Gov. Ron DeSantis named a Republican ally to the position of Miami-Dade County clerk on Friday, appointing Rep. Juan Fernandez-Barquin to administer the court system and oversee the county’s finances ahead of the 2024 elections.
The appointment of Fernandez-Barquin, 40, and a married lawyer from Kendall, comes five months after the death of Miami-Dade’s longtime Democratic clerk, Harvey Ruvin.
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Privately, Fernandez-Barquin has told associates he’s eager to expand the public role of clerk and assume the financial powers exercised by clerks in other Florida counties. In announcing his appointment, DeSantis said he was naming Fernandez-Barquin to be “Clerk of the Court and Comptroller of Miami-Dade County.”
While best known for running the offices that process parking tickets, divorce filings and real estate deeds, the clerk also has a central financial role in county government. The clerk’s signature appears on county paychecks, and Florida law gives clerks auditing power and other financial duties that Ruvin largely ceded to the county mayor.
In a statement, Fernandez-Barquin said: “As Clerk and Comptroller, I will work my hardest to streamline services, enhance technological capabilities and increase outreach to our residents. Thank you, Governor Ron DeSantis for your vote of confidence in my abilities.”
As a state office, the clerk is elected in partisan elections, and Fernandez-Barquin could run for a full four-year term in 2024. Florida’s Constitution allows the governor to name replacements when the clerk’s office becomes vacant.
After the Dec. 31 death of Ruvin, who held the position for 30 years, DeSantis had the power to appoint a replacement immediately but waited.
That allowed the state judge who runs Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Nushin Sayfie, to appoint a Ruvin deputy, Luis Montaldo, to the position temporarily days after Ruvin’s death.
Montaldo registered as a Republican after his appointment and said in late January he planned to run for a full four-year term in 2024. Montaldo hasn’t filed for the election, which currently has one declared candidate: Republican Rubin Young, who has run for Congress and other offices.
Ruvin, a former county commissioner, focused on the legal and paperwork elements of the job, which oversees more than a dozen offices where residents pay speeding tickets, file for divorce and process real estate sales.
The clerk’s financial powers had Miami-Dade leaders bracing for a shakeup ahead of Fernandez-Baquin’s expected appointment in recent weeks. The county’s finance director, Ed Marquez, serves under a joint appointment by the mayor and clerk — and some speculated a DeSantis appointee won’t be eager to cooperate with the Democratic mayor.
“My understanding is that the governor is going to name someone to be the clerk,” Commissioner Raquel Regalado, a Republican, said at the board’s May 16 meeting. “ And one of his first actions is going to be undoing this agreement.”
Fernandez-Barquin, now in his third term representing House District 118, was not immediately available for comment. His biographical page on the House of Representatives website says he has a jiujitsu blue belt and graduated from American University’s Washington College of Law in 2008 after earning an economics degree from Florida International University.
Fernandez-Barquin sponsored the DeSantis-backed “anti-riot” legislation in 2021, which increases criminal penalties for misconduct during protests and demonstrations. This year, Barquin was the sponsor of a new law opposed by Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava mandating the county turn over its police department to the newly revived position of sheriff in 2025.
