One week after a blistering election night rebuke of GOP candidates across the country, a machine recount confirmed Tuesday that incumbent Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar had defeated Democratic challenger Eliott Rodriguez in the contentious race for Florida’s 27th congressional district.
For the past week, Salazar clung onto a lead of about 1,100 votes — a spread over her challenger of less than half a percentage point — a small enough margin to trigger a mandatory machine recount, which Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd formally ordered late last week.
Meanwhile, Salazar’s challenger sought to block the Miami-Dade elections supervisor, a Republican, from overseeing the canvassing board reviewing the election results due to “serious concerns about her impartiality and a potential personal conflict of interest.” Elections Supervisor Alina Garcia said she would not recuse herself, and a federal judge denied Rodriguez’s request Monday.
Unofficial recount results showed less than an 1,100-vote difference between the candidates, with Salazar leading with 124,519 votes and Rodriguez with 123,433 — a negligible change compared to the earlier election night results.
In a statement posted to X shortly after the recount results were released, Salazar said “the recount is over, and our victory has been reaffirmed!”
“This victory sends a message beyond Miami: We prevailed because we LISTENED,” said Salazar, who will now enter her fourth term in Congress.
Referendum on the president
The recount results bring a conclusion to a race viewed as a referendum on President Donald Trump among South Florida Hispanic voters who helped carry the president to victory just two years earlier. Republicans have the advantage in District 27, which is about three-quarters Hispanic and includes parts of Miami as well as Key Biscayne, Cutler Bay, Coral Gables, Palmetto Bay, Pinecrest and South Miami.
The race between Salazar and Rodriguez, two former TV anchors with Cuban roots, landed amid a nationwide immigration crackdown that’s sent shockwaves throughout South Florida. Salazar publicly broke from Trump on the issue in September when she posted a direct-to-camera message telling the president that some of his immigration enforcement efforts had “gone too far.”
“The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” Salazar, standing in front of the White House, said in the viral video.
The extent to which the campaign video helped or hurt Salazar is difficult to measure, although, on the national scale, the needle moved decidedly to the left as Democrats wrestled back control of Congress, flipping seats in deep-red territory previously thought to be unwinnable by the party.
While South Florida congressional incumbents avoided that same fate, they ceded ground to Democrats in districts they had previously won by double digits.
Salazar, who flipped her seat in 2020, enjoyed a much more commanding lead in previous election cycles. In 2024, she beat Democrat Lucia Báez-Geller by 21 percentage points. In 2022, she defeated Democrat Annette Taddeo by 15.
In the race for House District 26 — another South Florida seat — Republican Mario Díaz-Balart led Democrat Nicole Locklin by less than a percentage point. Compare that to 2022 and 2024, when Díaz-Balart won the seat by over 40 percentage points each time.
Republican Carlos Giménez also faced a tougher-than-usual election night last week. The former Miami city manager won his fourth term in Congress, defeating Democrat Phil Ehr by about seven percentage points in House District 28. Giménez defeated Ehr two years ago, too, except last time he won by 29 percentage points. Similarly, in 2022, Giménez defeated Democrat Robert Asencio by about 27 points.
Recount tinged in controversy
While Salazar’s victory doesn’t make a substantial difference in the makeup of the U.S. House, where Democrats are projected to have an 83-seat majority, the stakes remained high in Miami-Dade County in the days following election night as the recount process became tinged in controversy.
On Thursday the Rodriguez campaign called on Garcia, the Miami-Dade elections supervisor, to recuse herself from “all canvassing board proceedings” in the District 27 race, including the recount.
Salazar fired back, saying Rodriguez was “behaving like an election denier, attempting to turn this process into a political circus because he does not like the election outcome.”
Rodriguez sued Garcia late last week, seeking to block the elections supervisor from the canvassing board reviewing the election results, but a federal judge on Monday denied the petition.
Garcia declined to recuse herself, saying in a statement that, “Nothing disqualifies me [from] performing those duties including serving on the Canvassing Board.”
This reporting is made possible through a partnership between The Florida Trib and the Coconut Grove Spotlight with support from The Miami Foundation, Report for America, and other generous donors.
