Florida state Rep. Alina Garcia won’t seek reelection to her state House seat in November and will instead run for Miami-Dade County supervisor of elections, she said on Thursday.

Garcia, a Miami Republican who was just elected to her House seat in 2022, becomes the latest candidate to jump into the race to succeed outgoing Supervisor Christina White. White has helmed the county’s elections since 2015, but announced last summer that she would not run to lead the agency.

In a phone interview with the Miami Herald, Garcia said that the supervisor’s race wasn’t initially on her radar, but that she ultimately decided to run for the job after being encouraged to do so by Florida GOP leaders. She said that she has already secured the endorsement of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.

“This is a new office. This is the first time we’re going to be having an election for supervisor of elections, and a lot of people were asking me to run for the position,” she said. “I think it’s a very important position and we need to have somebody that’s going to be fair.”

Garcia’s decision was first reported on Thursday by The Floridian. Evan Power, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, threw his support behind Garcia’s expected supervisor campaign, saying in a post on X that he would help “her get elected.”

While Garcia is only in her first term in the state House, and has no experience overseeing elections, she has a long track record in Miami-Dade and Florida politics. She previously served as chief of staff and senior policy adviser for Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo, deputy chief of staff for Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo and regional director for state CFO Jimmy Patronis.

“I’ve been involved in elections for 30 years, not as supervisor, but as someone who has worked for different people in different races,” she said.

She also worked as a legislative aide for Rubio when he was a newly elected state representative more than two decades ago.

Supervisor of elections is one of three county positions that currently reports to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava but will become independent, elected offices after the 2024 election thanks to a constitutional amendment Florida voters approved in 2018.

So far, four other candidates have announced bids for the supervisor job: Republicans Megan Pearl and Ruth Swanson and Democrats Willis Perry Howard and Juan-Carlos Planas, a former Republican state representative.

With the supervisor job now an elected position, White’s eventual successor will likely find themselves at the center of an intense political debate over the fairness and security of the county’s elections.

Former President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly alleged without evidence that the country’s elections systems are tainted by widespread fraud and malfeasance, and many of his supporters have latched onto such claims to contest his 2020 defeat to President Joe Biden.

Garcia said on Thursday that she believes that elections are overwhelmingly “fair,” but argued that many people have lingering doubts about the process.

“People don’t always feel that they’re fair,” she said, “and perception is very important.”

Garcia said that White, who registered as a Democrat last year before announcing that she wouldn’t run for supervisor of elections, “has done a great job.”

“We’ve come a long way from hanging chads to now,” Garcia said. “But there’s always room for improvement.”