Dems Score In The MIA!

Meet your new mayor of Miami.

Miami, Florida has a new mayor. She is a Democrat. She won in a runoff election against a Republican who had full backing of the president.

Democrats have mayors in Tampa, Orlando, Tallahassee, West Palm Beach, St. Petersburg, Gainesville, Fort Lauderdale and Jacksonville.

A place where Republicans dominated for three decades is now going to be served by a moderate Democrat. The city where it rarely gets below 40 degrees. A place where snow happens only once in a generation.

A place where corporations and vacationers go.

A city with a population of 495,000 and a consolidated county of 3.4 million.

Former vice president Kamala Harris lost Miami-Dade County by 8 points. President Donald J. Trump won the county in 2016 and 2024. Former president Joe Biden won it by 2 points.

Florida is far from a Democratic takeover. It has become more Republican thanks to gerrymandering, culture war politics and rapid development. Trump calls the state his new home.

The state is suffering with high inflation, a homeless crisis, a housing crisis, insurance premiums skyrocketing, gun violence, extreme weather events, oversaturation of unnecessary sprawl and the influx of domestic migration. The state is at high potential for catastrophic collapse.

The state is shaped like a penis. The governor is a dick. The president is a dick.

Many Republican are quietly taking dick. Well it's Floridah.

Eileen Higgins, a former Miami-Dade County commissioner is the mayor-elect. She will take office in January. She was born in Dayton, Ohio, raised in Albuquerque and moved to Miami in the 2000s.

Before entering electoral politics, Higgins worked in international development and consulting with a focus on transportation and infrastructure projects in Latin America. In 2006, she became Country Director of the Peace Corps in Belize. After holding this position, Higgins became a foreign service officer for the U.S. Department of State. As a foreign service officer, her work was focused on matters in Mexico as well as in economic development areas of South Africa. After returning to the United States following her work abroad, Higgins worked in private sector marketing, working for such brands as Pfizer and Jose Cuervo.

Higgins, 61, will be the first woman to lead the city of Miami. She spoke frequently in the Hispanic-majority city about Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying she has heard of many people in Miami who were worried about family members being detained. She campaigned as a proud Democrat despite the race being officially nonpartisan and beat Trump-backed candidate Emilio Gonzalez, a former city manager, who said he called Higgins to congratulate her.

Emillio Gonzales took a hard fall.

“We are facing rhetoric from elected officials that is so dehumanizing and cruel, especially against immigrant populations,” Higgins told The Associated Press after her victory speech. “The residents of Miami were ready to be done with that.”

Incumbent mayor Francis Suarez was term-limited and could not run for a third term. Miami holds runoffs if no mayoral candidate receives a majority of the vote. Higgins and Gonzalez advanced to the runoff. Higgins would go on to defeat Gonzalez in the runoff, making her the first Democrat to be elected mayor since 1997, and the first woman elected to lead Miami in the city's history. The 2025 election marked the first Miami mayoral election to advance to a runoff since 2001.

With nearly all votes counted Tuesday, Higgins led the Republican by about 19 percentage points.

The local race is not predictive of what may happen at the polls next year. But it drew attention from the two major national political parties and their leaders. The victory provides Democrats with some momentum heading into a high-stakes midterm election when the GOP is looking to keep its grip in Florida, including in a Hispanic-majority district in Miami-Dade County. The area has shifted increasingly rightward politically in recent years, and the city may become the home of Trump’s presidential library.

“Tonight’s result is yet another warning sign to Republicans that voters are fed up with their out-of-touch agenda that is raising costs,” said Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, in a statement.

Some nationally recognized Democrats supported Higgins, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel traveled to Miami on Sunday and Monday to rally voters for the Democrat who served as a Miami-Dade county commissioner for seven years.

Higgins, who speaks Spanish, represented a district that leans conservative and includes the Cuban neighborhood of Little Havana. When she first entered politics in 2018, she chose to present herself to voters as “La Gringa,” a term Spanish speakers use for white Americans, because many people did not known how to pronounce her name.

“It just helps people understand who I am, and you know what? I am a ‘gringa,’ so, what am I going to do, deny it?” she told the AP.

Republicans’ anxiety grows

Republicans in Florida have found strong support from voters with heritage from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, because they likened some members of the Democratic party’s progressive wing with politicians from the governments they fled. Trump and other GOP members have tapped into those sentiments over the past eight years.

However, some local Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated since November’s elections when Democrats scored wins in New Jersey and Virginia, where both winning gubernatorial candidates performed strongly with nonwhite voters.

The results from those races were perceived as a reflection of concerns over rising prices and the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies.

Trump and Ron DeSantis. These morons thought culture wars would help Republicans win. Their failure to take on real issues could be their undoing.

U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican whose district is being targeted by Democrats and includes the city of Miami, called the elections elsewhere a “wake-up call.” She said Hispanics also want a secure border and a healthy economy but some relief for “those who have been here for years and do not have a criminal record.”

“The Hispanic vote is not guaranteed,” Salazar said in a video posted on X last month. “Hispanics married President Trump, but they are only dating the GOP.”

Salazar called for a full scale invasion of Venezuela and a forced seizure of its resources.

David Jolly, who is running to represent Democrats in the Florida governor’s race next year, said the mayoral election was good news for Democrats in what used to be a battleground state.

Jolly was a Republican when he was elected as a U.S. Representative in a special election in 2014.

He backed the president in his first term but turned sour on him in 2019. He ended his association with Republicans and became an independent. He went to MSNBC (known as MS NOW) and became a prominent voice of anti-Trump Republicans. Trump's toxic politics made Jolly eventually become a moderate Democrat and now this win may give him momentum. 

Republicans running for governor are Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Paul Renner.

“Change is here. It’s sweeping the nation, and it’s sweeping Florida,” Jolly said.

Miami mayor-elect gains national platform

The mayoral position in Miami is more ceremonial, but Higgins promised to execute it like a full-time job.

The city is part of Miami-Dade County, which Trump flipped last year, a dramatic improvement from his 30 percentage point loss to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

As Florida’s second-largest city, Miami is considered the gateway to Latin America and attracts millions of tourists. Its global prominence gives Higgins a significant stage as mayor.

Her pitch to voters included finding city-owned land that could be turned into affordable housing and cutting unnecessary spending.