Rivera, David, 1965-

David Mauricio Rivera (born September 16, 1965) is an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Florida's 25th congressional district from 2011 to 2013.

Born in New York City, he graduated from Miami Christian High School before earning his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in Political Science from Florida International University in 1986 and his MPA there in 1994. Rivera had extensive political experience before ever running for office himself. As a teenager he volunteered with Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, and worked on Jack Kemp’s run for the White House eight years later. Among other roles, Rivera spent some time in the office of United States Senator Connie Mack of Florida, after helping him win election in 1988. And in 1996, Rivera worked for the Republican presidential ticket of Robert Dole and Jack Kemp. Rivera also directed the GOP’s outreach efforts in Florida, and worked for the U.S. Information Agency, the governing body of Radio and TV Martí, a federally sponsored media venture that sent anti-Castro programming to Cuba. In 2002, after years of working behind the scenes, Rivera successfully ran for a seat in the Florida state house. In the Florida house, Rivera chaired the rules committee before serving as chairman of the appropriations committee from 2009 to 2010, where he pushed to create new professional schools at FIU and helped the Miami-Dade delegation work within a tight state budget.

Rivera had considered running for the state senate, but in the buildup to the 2010 election the U.S. House seat from Florida’s 25th District was suddenly put in play after the four-term incumbent Representative, Republican Mario Diaz-Balart, opted to run in a nearby district that his older brother, Republican Lincoln Diaz-Balart, had represented for a number of years before announcing his retirement. Running on a platform to reduce spending and cut taxes and touting his effort to eliminate “special interest projects” in the state house, he won the Republican primary and general election. In Washington, Rivera continued many of his earlier political efforts against the Castro regime in Cuba, introducing bills amending the immigration status of Cuban nationals who return to the island before being granted U.S. citizenship. Rivera also wrote his own alternative to the DREAM Act, which he called the Studying toward Adjusted Residency Status Act, or the STARS Act for short.

Questions about Rivera’s finances led him to be viewed as a vulnerable incumbent heading into the 2012 election cycle. After a statewide redistricting plan redrew Rivera’s district to help other members of the Florida delegation. Rivera lost the 2012 general election to Democrat Joe Garcia by nearly 11 percent of the vote. Rivera announced his candidacy for his old seat in 2014 but withdrew in July— too late to have his name removed from the ballot. In 2016, he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Florida house of representatives.