For Marina Garcia-Wood, hard work, persistence and patience finally paid off in a decade-long quest to become a judge.
So did a tactical decision to appear a little less Hispanic to Broward County voters. Next month, Garcia-Wood will become Broward’s eighth Hispanic judge after running a successful, partly self-financed campaign that landed her a seat on the circuit court. In a rare feat, she won the judgeship by election, not appointment — the usual and politically freighted route for Hispanic judges in Broward.
Hispanics applauded Garcia-Wood’s victory as a political milestone, even if, at the urging of her campaign advisor, Tony Gargiulo, she dropped her Hispanic maiden name from the ballot. While she campaigned as Marina Garcia-Wood — the name she kept after divorcing real estate attorney Dennis Wood in 1999 — she appeared on the ballot as Marina G. Wood.
Garcia-Wood, 45, spent around $150,000 of her own money by taking out a loan against her Hollywood home to beat opponent Mardi Levey Cohen.
“I wanted to make a statement that we have qualified Hispanics in Broward County willing to do what’s necessary to win an election,” she said. “I felt this was my time. I’m hoping my election will inspire other Hispanics to seek office.”
Garcia-Wood said other Hispanics already knew who she was from her public appearances and campaign literature, where her full name appeared. It was to avoid alienating other Broward residents who might be reluctant to vote for a Hispanic judge, she said, that she heeded the recommendation to delete the “Garcia” part of her name from the ballot.
As a fledgling attorney, Garcia-Wood moved to Hollywood in 1988, on the leading edge of the wave of Spanish-speaking arrivals about to transform the county’s demographics. It was a lonely time for a Cuban native who spent much of her childhood in Miami.
From a world where Hispanics were in the political ascendancy, the future judge came to a county where the ranks of powerbrokers were virtually closed to minorities. Some believe that’s still true.
“We’re a long way from parity in Broward County,” said Peter Hernandez, head of the Hispanic Alliance Council and a Garcia-Wood friend and supporter. “Broward voters are still resistant to Hispanics in positions of power.”
Hispanics now make up 21 percent of Broward’s population, but hold just under 10 percent of the 84 judgeships. Garcia-Wood joins seven other Hispanics, including Robert Diaz, Robert Lee, Catalina Avalos and Julio Gonzalez in county court, and Ana Gardiner, Mily Rodriguez-Powell and Pedro E. Dijols in circuit court.
Garcia-Wood, the daughter of an auto mechanic who cut sugar cane in a Cuban labor camp for years before fleeing the island with his family, has been key to the growing political clout of Broward Hispanics. In 1989, she founded the Broward County Hispanic Bar Association to promote the interests of Hispanic lawyers and seat more Hispanics on the bench. It was a year when ambitious Hispanic attorneys like herself had few role models north of the Miami-Dade county line.
Mother of a teenage daughter and an autistic son, Garcia-Wood was unfazed by the setbacks and years of waiting that preceded her victory in November. Since 1996, she’s applied over 10 times through the state’s Judicial Nominating Commission, a nine-member panel that recommends judicial candidates for appointment to the governor. In 2000, she was nominated for a county court seat, but not appointed.
Four-and-a-half years ago, she became a general magistrate in the juvenile dependency division. In case after case, she weighed in on the battered lives of children in need of a home. As circuit court judge, she will remain in the same division.
“It’s been a great experience. I’m able to help children. I myself have a special-needs child, so I know the compassion and listening skills this job demands. My journey, with all its twists and turns, has prepared me for this,” she said.
Her journey was marked by struggle early on. Her father, Manuel Garcia, 74, cut sugar cane in a labor camp under Fidel Castro for three years before boarding his wife and five children on a 1969 Freedom Flight to Miami, part of an airlift of Cubans into the United States from 1965 to 1971.
Fresh from the southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba, she was held back a year in school for lack of English.
“It caused me trauma. But once I learned the language and assimilated, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to represent people who weren’t able to have a voice in court,” she said.
Garcia-Wood graduated with a law degree in 1986 from the University of Florida College of Law. Two years later, she was practicing commercial law for the firm of Walter M. Dingwall in Fort Lauderdale, before moving to matrimonial and family law.
Active in Hollywood politics, she wrote the resolution that led to the creation of the Hispanic Affairs Council, which launched the city’s Latin festival and Hispanic Recognition Day.
In 2004, she ranked last among general masters in the “extremely qualified” category of a lawyers’ poll conducted by the Broward County Bar Association. Garcia-Wood dismissed the poll as politicized, saying that just a fraction of the county’s lawyers responded to it.
Hispanics embraced her electoral success as a coup for the country’s fastest-growing minority.
“She will do a great job for the entire community, not just the Hispanic community. But having said that, her election is a sign that Hispanics have joined the mainstream of Broward politics,” said Hyram Montero, president of the Broward County Hispanic Bar Association.
The organization, which had 25 lawyers when Garcia-Wood founded it, today has 300 members.
“I took a leap of faith,” Garcia-Wood said as she planned her Jan. 26 robing ceremony. “This was my opportunity. I wasn’t going to look back.”
Tal Abbady can be reached at or 954-356-4523.
