Last day to vote in two heated Coral Gables commission runoff races

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After all that hand-wringing and sweating over the Coral Gables commission election, much fewer voters will actually have made the decision when it comes Tuesday.

Already there are more than 2,500 fewer voters between vote-by-mail ballots and early voting than there was for the first round April 13.

According to the Miami-Dade County Elections Department, a total of 1,134 people had voted early at the Coral Gables library (604 on Saturday and 530 on Sunday). By Monday, the county had received a return of 3,453 VBMs or absentee ballots.

There were more absentee ballots than that returned for just the two candidates in each the Group 2 and Group 3 races that made the runoff.

In Group 2, Rhonda Anderson got 2,449 absentee votes and 729 ballots in her favor during the two days of early voting, which is more than the other five candidates got combined. Jose Valdes-Fauli, brother of the former Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli, got 1,665 ABs and 290 early votes for 26% of the vote.

In Group 3, Javier Baños got 32% of the vote while Kirk Menendez got 31%, but Mr. Coral Gables beat Mr. Bathrooms in ABs, with 1,813 to 1,782. On early voting weekend, Baños got 478 and Menendez got 432 votes.

Municipal runoff elections typically have lower turnouts than municipal general elections. But the Gables election has been marked with so much fear of overdevelopment and Miami politics creeping in that one would think the interest would make it to the end.

For more on the Coral Gables elections, read related stories:\

Joe Arriola sues Javier Baños and Marc Sarnoff over ‘lies’ in PAC attack mailer

Endorsements fly in Coral Gables runoff election as VBM ballots arrive

Absentee ballots go out with little time to mail them back in Coral Gables

Kirk Menendez vs Javier Baños is not as easy a decision as voters may think

In snobby Coral Gables, ‘not one of us’ plagues some candidates at elections

Two Coral Gables commission races head to runoffs

  Coral Gables politics, Rhonda Anderson