Miami-Dade voters will soon see TV ads and online spots with County Commissioner Vicki Lopez highlighting her policymaking work and pitching herself as the best choice for District 5 on the Aug. 18 ballot.<\/p>\n
Lopez\u2019s campaign just launched a five-figure, bilingual ad buy targeting voters in the district, which covers parts of Miami and Miami Beach.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re targeting voters with virtually identical 30-second spots in English<\/a> and Spanish<\/a>. In both, Lopez emphasizes her record as a state lawmaker and, since late last year, one of 13 Miami-Dade Commissioners.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Tallahassee, I fought hard to take on affordability challenges and deliver infrastructure funding to improve our neighborhoods,\u201d she says in the video.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, as your County Commissioner, I\u2019m focused on what matters most: keeping our waterways clean, supporting small businesses and moving faster on affordable housing. I\u2019m not waiting to get started; I\u2019m already on the job.\u201d<\/p>\n A former Lee County Commissioner, Lopez, a Republican, won election<\/a> to House District 113 in 2022 and was re-elected with nearly 55% of the vote<\/a> two years later.<\/p>\n During her first term, she secured nearly\u00a0$47 million<\/a>\u00a0in appropriations while creating a pilot program that extended home-hardening grants to condo owners, passing post-Surfside condo safety legislation and successfully carrying the House version of the Live Local Act<\/a>, a seismic measure meant to address Florida\u2019s affordable housing shortage that critics argued preempted local growth controls while giving too much to developers.<\/p>\n In 2025, she passed 10 of 12 bills she sponsored<\/a>, including measures on boating safety and regulation, school social workers, workforce housing provisions, and updates to her condo safety law and condo-hardening program.<\/p>\n The Miami-Dade Commission voted 7-5 in mid-November to appoint her<\/a> to fill the panel\u2019s District 5 seat, which Democrat Eileen Higgins vacated to serve as Miami Mayor.<\/p>\n Lopez faces two challengers: fellow Republican Joe Sanchez, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper and former Miami City Commissioner who ran unsuccessfully<\/a> Sheriff in 2024, and Democratic Rob Piper, a Marine Corps veteran who led a 2020 recall PAC targeting former Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo and was one of eight candidates<\/a> who ran for the City Commission last year.<\/p>\n Sanchez was one of a few applicants vying for the District 5 seat Lopez took last year. Piper previously worked as a Florida House staffer.<\/p>\n Because County Commission contests are technically nonpartisan, all three candidates will appear on the Aug. 18 Primary ballot.<\/p>\n To win, a candidate must receive more than 50% of the vote. If no candidate in a given race does so, the top two vote-getters will advance to a runoff in the Nov. 3 General Election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Miami-Dade voters will soon see TV ads and online spots with County Commissioner Vicki Lopez highlighting her policymaking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[8184,123,125,124,1064,373,24954,11674],"class_list":["post-317904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-election-2026","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami-dade","tag-miami-dade-county","tag-miami-dade-county-commission","tag-vicki-lopez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}