The Miami-Dade Republican Party is seeing some real change effected within its party structure. State Representative David Rivera was elected as Chairman, Marco Rubio as its Committeeman, and the guy with the great first name, Javier Correoso was hired on as the Executive Director of the party.

Before Rivera came on as chairman, membership hovered around 100 members. Since then, the local party has increased memberships 50% by aggressively pursuing club memberships as well registering voters. Chairman Rivera told me that because of their political experiences back in their home countries, the immigrants that come to Miami tend to the right. “The ones that get involved in the party are conservative,” he explains.

When I asked him about the huge deficit that the state GOP has in voter registration he told me that,       “We need to convince them that our platform is better than the Democrats.” “Them”, of course refers to the many Independents , Democrats, and non-registered individuals that Rivera is aggressively pursuing.

David Rivera is also the state representative in Florida District 112. He is currently serving his fourth term as a state representative. Because of term limitations, Rivera has decided to run for the State Senate seat in district 38. The seat is being vacated by Senator Villalobos who is term limited out of office as well.

In a Republican-safe district, Representative Rivera’s only primary opponent is Representative Anitere Flores from House District 114, whom he leads in the polls. Rivera’s war chest of $400,000 by far exceeds what Representative Flores has raised, which is approximately about 1/3 of that.

Representative Rivera is by no means taking his comfortable fundraising and poll leads for granted.

“I am not going to rest of my laurels-I am going to pound like there is no tomorrow.”

To learn more about David Rivera, you can visit his website at www.davidrivera.org