Eleven days before Surfside voters are set to choose a new Mayor, one of the candidates is seeking a one-week postponement on religious grounds.
Former Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger, who faces Vice Mayor Tina Paul in an April 7 runoff, has joined a group of Jewish organizations, rabbis and local voters in filing an emergency lawsuit to delay the election until April 14.
They argue the current date conflicts with Passover, one of Judaism’s holiest holidays.
The verified petition, filed Friday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, lists as plaintiffs Chabad of Surfside, United Orthodox Synagogues of Surfside, multiple rabbis and individual voters, including Danzinger himself.
Defendants are the Town of Surfside and the Surfside Canvassing Board, with Miami-Dade County also referenced as administering the election.
The plaintiffs, represented by lawyers affiliated with the National Jewish Advocacy Center and GS2Law, seek a temporary injunction blocking the April 7 runoff and ordering it rescheduled to April 14 — or another date that does not conflict with Passover.
Passover runs April 1-9 this year, during which time many traditionally observant Jews are prohibited from activities including driving, writing and using electronics.
“This isn’t about politics; it is about the right of every Surfside resident to practice their faith and cast their vote without being forced to choose between the two,” Danzinger said in a statement.
“Hundreds of our neighbors, people who care deeply about this community, will be unable to vote on April 7 because of their religious observance. All we are asking for is one week … so that every resident of Surfside, regardless of their faith, can participate in choosing their next Mayor.”
Of Surfside’s more than 5,700 residents, an estimated 2,500 are Jewish, with a significant share of them identifying as Orthodox or Conservative.
Friday’s filing lays out a detailed constitutional argument under the First Amendment and Florida’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits governments from substantially burdening a person or religious organization’s exercise of religion.
The law, enacted in 1998, requires the state to demonstrate a “compelling government interest” in imposing any such burden, while using the least restrictive means in doing so.
The Surfside filing contends the April 7 election date indeed imposes a substantial burden on observant Jewish voters, in part because some interpretations of Jewish law prohibit voting during Chol Hamoed — the intermediate days of Passover, between the first two and last two days of the eight-day holiday — while others make it impractical due to travel and holiday preparation.
And vote-by-mail doesn’t solve the issue, the plaintiffs argue, since the runoff was triggered March 17, leaving limited time to request and return absentee ballots before many residents depart for the holiday.
There’s also precedent. Nearby Bay Harbor Islands unanimously moved its election to April 14 to avoid Passover, and in 2010, the petition notes, then-Gov. Charlie Crist postponed a Special Congressional Election for similar reasons, as was also done in states like New York and New Jersey.
The filing also takes exception with a blog post outgoing Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett wrote this month detailing how Paul should communicate with voters about what he called Danzinger’s “fearmongering” about a “(non-existent) threat” of antisemitism in the town.
In the post, titled “The Letter Tina Paul Should Write,” Burkett — who served as Mayor both before and after Danzinger’s only mayoral term from 2022 to 2024 — took exception with Danzinger flying Israel’s flag at Town Hall and a “cottage industry based on division” he said the candidate employs while seeking and after winning office.
Danzinger took 857 votes in the General Election, representing roughly 25% of the total number of registered voters in Surfside. Of those, “a solid 850” were “religious voters” whom Danzinger “frightened and misled” into voting for him, Burkett said before arguing that the “remaining 75%” of the town’s electorate should choose Paul in the runoff.
Paul is also Jewish. Burkett is not.
The filing characterized Burkett’s remarks as evidence of the current Mayor’s “deep-seated animus toward the Jewish people” and argues that the “facially neutral” runoff date set by the town charter can no longer be considered such, because a “government official is actively encouraging non-Jewish voters to turn out on a date when Jewish voters” are unlikely to do so in as large a number as they otherwise would.
Speaking with Florida Politics, Burkett said he harbors no ill will toward the Jewish community, members of whom he has lived beside for decades and considers himself an honorary member “by osmosis.” But he takes exception, he continued, with Danzinger “inciting one group against another” and flying a flag representing one religion or nation other than the U.S., but no others.
“It’s not about any one religion,” he said. “It’s about his intolerance for anybody else, his intolerance for any other views.”
Burkett added that he is open to delaying the election by a week, as the petition seeks, and would have likely agreed to do so had Danzinger asked Surfside to do so.
“Rather than filing a lawsuit, all he had to do was call me up and ask me if I would have a special meeting and move the date. He didn’t bother to do that because it would have been the easy and less controversial thing to do,” he said. “But it’s no skin off my back. It never was, and that issue is 100% separate from the way voters feel about Shlomo Danzinger conflating some sort of malicious, dark secret to try to disenfranchise people before you even ask the question.”
Danzinger, who took 49% of the vote to Paul’s 36% in Surfside’s General Election this month, is no stranger to election-focused litigation. While running for Miami-Dade County Mayor, he filed two lawsuits challenging incumbent Daniella Levine Cava, one seeking to remove her from the ballot over alleged paperwork irregularities and another to overturn the race after she won.
The first complaint failed. He withdrew the second.
Danzinger is a Republican. Paul is a Democrat. Burkett has no party affiliation.
Surfside’s elections are technically nonpartisan, though party politics can and often still influence town races.
