SERAPHIN - 105,779 - 50.16%
ABREU - 105,090 - 49.84%
(In Florida, a recount of the ballots takes place if the vote margin is 0.5 percent or less. The County Elections Canvassing Board will conduct the recount).
10:30. With 96% of the votes having been counted it's:
SERAPHIN - 104,537
ABREU - 104,142
10:00. We are ready to call all but the Seraphin v. Abreu race.
Judge-Elect Del Ray over former Judge Bloch
Blumstein v. Perez-Medina in a runoff. Gordon and Scanziani out
Breece v. Rodriguez-Fonts in a runoff. Aponte out
Judge Luck over Roberson
Judge Sarduy over Tauler (YES Tauler)
Judge Newman over Martinez
Judge-Elect Luce over Aponte, BIG, Really, Really Big
Judge Graham over Jimenez
With 92% of the votes counted, Judge Seraphin leads Abreu by 249 votes.
And North of the Border, headed for a run-off Barbara Duffy (29%)and Abbe Rifkin (24%). Mike Satz (52%) over Teresa Williams (48%) for State Attorney.
9:30 Yawn. We are going to sleep. Big early morning sunrise hike scheduled. Basically the returns are what they are below- it's a total toss-up between Abreu and Seraphin Just checked and with 723 out of 783 precincts reporting, Seraphin pulled ahead by 249 votes, but the race is still way too close to call, and Bloch has probably lost but we can't say for sure. Maybe the Captain will post later but will won't be near a computer until we return around noon. Good night.
9:15 update- with 697 out of 793 precincts reporting Milena Abreu has a 76 vote lead over Judge Seraphin with almost 205,000 votes cast. Meanwhile Judge Bloch remains 9,318 votes behind.
Fifth Call of the night: 8:54 PM= Jodie Breece (40%) and Oscar Rodriguez-Fonts (35%) will make the runoff in a circuit court seat.
Fourth Call of the night- 8:51 PM- The Biggest winner of the night, vote wise, is your new county court judge LINDA LUCE who leads Ruben Alcoba by more than 55,000 votes. This is a landslide.
Third Call of the Night-8:48 PM- up by 22,000 votes, it's....SARDUY!!!
Second call of the night-8:35 PM- after an initial scare in the early returns, your county court judge Wendell Graham, confortably ahead by 25,000 votes and with 630 of 783 precincts reporting, will be re-elected and returned to the bench! Congrats to Judge Graham!
Meanwhile things are looking for grim for Bloch- Del Rey continues to hold on to a 9,300 vote lead, and there are less and less places on the map where Bloch can make it up.
There are 36,000 votes to tally and that makes his comeback a very very slim possibility at this hour.
Bloch needs to win 26,500 out of the 36,000 to pull even. And that's assuming Bloch is listed on every ballot, which is an incorrect assumption. This could well be the end for his current judicial career.
Meanwhile, in the tightest race of the night, Milena Abreu is clinging to a 665 vote lead over Judge Seraphin with a total of almost 200,000 votes cast. WOW.
Our first call- Looking at the returns, based on the map and the precincts left, prior voting patterns, and leading by 15,000 votes....ROBERT J LUCK has been returned to the bench and will
continue to be a circuit court judge.
Interesting observation- Both Luck and Block took the south and Homestead area. But when you move into the Pinecrest, Gables, South Miami areas, Luck won that as well, but Bloch did not and that is shaping up to be the difference here between these two incumbents.
Early Returns: 7:30
No precincts have fully reported, so take this with a grain of salt.
Graham has pulled ahead of Jimenez 55-45.
Luck is maintaining a 55-45 lead over Roberson as is Sarduy over Tauler. While Newman and Abreau lead Martinez and Seraphin 51-49 each.
But in the biggest and most closely watched race of the night, Judge Bloch trails Del Rey 51-49 and by a total of about 9500 votes.
THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:
ELECTION CENTRAL - 2016 JUDICIAL PRIMARY
Welcome to our bi-annual Blog Post on Election day. Today is the day where as many as nine of the names listed below will be hired (or rehired) by the voters of Miami-Dade County to the position of Circuit or County Court Judge. The job interview began for many of these candidates more than a year ago and the process has been long and arduous. These candidates have had pastelitos for breakfast in Homestead, arroz con pollo for lunch in Hialeah, and matzah ball soup and corned beef for dinner in Aventura, as they trekked across our very large County selling themselves to the voters.
At least seven of the contests will be decided by the close of the polls tonight. There could very well be a run-off in two Circuit Court contests.
Good luck to all of the candidates. We will begin reporting the results shortly after 7:00 PM.
Here are your contested judicial races:
CIRCUIT COURT
Circuit Group 9 - Incumbent Jason Bloch v. Marcia Del Rey
Circuit Group 34 - Mark Blumstein v. Renee Gordon v. Denise Martinez-Scanziani v. Luis Perez-Medina. (Judge Gill Freeman retiring).
Circuit Group 52 - Rosy Aponte v. Carol "Jodie" Breece v. Oscar Rodriguez-Fonts. (Judge Michael Genden retiring).
Circuit Group 66 - Incumbent Robert Luck v. Yolly Roberson
Circuit Group 74 - Incumbent George "Jorge" Sarduy v. Elena Ortega-Tauler
COUNTY COURT
County Group 5 - Incumbent Fred Seraphin v. Milena Abreu
County Group 7 - Incumbent Ed Newman v. Lizzett Martinez
County Group 15 - Ruben Yury Alcoba v. Linda Luce (Judge Judith Rubenstein retiring).
County Group 35 - Incumbent Wendell Graham v. Antonio "Tony" Jimenez
NORTH OF THE BORDER .....
We will also keep our eyes on the election in Broward's Circuit Court Group 15 where incumbent Judge Matthew Destry has his hands full with four challengers including our own ASA Abbe Rifkin. Good luck to Abby.
A NEW WEB SITE FOR THE 11TH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT .....
Holy hotcakes, Batman. Did you say that our Circuit actually has a new web site. Why yes, Robin, we understand that Miami-Dade bigwigs went straight to the founder of the Internet, former VP Al Gore, and, with his help, they have developed a state of the art, first of it's kind, never before seen, website for the ages.
You can peruse the new web site by going here.
CAPTAIN OUT ......
Captain4Justice@gmail.com