Monroe County’s longest-tenured county commissioner will look to continue his service to the Florida Keys.
District 4 commissioner and current Monroe County Mayor Pro Tem David Rice became the first to file for the 2026 race, vying to represent the majority of Marathon all the way up through Plantation Key and the west end of Tavernier.
First elected in 2002, Rice was re-elected in 2010, 2014 and 2018, most recently going unopposed in the 2022 election. He’s a 53-year resident of Monroe County and the founder of the Guidance Clinic of the Middle Keys, serving as the organization’s executive director for more than 30 years until his retirement in 2006.
“It will be 20 years (on the commission) at the end of this term,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it, and if the citizens of this county would like to have me one more time, I’m ready to do that.”
Rice currently serves on the board of the Historic Florida Keys Foundation and was a founding member of the Pigeon Key Foundation. He has previously served on the boards of the Monroe County Housing Authority, Rural Health Network, Marathon Economic Development Council, South Florida Resource, Conservation Development Council, and Florida Keys Hurricane Recovery Foundation.
He told the Weekly one of his proudest achievements in office was helping develop the Trauma Star air ambulance program as it exists today.
“We’d been operating an old Vietnam Huey, and it had finally died on us,” Rice said. “We were at a crossroads, and we’d demonstrated how important it could be. So I developed a business plan, and we discovered that it could essentially pay for itself.”
The program went on to purchase three Sikorsky S-76 helicopters before a full fleet refresh at the close of 2025, replacing the aging birds with brand-new Leonardo AW-139 helicopters. Today, Trauma Star transports more than 1,300 patients per year.
Rice listed traffic and transportation issues as unsolved.
“For several years, that was the number one priority of folks who live here, and we really have not done a great deal with that,” he told the Weekly. “I’m not sure how much we can do, because it appeared the voters didn’t really have an appetite for another penny sales tax. … That’s about the only way I know to create a transportation system that would give us some relief on the highway.”
While noting an ever-present issue of affordable housing, Rice said the county has seen some vacancies in Upper Keys and Lower Keys projects, potentially correlated with heightened immigration enforcement activity throughout the county.
“We need to keep an eye on it until we can figure out what’s happening,” he said. “Maybe we’ve had a certain percentage of our workforce decide to live elsewhere for reasons that may have to do with ICE, but we just don’t know yet.”
Rice’s tenure has spanned some of the more tumultuous years in recent memory for Monroe County as it navigated widespread staff layoffs, changes to its fire department and protocols following a drug theft and coverup scandal and critical financial audits of county departments and the Tourist Development Council. He said that while the layoffs were difficult, they were a necessary step in complying with directives from the state Department of Government Efficiency and preparing for deep cuts to property tax revenues.
“We’re running a pretty lean operation, and it may not be over,” he said. “Depending on how they (cut taxes), we could be unable to deliver services to the county at the rates that people want things to happen. The time it takes to get permits, things like that – these matter to people, so hopefully we won’t be dealing with that, but with or without (the cuts), we had to make some big reductions.”
