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SUMMARY: (Sources and media reports are below)
– Daniella Levine Cava declared a net worth of $6.2 million according to her filed 2020 campaign documents.
 Daniella Levine Cava’s 2020 campaign documents show a net worth over $6 million. – Her net worth was $3+ million in 2014 according to the Miami Herald.
– Born to a wealthy family in New York.
– Married to Robert Cava, who is of Italian descent.
– She adopted the ‘Cava’ last name of her husband because it sounded Spanish. She was just ‘Daniella Levine’ until she ran for commissioner. “I did think it would communicate that I spoke Spanish — even though it’s not a Spanish name, it’s an Italian name,” Daniella said. (see report below)
– Received bachelor’s degree in psychology from Yale University, and graduate degrees in law and social work from Columbia University.
– Moved to Miami in the early 1980s.
– In 1995, she founded Catalyst Miami (formerly known as the Human Services Coalition of Dade County), an advocacy group and social-services provider.
— Her nonprofit foundation, Catalyst Miami, is partially tax-funded and paid her $500,000 from year 2002-2020 according to reports.
– In 2014, she quit her job as Catalyst’s director to run for the District 8 county commission seat, covering South Miami-Dade.
CAMPAIGN DOCS
– Campaign Contributions and Expenditure
– Filing Documents:
– Qualifying Documents:
REPORT: Miami Herald(July 23, 2020) | Archive
Levine Cava’s quick bio
Born to a wealthy family in New York, the Columbia Law graduate moved to Miami in the early 1980s to be with a young Miami doctor she was dating, Robert Cava. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, she headed up the county’s foster-child program. In 1995, she founded the Human Services Coalition of Dade County, an advocacy group and social-services provider that’s now known as Catalyst Miami.
In 2014, she quit her job as Catalyst’s director to run for the District 8 county commission seat, covering South Miami-Dade. With backing from the Democratic Party she unseated incumbent Lynda Bell, a conservative former Homestead mayor and president of Florida Right to Life.
Not Hispanic: She added the ‘Cava’ last name until she ran for commissioner
The win made Levine Cava the commission’s wealthiest member, with a net worth now topping $6 million thanks to stock holdings and property she owns with her husband, Robert. Though known as Daniella Levine professionally since moving to Miami, the candidate used her more Spanish-sounding name to run for the commission. “I did think it would communicate that I spoke Spanish — even though it’s not a Spanish name, it’s an Italian name,” she said at the time.
Selfish?
She’s giving up her final two years on the commission to run for mayor because Florida law required her to resign before qualifying for the race in May.
Rather than quit right away, she made her resignation effective in November, requiring either an appointment or special election in early 2021. If she had left office immediately, the seat could have been filled during the regular county elections in August.
Critics on the commission complained of the cost of a special election in the midst of an economic crisis caused by COVID. The scenario also would let Levine Cava run for her seat again if she doesn’t become mayor, but the candidate ruled out that possibility. “I’m done being a county commissioner,” she said.
Tougher Coronavirus measures: lockdown, tracers
After the coronavirus hit, Levine Cava became the commission’s top critic of outgoing Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s response. In a series of letters released to the media by her office, Levine Cava demanded the county hire contact tracers to bolster the state’s lackluster efforts, provide hotel rooms to give isolation options to people in cramped living quarters and issue a countywide directive to stay at home.
Pro-Sanctuary
Levine Cava sits on the more liberal wing of the nonpartisan commission’s collection of Democrats. A bipartisan majority in 2017 backed dropping “sanctuary” policies at county jails under pressure from the newly inaugurated president, Donald Trump. (Of the three commissioners running for mayor in the nonpartisan Aug. 18 primary, Levine Cava and Xavier Suarez, an independent, voted against the change; Esteban “Steve” Bovo, a Republican, voted for it.)
REPORT: Miami Herald (Oct. 4, 2020) | Archive
Levine Cava believes there is systemic racism
Levine Cava, a commissioner since 2014, took a different view [than Bovo’s]. “We have systemic racism in county government,” she said, without elaboration.
Will liberal Levine Cava turn Miami-Dade into another Portland?
Bovo, a former Republican state representative running as a conservative champion of law and order, called Levine Cava “radical” and at risk of turning Miami-Dade into a “another New York or Portland” by shifting county dollars from core services like police and roads to social-services programs.
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