Early voting and ABs in Miami Beach have incumbents losing

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If the trends continue, both incumbents in the Miami Beach elections may be spending their last days at City Hall next week.

According to the Miami-Dade Elections Department, and with only absentee ballots and early voting counted, both Michael Grieco and Joy Malakoff are winning their respective races against Commissioner Jorge Exposito and Mayor Matti Bower, who is termed out and ran for a commission seat instead.

Malakoff is beating Bower by a wider margin of 56-44 percent — a 500+ lead that seems insurmountable — while Grieco has a 52 percent lead over Exposito.

Micky Steinberg, who is running in an open seat against activist, Elsa Urquiza, is also holding on to a slight lead with 51 percent of the vote. Steinberg is expected to hold on to that lead through election day voters, where she blew Urquiza away on Nov. 6.

These results are only the counting absentee ballots, which have reached 3,017 so far, and 1,329 early voters who went to City Hall Saturday and Sunday to avoid Tuesday’s rain, because there were no crowds.

So far, it looks like Mayor Elect Philip Levine is batting two out of three and that he is winning his bitter war with Bower.

Levine has been fully and openly supporting Grieco and Malakoff and some say he has been quietly supporting Urquiza as well, at least through their shared campaign consultant, David Custin. But many also believe the Levin/Custin team put most of their eggs into the Group 3 basket to unseat Mayor Matti, who would be a big thorn in the mayor’s side if elected.

And the effort is apparently bearing fruit.

By 8 p.m., we knew that Malakoff had a 500+ lead over Bower, with 2,380 votes to the mayor’s 1,845, which seems like doom for Bower considering the low turnout that came out to vote on Tuesday. She may be conceding any minute now.

The other races are tighter and could turn. Steinberg has less than 100 votes over Urquiza (2,103 to 2,014) and Grieco has just over 100 over Expo (2,159 to 2,027).

Stay tuned for full results around 10 p.m.

  Jorge Exposito, Matti Bower, Michael Grieco, Micky Steinberg, Philip Levine