MIAMI — Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar was declared the winner Tuesday in the tight race for Florida’s 27th Congressional District against Democrat Eliott Rodriguez following a contentious recount that lasted nearly two days and took a brief detour through federal court.

The Miami-Dade Canvassing Board, after recounting 247,952 ballots, found Salazar leading Rodriguez 50.22% to 49.78%. She won by just 1,086 votes.

Salazar’s lead after Election Day was so slim that it triggered a state law requiring a machine recount, but she maintained her advantage as the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections’ equipment processed nearly a quarter-million ballots Monday and Tuesday.

Salazar said the victory “sends a message beyond Miami” and that her campaign “prevailed because we listened.”

“Throughout this campaign, I heard from families who want secure borders, safe communities, relief from rising costs, and an immigration system that respects the dignity of hardworking people,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “We can enforce our laws without abandoning our humanity.”

Rodriguez said he respected the election outcome and had called Salazar to congratulate her. He said his team will continue watching any additional overseas and military ballots that may come in before the election is certified on Friday. And if those votes change Tuesday’s outcome, “we will accept those results and we expect my opponent to do the same.”

The results Tuesday followed an order by federal Judge David Leibowitz of the U.S. Southern District, denying an emergency request by Rodriguez to kick the county’s Republican elections supervisor off the Canvassing Board for the recount. Rodriguez argued that elections chief Alina Garcia was biased because of her ties to the Republican Party and her son-in-law’s representation of Salazar.

Rodriguez’s campaign sent a letter last week asking Garcia, who was elected to the post in 2024, to remove herself from the Canvassing Board during the recount. They accused her of improper influence on the election, cited her previous advocacy for ballot initiatives like DeSantis’ tax-cut proposal Amendment 3 and took issue with her statement to The Miami Herald on election night that Salazar had likely won the election.

Less than 24 hours later, as the Miami-Dade Canvassing Board met to officially tabulate the countywide results, tensions between the two camps escalated. The lawsuit was filed after Garcia’s daughter and son-in-law, of the RHF law firm, which is representing Salazar, were also present during the ballot validation proceedings.

Rodriguez’s lawyers argued that Garcia’s participation in the recount process violated the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

Garcia’s lawyer, in response to the complaint filed Sunday, said that Rodriguez’s lawsuit was “premature” and that his campaign had not cited any provision in Florida law suggesting that any of Garcia’s actions required her to abstain from performing her job.

“Plaintiff points to no decision by Supervisor Garcia where he has been prejudiced or harmed and fails to identify any decision by Supervisor Garcia that could alter the outcome of the recount, so his claim rests on contingent future events that may never occur as Plaintiff fears,” Oren Rosenthal, general counsel for the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections office, wrote.

An hour before the recount at the Miami-Dade elections office in Doral, Leibowitz, who was appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, said that Garcia’s comment to a Miami Herald reporter about Salazar winning on election night was “a really dumb statement to make.” But he rejected Rodriguez’s injunction, saying his attorneys hadn’t proved that Garcia needed to be removed from the proceedings.

The recount started with more than 69,000 ballots cast on Election Day. In a nearby room, observers from both campaigns watched through plexiglass every movement of election staff, how each machine was counting and which ballots required additional attention. The campaign lawyers at times squabbled over a voter’s intent when a ballot was not explicitly clear for whom the voter was voting.

In one instance, lawyers for Rodriguez challenged a decision regarding a ballot in which his name was checked rather than the oval being filled. The Canvassing Board rejected it.

The ballot began circulating on social media after Fernand Amandi, a consultant for the Rodriguez campaign, shared it as an example of what he said was bias by the Canvassing Board.

Garcia on Tuesday said “voter intent is extremely important. So is consistency in how a voter marks a ballot.” She said that under Florida voting standards, ballots marked in ways other than filling in the designated oval consistently across the ballot require review by the Canvassing Board to determine whether the voter’s intent is consistent across the ballot.

“These determinations are not arbitrary; they are guided by Florida’s established standards for determining voter intent,” she said. “Those standards apply throughout the state, not just in Miami-Dade County.”

The recount continued overnight into Tuesday morning as the election office counted more than 100,000 early-voting ballots. With little sleep, tensions rose over how quickly early voting ballots were being counted compared to Election Day ballots, which had taken more than 10 hours to count and were a little more than half the volume.

Garcia later clarified to reporters that the count Tuesday had been processed faster because her team had sorted the ballots and removed extra pages so that they were only feeding the one page with the congressional race into the tabulating machines.

The election chief, reflecting on the issues her words and family relations had caused in the congressional race, said she would be “more mindful moving forward” of her words. As for her son-in-law, Robert Fernandez, she noted that he has been practicing election law since long before she was elected to her role.

“He did not become an elections attorney or develop his specialization in his field when I took office, as some have attempted to suggest. I want to make that timeline absolutely clear,” she said.

Garcia said that, though she would not endorse or support a candidate appearing on the ballot, she does plan to continue speaking out about issues that affect her as a private citizen, like Amendment 3.

“I have First Amendment rights, just like every other citizen and I will continue to exercise those rights in matters where I believe my participation is appropriate,” she said.

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