am working with my colleagues at all levels of local government to send a clear message that the law needs to be revisited and amended to ensure loopholes are closed shut,” she wrote.

Piper emphasized he’s the only “true progressive in this race,” adding: “I don’t think either of my opponents will advocate for the type of things that will bring economic relief for struggling families in Miami-Dade.”

If elected, Piper said he would fight to reduce costs for Miami-Dade residents, push for a fairer tax system, create greater transparency for daily government activities, and provide more resources for residents to “better navigate and understand county government.”

Piper said he would also push for the creation of a revenue generation task force to find ways to expand the county’s revenue base to pay for services. And he wants to create an independent county-owned municipal public bank to finance public improvements as well as the development of affordable housing and support for small businesses.

If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote on Aug. 18, the winner of District 5 will be determined in a runoff election held during the general election on Nov. 3.