Ileana Ros-Lehtinen announced her retirement Sunday. | AP Photo Miami GOP seeks unicorn candidate to save Dem-trending Ros-Lehtinen seat

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s surprise announcement that she’s quitting Congress has left the GOP with a needle-in-the-haystack problem: finding a socially moderate Republican in a party where they’re in short supply.

And even if Republicans find the right candidate for Ros-Lehtinen’s seat next year, there’s no guarantee he or she will run.


Because Florida’s 27th Congressional District is now such a deep shade of Democratic blue — Hillary Clinton carried it by nearly 20 percentage points last year — many Republican donors and conservative groups won’t be keen on financing what could be a hopeless mission to keep the seat in GOP hands, with the 2018 House map set to include numerous other districts where the party's chances are better. The 27th District was considered relatively defensible for Republicans as long as Ros-Lehtinen, an icon in Miami politics who beat her Democratic challenger last year by about 10 points, stayed.

In the hours after Ros-Lehtinen announced her retirement Sunday, the list of potential candidates grew, especially among energized Democrats. On the Republican side, few generated buzz among GOP insiders like former Miami-Dade school board member Raquel Regalado, a social moderate like the retiring congresswoman. She’s also the well-known daughter of Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, a Republican who refused to vote for President Donald Trump last year because of his inflammatory comments about immigration. (Ros-Lehtinen, too, has had little good to say about the president.)

Raquel Regalado, who wouldn’t say whether she voted for Trump, said she’s strongly considering a bid for Ros-Lehtinen’s seat after getting deluged with calls. A self-proclaimed moderate who supports comprehensive immigration reform and abortion rights, she said she wants to know more about the National Republican Congressional Committee thinks.

“Will the Republican Party at a national level stand behind a moderate? That’s the question,” Regalado asked. “Will we continue to move to the right? Or is this an opportunity for the Republican Party at a national level to consider moderates as an option?”

Many of the other big name Miami Republicans considering a bid — Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, state Rep. Jeanette Núñez and state Sen. Anitere Flores — are more conservative than Regalado. And they all sound slightly less enthusiastic than she when it comes musing about a potential bid so early. Núñez, Flores and other state legislators say they’ll come to a decision about the race after the Florida lawmaking session ends Friday.

Because Democrats’ odds of winning the seat are higher, the list of potential candidates from their party is growing far longer. On Sunday, Florida Democratic insiders quickly began talking up the chances of state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, who has a record of winning tough races. Sixty percent of his current legislative district is also inside Florida’s 27th. He said he’ll decide after the legislative session.

Before Ros-Lehtinen announced she was quitting, three Democrats had already lined up to challenge her: Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez — who had been courted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and met with its political director recently in Miami — as well as University of Miami academic adviser Michael A. Hepburn and businessman Scott Fuhrman, who lost to Ros-Lehtinen last year.

Ros-Lehtinen told her hometown newspaper, The Miami Herald, that she was quitting congress because it was time to move on — not because she was vulnerable or because of her clashes with fellow Trump and GOP leaders over Obamacare and transgender rights.

“There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that I would not only win in this election, but I would win by a greater percentage,” Ros-Lehtinen told the paper.

Regardless of her motivations, her decision has further energized Democrats in Miami-Dade County, Florida’s most-populous and a bastion of opposition to President Trump.

“Almost any Democrat in Miami will want to run for this seat. They’re celebrating,” said Miami political consultant David Custin. “But never underestimate Democrats' ability to screw up a two-car funeral.”

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Custin said he believed Lopez-Cantera will be tempted to run because he’ll leave his current office in 2018, is well-known in Miami-Dade County and might like to mount another campaign to continue public service. Lopez-Cantera briefly ran for U.S. Senate in 2016 before his close friend, Sen. Marco Rubio, reversed course after his failed presidential campaign and ran for reelection in 2016. Even in his successful reelection, Rubio still lost the 27th District in his home county by a percentage point.

Lopez-Cantera was noncommittal about running for Congress and instead praised Ros-Lehtinen. One of his occasional advisers, Anthony Bustamante, said he hadn’t spoken to the lieutenant governor about the race and acknowledged that the odds for any Republican were long: The more conservative candidates will have a tougher time in the district, which includes Democrat-heavy Miami Beach.

Raquel Regalado said she’s strongly considering a bid for Ros-Lehtinen’s seat after getting deluged with calls. | AP Photo

“You need someone to fit the mold, someone similar to Ileana,” Bustamante said. “It’s possible Raquel fits the mold best. She’s a woman, middle of the road. She’s not an ideologue. On the local level, she ran for [Miami-Dade] county mayor, so she has good name ID. And if she runs for this, she’ll get support locally. But the NRCC has to make a calculated decision, whether to spend millions of dollars on a race that might not be winnable.”

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans about 37 percent to 34 percent. Almost 29 percent of the voters registered as third- or no-party-affiliation voters. The district is almost 58 percent Hispanic, 31 percent white and 4.4 percent black.

Democrats, hoping Donald Trump’s party suffers at the polls during his midterm, have to win 24 U.S. House seats to take control of the chamber. And former Florida Rep. David Jolly, a Republican who lost his swing seat in the St. Petersburg area to former Gov. Charlie Crist last year, said Ros-Lehtinen’s seat is lost.

“Put a point on the board for the Democrats,” Jolly said. “This is not a district that Republicans win in an open seat in 2018. I can’t speak for the NRCC, but they won’t spend a dime in that district. They’re worried right now about traditional seats, like [Miami Rep. Carlos] Curbelo.”

Like Ros-Lehtinen, Curbelo is more of a centrist Republican who was reelected even though Clinton won his district. He was targeted by Democrats in 2016, though he ended up winning comfortably, and had been considered a bigger target than Ros-Lehtinen heading into 2018, before his congressional neighbor retired.

Curbelo’s adviser, David “DJ” Johnson, said the Ros-Lehtinen “seat is difficult for Republicans in the classic sense. It’s an Ileana Republican-type seat, someone who has been there for decades. And that’s not a lot of people … Just look at all the maps Democrats are tweeting out right now. Every day, the district becomes more blue."