In an upset victory his friends have dubbed the “Meiner Miracle,” first-time candidate Steven Meiner defeated Kristen Rosen Gonzalez in a runoff election Tuesday for her old seat on the Miami Beach City Commission.
Meiner, who secured a spot in the runoff election by edging out the third-place finisher by just two votes in a dramatic manual recount, defeated Rosen Gonzalez by 8 percentage points. The former Miami Beach Commissioner raised and spent far more money than Meiner, a Securities and Exchange Commission attorney endorsed by city leaders.
“I’m very cognizant, I am, of how close I was to not being in this situation tonight,” Meiner said, referring to the two-vote margin that separated him from the third-place Mike Barrineau. “You can make it happen if you believe.”
With his win, Meiner ends Rosen Gonzalez’s months-long effort to reclaim the Group IV Commission seat she left when she resigned to run for U.S. Congress in 2018.
