ELECTION CENTRAL ..... JUDICIAL CONTESTS 2026 - PART TWO .....

THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

MEET THE CANDIDATES, PART 2 .....

Today, Captain Justice takes a look at two more contested Circuit Court races. One of them—Group 67—features a candidate whose campaign finance reports caught Captain Justice's attention.

CIRCUIT COURT – GROUP 67
(Incumbent Judge Mavel Ruiz)

Judge Mavel Ruiz

• Incumbent Circuit Court Judge.
• Elected in 2014 and has served on the Circuit Court bench since January 2015.
• Re-elected in 2020.
• Former Assistant Public Defender.
• Has tried more than 50 jury trials.

DOLLARS $$$

• Judge Ruiz has raised $247,191 from 492 contributors, the highest fundraising total of any candidate in this year's judicial election cycle.
• She has also loaned her campaign $20,100.
• Captain Justice was unable to locate a financial disclosure reflecting her current net worth. Her reported judicial salary is $200,836.

Destiny Goede Alvarez

• Insurance defense attorney with Goede, DeBoest & Cross.
• Member of The Florida Bar for five years.
• Age 30.
• Practices civil litigation, insurance disputes, condominium, and homeowners' association law.
• Has not tried a jury trial.

DOLLARS $$$

• Alvarez has raised $195,960 from 360 contributors.
• Her financial disclosure reflects a net worth of $391,163, and an annual salary of $222,519 from her law firm.

A Campaign Finance Observation - better said as

WAIT A MINUTE

Here's what caught Captain Justice's attention.

Since 2008, when Rumpole first launched this blog, I have reviewed campaign finance reports for hundreds of judicial candidates. I have never encountered another judicial candidate whose campaign reports reflected this level of Political Committee support.

According to her campaign finance reports, 26 separate Political Committees (PACs) contributed to Ms. Alvarez's campaign. All but one contributed the maximum $1,000 permitted by law. One PAC contributed $750.

Even more noteworthy, nine of those PACs list the same address:

2100 Salzedo Street, Suite 200
Coral Gables, Florida

Captain Justice reviewed the campaign finance reports of all 14 candidates running in this year's six contested judicial races.

Ms. Alvarez is the only candidate whose campaign reflects contributions from this many Political Committees. The only other PAC contributions identified were two law firm PACs—GrayRobinson and Duane Morris—which contributed to Judge Eig's campaign.

The Political Committees contributing to the Alvarez campaign are:

• A Stronger Florida
• America First Florida First PC
• APB for Florida
• By the People, For the People
• Conservatives for a Better Florida
• Conservatives for a Better Miami
• Dade County PBA Political Action Committee
• Dade Families First PC
• Ethics and Honesty in Government
• Fighting for a Better Miami-Dade
• Fighting for Florida's Families
• Floridians for Prosperity
• Floridians for Strong Leadership
• Friends of Sammi
• Miami-Dade Residents United
• Miami Fraternal Order of Police
• Miami United PC
• New Leadership for Miami
• People Above Politics
• People for Accountable Government
• Protect Our Florida Values
• Protecting Florida's Future
• Right Future for Florida
• The Future Now PAC ($750)
• The Right Path for Florida
• The Southern Group of Florida

Captain Justice previously wrote about Ms. Goede Alvarez's multiple name changes in a post entitled "The Name Game."

If you missed it, it is worth another look. Click here to read our previous post.

CIRCUIT COURT – GROUP 69
(Seat being vacated by Judge Richard Hersch)

Rita Baez

• Private practice concentrating in personal injury litigation.
• Member of The Florida Bar for 30 years.
• Has tried approximately 80 jury trials.
• Candidate for County Court in 2024.

In 2024, Baez sought election to the County Court, narrowly losing to Christopher Green by a margin of 50.8% to 49.2%—a difference of just 4,145 votes out of 249,483 ballots cast.

DOLLARS $$$

• Baez has raised $64,016 from 105 contributors.
• She has also loaned her campaign $200,000.
• Her financial disclosure reflects the highest reported net worth of any judicial candidate in this election cycle—$9,110,000.
• She reports annual income of $750,000.

Yaneth del Carmen Baez

• Assistant State Attorney throughout her nine-year legal career.
• Currently assigned to the Human Trafficking Unit.
• Has tried 34 jury trials.
• Previously nominated by the Judicial Nominating Commission on four separate occasions.

DOLLARS $$$

• Baez has raised $60,913 from 203 contributors.
• She has also loaned her campaign $33,500.
• Captain Justice was unable to locate a financial disclosure reflecting her current net worth.
• Her State of Florida salary is $124,798.

Bonita Jones-Peabody

• Private practitioner.
• Former Assistant Public Defender.
• Member of The Florida Bar for 35 years.
• Has tried more than 200 jury trials.
• Candidate for Circuit Court in 2024.

In 2024, Jones-Peabody sought election to the Circuit Court but was defeated by Jason Bloch by a 62% to 38% margin.

DOLLARS $$$

• Jones-Peabody has raised $35,045 from 130 contributors.
• She has loaned her campaign $10,100.
• Her financial disclosure reflects the lowest reported net worth among the candidates in this year's contested judicial elections—$220,181.
• She reports annual State of Florida income of $19,097, together with $41,821 in Social Security benefits.

Tomorrow, Captain Justice concludes this three-part series by examining the final two contested judicial races:

Circuit Court – Group 76

County Court – Group 25

Until then...

CAPTAIN OUT …
Captain4Justice@gmail.com

ELECTION CENTRAL ... JUDICIAL CONTESTS 2026 - PART ONE .....

THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:

MEET THE CANDIDATES - PART ONE .......

Miami-Dade County has six contested judicial elections in the 2026 election cycle—five for the Circuit Court and one for the County Court.

Early voting began on Monday, August 3, and Election Day is Tuesday, August 18, 2026.

Over the next three days, Captain Justice will take a look at each of the six races. Today, Group 5 and Group 35.

CIRCUIT COURT – GROUP 5
(Seat being vacated by Judge Angelica Zayas)

Alexander Annunziato

• In-house counsel for Ascendant Commercial Insurance.
• Member of The Florida Bar for 11 years.
• Former Lieutenant with the Florida Highway Patrol.
• Former Assistant Public Defender.
• Has tried 23 jury trials.

His background also includes a highly publicized 2018 arrest for purchasing two bags of heroin. He successfully completed the Miami-Dade Drug Court program, and the charges were ultimately dismissed.

DOLLARS $$$

• Raised $53,795 from 86 contributors.
• Presidente Supermarkets, through five different corporate entities, contributed a combined $5,000.
• Financial disclosure reflects a net worth of $1,165,000, including an annual salary of $170,000 from Ascendant Commercial Insurance.
• One final tidbit that Rumpole would undoubtedly appreciate: among his listed assets is "Green Bay Packers — $1,500."

Arthur McNeil

• Assistant Public Defender.
• Member of The Florida Bar for 19 years.
• Currently assigned to the Death Penalty Litigation Unit.
• Certified Supreme Court Mediator.
• Former private practitioner handling both civil and criminal litigation.
• Has tried 56 jury trials.

DOLLARS $$$

• Raised $57,545 from 109 contributors.
• Personally loaned his campaign $25,250.
• Financial disclosure lists a net worth of $509,199 and an annual State of Florida salary of $134,321.

Monica Segura

• Senior Managing Associate General Counsel for Universal Property & Casualty Insurance.
• Member of The Florida Bar for 20 years.
• Has tried one jury trial.

DOLLARS $$$

• Raised $61,269 from 145 contributors.
• Financial disclosure reports a net worth of $1,492,000 and an annual salary of $213,500 from Universal Property & Casualty Insurance.

CIRCUIT COURT – GROUP 35
(Seat being vacated by Judge Orlando Prescott)

Renee Gordon

• Assistant Public Defender.
• Member of The Florida Bar for 30 years.
• Seven years with the PD's Office, twelve years in private practice, and the past eleven years back with the PD's Office.
• Has tried 60 jury trials.

This is Gordon's third campaign for the Circuit Court. In 2016, she ran in a four-candidate race, finishing third behind Mark Blumstein (29%) and Luis Perez-Medina (25%). She narrowly missed advancing to the runoff by just 1,737 votes. In 2018, she again sought a Circuit Court seat, this time in a three-candidate race. Gordon finished first in the primary with 47.6% of the vote, while Vivianne del Rio received 35%. In the runoff election, del Rio prevailed with 53% of the vote.

DOLLARS $$$

• Raised $84,000 from 289 contributors.
• Personally loaned her campaign $27,000.
• Net worth: $602,273. State salary: $124,133 plus $9,296 from Florida International University.

Cristobal Padron

• Private practice concentrating in family law.
• Member of The Florida Bar for 14 years.
• Ran for Circuit Court in 2024.
• Has tried two jury trials and more than 400 bench trials.

Padron lost the 2024 election to Judge Heloiza Correa by a 52% to 48% margin.

DOLLARS $$$

• Raised $15,800 from 31 contributors.
• Personally loaned his campaign $38,500.
• Net worth: $1,085,000. Income from solo practice: $237,313.

Be sure to check back tomorrow as Captain Justice turns to Circuit Court Groups 67 and 69.

Trust me—you won't want to miss it. The Group 67 race contains a few surprises that deserve a closer look.

CAPTAIN OUT …
Captain4Justice@gmail.com

THE ASSMAN

More fun with license plates. More and more Seinfeld episodes are becoming relevant to current issues. 

Case in point- the Assman license plate episode, because now a Virginia man has sued to be able to have a plate that reads

And now after the Fourth Circuit's opinion here calling the plates private speech (not government speech) and subject to the first amendment protections, it may be headed to everyone's favourite group of nine in DC. 

In 2015 in Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans, Justice Breyer (still around, not writing opinions and no relation to the mid ice cream company) held that specialty plates issued by the state are government speech, not private speech, and thus subject to far less First Amendment protections. Three liberal justices were joined by Justice Thomas who wrote that he felt compelled to join his liberal colleagues at least once a decade in an opinion. The plates in question in Walker were Texas specialized plates and included such slogans as Choose Life, God Bless Texas, Fight Terrorism, Down With NY Jewish Delis, and I'd Rather Be Golfing.  (NB- one of these is a fake Rumpole parody). 

In dissent, Justice Alito disinvited Thomas to the weekly conservative pizza party the court has and wrote "If a car with a plate "I'd rather be golfing" passed by at 8:30 am would you think that it is official Texas state policy to golf rather than work?" Point to Alito, and more pizza for the rest of the conservative Justices and clerks that week we guess. 

Virginia appears ready to take this plate contretemps all the way to the DC 9. 

SABBATICAL

 Still on Sabbatical. Blog interns will review and post your comments. 

MORE OF WHAT WE ARE READING PLUS

 As we continue our sabbatical, we add an addition to our highly anticipated series on the books we are reading- What We Are Listening To (c) Blogstuff 2026 most rights reserved). 

Let's start with our new feature. Everyone has a podcast these days, from lawyers who work on top of garages, to guys doing time at Coleman. 

Alan Alda's Clear and Vivid, available on, inter alia, Apple Podcasts, is a gem. Alda interviews a wide collection of famous, and not so famous people, with an eye on communication, how we engage in it, and how it can be more effective. Walter Issacson's episode is a must listen to as he expounds on the communication during the Continental Congress (the wonky wifi in Philadelphia kept cutting out, causing Franklin at one point to toss his iPhone across the room during one contentious meeting), and talks about his new, short, epistle The Greatest Sentence Every Written.

Fan of the West Wing?  MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell talks about his years as executive producer for the show and his task during the last two seasons writing the character Senator Arnie Vinick, who is the Republican presidential candidate vying to succeed President Bartlett and was played by....Alan Alda. 

One recent episode caught our ear- author and neuroscientist Lisa Genova was interviewed about her career and works in fiction and non-fiction, which brings us to...

What We Are Reading: 

More Or Less Maddie, by the just mentioned Lisa Genova, is a thoughtful, engrossing and engaging quick beach read that you must consume as summer wanes. The topic: a fictionalized account of a smart young woman dealing with the onset and challenges of           bi-polar disorder. *

Genova is a masterful writer, spending fifty-some-odd pages developing a character you become fully invested in, with only the barest hints of a plot (in violation of the current  your plot line must be apparent in the first ten pages requirements of block-headed book agents and query letter rules) until you slowly are drawn in to Maddie's illness and say to yourself Oh I see now where this is going, only to have what you think is going to happen turn on its head again and again and again. The worst thing about this wonderful novel is that it ends, leaving you wanting More Maddie. 

More Or Less Maddie comes with our famous Rumpole Money Back Guarantee that you will love this book or your money cheerfully refunded! And we have yet to refund any reader, so buy it and settle down for a great read with confidence. 

 

* For our robed readers, this has nothing to do with the mating habits of those big white bears in Alaska that you see in your IG feeds. 

A TINY OF RIPPLE OF HOPE

 This is what we do on Sabbatical. Read and ponder and meditate and hope and rest and refresh. 

"But how shall we educate men to goodness, to a sense of one another, to a love of truth?  And more urgently, how shall we do this in a bad time?"

Father Daniel Berrigan, Cover of Time Magazine, January 25, 1971. 

For more on Father Berrigan, the only Jesuit Priest ever to be on the FBI's most wanted list, click here.

(for more on Time Magazine, ask your parents)

More urgently indeed. 

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth tiny ripples of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." 

Robert Kennedy, Day Of Affirmation Address, Cape Town University, June 6, 1966.  (That's Cape Town South Africa for our robed readers, not Cape Town Gas and Cafeteria in Hialeah). 

(For more on Robert Kennedy, go back to college or ask your college for a refund) 

Where is our Robert Kennedy  today? Because we don't see any on the horizon, absent - stand by for an outrageous backlash in the comments- the current Mayor of NYC (ouch, but we said it and we mean it). 

WHY WE ARE DONE WITH LAW

 There are many reasons why our disillusionment with law continues. However, this post by famed federal lawyer cum blogger Mr. Markus sums it up for us: Our System Has Lost Its Way. 

 US v. Hernandez.    Six-day Medicare fraud trial. Judge Moore gives prosecution forty minutes for closing, defense gets thirty. At the end of her thirty minutes defense counsel asks for more time as she has not been able to address loss amounts, the false statements counts, and the good faith defense. Hernandez is convicted and sentenced to veinte años as we say in Miami. 

And now the 11th Circuit has weighed in (Motto: Proudly reversing just one criminal conviction per year since 1990 and before). 

Was Moore wrong? You betchya.  Does it matter? Remember who has the appeal. 

All together now....(hint- begins with an H....) HARMLESS ERROR

And as Mr. Markus points out, that was not good enough for Judge Luck* who concurred and opined that thirty minutes is fine for the defense "You get what you get and you don't get upset" (clarification so we don't get into hot water- this is not a quote from Judge Luck's concurrence. It does however sum up the gist of his opinion, in our opinion, and comes from a well-known pre-school saying that teachers tell their little ones who want a different flavor of ice cream). 

Read Mr. Markus's piece, along with his timely world cup analogy. ⚽

For us- we give up. 

Along with all the other arguments about a defendant getting a fair trial, the ability to fight the government and make it prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, our personal take is that the opinion is profoundly anti-defense attorney. 

What we do is both an art and a science. And the art part comes during our closing arguments. What we say, how we say it, and when we say it in crafting a narrative designed to influence the jury has been eviscerated by this opinion. The opinion silently stands for the proposition that there is no difference between a Gerry Spence, a Roy Black, a Richard Sharpstein, an Al Krieger et. al, standing before a jury arguing for their client's acquittal, and a third-year law student intern assisting in their first trial. 

Just say what you think your argument is and do it quickly so the court can get to the important business of sentencing.

There is no art or skill in closing. It matters not who gives a closing. Etc. 

The opinion is what one would expect from a court in Iran, North Korea, China, or Russia, where outcomes in criminal cases are predetermined and the defense is simply part of the show trial. This is not what should occur in the criminal justice system of the United States of America. 

And if you do not think this opinion will embolden the new set of MAGA judges taking the bench to shut down criminal defense attorneys even more, then we have a reflecting pool in Washington we would like to sell you. 

It's not the beginning of the end for our art- it is the middle- and the end is in sight. 

We are done. 

"The war outside still rages, but you say it ain't ours anymore to win."

Bruce Springsteen, No Retreat, No Surrender. 

* In an earlier version of this post we mistakenly listed the concurrence as being written by Judge Jordan. That was a mistake and "bad luck" on our part. We apologize. In our counting, it is our third mistake of the year.