![\"Adam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_9888.png\")
Adam Cervera played up his Republican ties in Tuesday’s election. That won’t work in a November general election.<\/p>\nToo few people voted Tuesday in Broward and Palm Beach counties. But those who did mostly chose wisely.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s especially true in local elections, those down-ballot races that don\u2019t get nearly the attention they deserve, but which directly affect quality of life issues such as schools, traffic, housing and growth.<\/p>\n
Broward voters elected two capable and well-prepared members to the School Board, Cynthia Dominique and Nicole Morst. They also wisely kept two strong incumbents, Maura McCarthy Bulman and Allen Zeman, giving the board the right combination of fresh faces and battle-tested veterans.<\/p>\n
Dominique is the Broward board\u2019s first Haitian-American member and its first member from Margate. Zeman is a consistently strong voice for higher teacher salaries. He digs deeply into financial details that drive board decisions and he courageously supports closing more half-empty schools that drain money from the system.<\/p>\n
Remembering in November<\/p>\n
A fifth School Board seat remains in play because none of the five contenders got a majority of votes.<\/p>\n
Voters in District 6 (Cooper City, Davie, Plantation, Sunrise, Weston) will elect Adam Cervera or Roberto Fernandez III on Nov. 3. This will be an entirely different election with a vastly higher turnout and many more unaffiliated voters who don\u2019t belong to any party.<\/p>\n
Cervera, appointed to the board by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, led Tuesday with 38% of the vote. Fernandez, an Army veteran who was a Broward high school teacher for 20 years, finished second with 26%. Three others got a combined 36% of the vote.<\/p>\n
Adam Cervera played up his Republican ties in Tuesday’s election. That won’t work in a November general election.<\/p>\n
School Board races are officially nonpartisan, but it\u2019s well-known that Cervera is a Republican. His own campaign made certain of that.<\/p>\n
In a late social media ad obviously aimed at Republicans, Cervera is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with DeSantis with the tag: \u201cA proven conservative voice for our schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
The required fine-print disclaimer said the piece was paid for by the Cervera campaign. Cervera told the Editorial Board he had not seen it beforehand.<\/p>\n
Cervera\u2019s campaign took a big risk by playing partisan politics in a nonpartisan race, and now the candidate must live with the consequences. The same ad now becomes a useful weapon for Fernandez, a Democrat, as both men compete in a far larger pool of likely voters.<\/p>\n
This newspaper editorially has long supported runoff elections, which require a winner to get a majority of votes.<\/p>\n
The same 50%-plus-1 principle applies in Florida judicial races. David Andrew Fry and Tamar Hamilton will face off in November for Broward\u2019s only contested judicial contest in Circuit Court Group 52<\/a>.<\/p>\n Our main disagreement with the will of the voters is in this race.<\/p>\n Fry is by far the most qualified candidate in this race and was enthusiastically recommended by this Editorial Board. Not only that, but Hamilton benefited from deceptive campaign tactics, such as a phony \u201cBroward County Voter Guide\u201d that implied she was recommended by the Democratic Party, which does not take sides in judicial elections.<\/p>\n But Hamilton still got more than 85,000 votes, or 41%, to Fry\u2019s 34%. A third candidate, Kathleen O\u2019Brien \u201cKatie\u201d Hinkle, got 25%.<\/p>\n In Palm Beach County, voters chose wisely by electing Erica Whitfield to the County Commission District 2 seat and John McGovern to the School Board District 6 seat.<\/p>\n Primary voters in Palm Beach County<\/a> winnowed the field and sent two other races to the Nov. 3 ballot.<\/p>\n They are in County Commission District 6, between Republican Sara Baxter and Democrat Katherine Waldron, and School Board District 4, a nonpartisan race between Christina Romelus and Daniel Zapata.<\/p>\n Baxter swamped Elizabeth Accomando, 59% to 41%, in the Republican primary for this westernmost seat on the seven-member commission, despite a string of missteps that would disqualify most other candidates.<\/p>\n That makes the Baxter-Waldron race required viewing from now until November.<\/p>\n In Broward, voters elected Democrat Caryl Shuham, the class of a three-candidate field, to a four-year term on the County Commission.<\/p>\n The Broward legislative delegation will have at least two new House members come November.<\/p>\n Voters nominated Republican Yoni Anijar for the open District 100 seat, and Republican Mery Lopez-Palma and Democrat Mike Friend in District 102.<\/p>\n Both seats are open because incumbents Chip LaMarca and Mike Gottlieb are term-limited and cannot run again.<\/p>\n The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Too few people voted Tuesday in Broward and Palm Beach counties. But those who did mostly chose wisely.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2853,249,251,250,114,482],"class_list":["post-377196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-editorials","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377196","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=377196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mike](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/TFL-L-mike-friend-victory-01.jpeg\")
Mike Friend celebrates his victory in the House District 102 Democratic primary on election night, Aug. 18, 2026, at a Plantation pizzeria. (courtesy)<\/p>\n![\"Turnout](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-20-092147.jpg\")
Turnout in Broward Tuesday was poor, and it was especially poor for Republicans (Courtesy Fresh Take Florida)<\/p>\n