Herald recommends: In Florida House District 113, a millennial with a passion for service | Editorial

In the race for Florida House District 113, voters have the chance to elect a candidate to the open seat who will break the usual mold.

Democrat Alessandro “A.J.” D’Amico and Republican Vicki Lopez are vying to represent the district that includes Key Biscayne, Brickell, the Roads, Shenandoah and Little Havana.

Neither candidate is your typical politician, but we think D’Amico’s enthusiasm and drive, his sharply defined vision for the job and his across-the-aisle appeal make him the best choice.

Lopez, a political and criminal-justice activist and lobbyist, is a former Lee County commissioner from the ‘90s. She resigned under investigation, went to prison under the federal “honest services” mail-fraud statute and then had her sentence commuted by then-President Clinton after serving about 15 months of a 27-month sentence. Fourteen years after her conviction, a federal court vacated it. She said she was was “wrongly accused and wrongfully convicted” but that “justice did finally prevail.”

Those experiences led her to to work on criminal-justice reform efforts, including as chairman of former Gov. Jeb Bush’s Ex-Offender Task Force, then to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce board of directors and, eventually, to this run for the state House. She said the chamber, where she had worked on business issues, urged her to run for office.

D’Amico, a lawyer and former legislative aide, has followed his own path into politics — and it has led him to cross the aisle. A Cuban American from Hialeah who was raised by a single mother, he initially registered to vote with no party affiliation until 2014, then registered as a Republican for three years and then as a Democrat when he started law school in 2017.

He works at Mase Mebane Seitz in Coconut Grove. Before that, he worked as a legislative aide to former state Sen. Rene Garcia, a Republican, and also as a legislative intern for Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in 2014. He said the changes in his political affiliation were a result of “gaining life experience.” He added that he was considered “the office lefty” even when he was a Republican.

He said he believes, “We are at an inflection point in this country when it comes to democracy and when it comes to decency,” and that’s what led to his political metamorphosis.

Lopez, who originally filed to run for a state Senate seat before resetting her sights on House District 113, brings a strong focus on housing affordability, noting that her own rent on Brickell went up $450 last year and another $450 this year. During her interview with the Editorial Board, she displayed knowledge of state issues, saying she wanted to restore full funding to the state’s Sadowski affordable housing trust fund. And she pledged to work with Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, and others to figure out ways the state could help create more affordable-housing opportunities.

We commend her willingness to put practicality above partisan politics on that issue.

She also signaled a level of reasonableness when, on the issue of banning abortion, she said she believes there should be exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking. The Legislature’s current 15-week ban, pushed through by Republicans, makes no such exceptions.

Given her experiences in the justice system, it’s not surprising that she also wants to increase funding for the Florida Department of Corrections and for re-entry programs for former prisoners, as well as for law enforcement officers.

But, of the two, D’Amico had the more fully thought-out agenda for a term in Tallahassee and the greater passion for the work of representing the district. He said he felt the call to office as a young person — a millennial — to represent on issues such as climate change: “Florida and, specifically, Miami is Ground Zero for the climate crisis, and I view it as an existential threat not just to our economy and our community but, honestly, our way of life.”

He is pro-choice, wants to ban assault weapons and wants to see the state expand Medicaid, saying it could result in insuring an additional 800,000 Floridians — “a tremendous public good.” He also easily articulated two other bills he wants to file: one that would require landlords to provide functional air-conditioning for tenants and another that would encourage solar-power production on Florida waters. He supports a living wage for workers and the elimination of the business rent tax on commercial leases.

He was unafraid to criticize his former boss, Garcia, on the issue of the Proud Boys extremist group’s role in the local Republican Party, something Garcia tried to dismiss by saying there are “fringe elements” in the GOP and “different points of view in our party.”

D’Amico, a member of the Cuban American Bar Association, called that a “lukewarm response . . . to this rise of this alt-right fascist wing of the Republican Party” and said he believes Florida is “on the front lines when it comes to saving democracy in the United States.”

In a split district — with both Democrats and independents slightly outnumbering Republicans — D’Amico’s emphasis on climate change, solar energy development, women’s reproductive rights, affordable healthcare and small business assistance is likely to appeal. With his roots in the community, his clear-eyed goals for the job make him the best representative for a district with such diversity.

The Miami Herald Editorial Board recommends ALESSANDRO “A.J.” D’AMICO for House District 113.