Democrat elected Miami mayor for first time in nearly 3 decades

Democrat Eileen Higgins became the first member of her party in nearly three decades elected mayor of Miami on Tuesday, December 9, defeating a Republican backed by President Donald Trump in a Hispanic-majority city in the heart of his Florida stronghold.

CNN and the Associated Press called the election for Higgins less than an hour after polls closed, as returns showed the former Miami-Dade County commissioner leading her Republican opponent, Emilio Gonzalez, by 18 percentage points.

An officially nonpartisan local contest that normally draws little attention across the country, the Miami mayor’s race this year was elevated to national prominence as a key electoral test of voter sentiment in Trump’s political backyard.

Higgins’ decisive win adds to the momentum Democrats gained in a flurry of election victories last month that dimmed Republican prospects for maintaining Trump’s monopoly over Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

It also sharpens Republican concerns about whether Hispanic support that Trump peeled away from Democrats in 2024 has since faltered.

Higgins, 61, made no mention of the national implications of her victory in a statement posted to her Facebook account, instead casting it as an outcome that “turned the page on years of chaos and corruption” at the local level.

Higgins is the first Democrat to win Miami’s mayoral race since 1997, when Xavier Suarez, father of the outgoing Republican incumbent, Francis Suarez, was last elected.

She also becomes the first woman ever and the first non-Hispanic candidate since the 1990s to be elected mayor of Miami, a predominantly Hispanic city of roughly 487,000 people that is part of Miami-Dade County.

Tuesday’s results suggest Republican strength has softened in Miami-Dade, where the Miami Herald says many historically left-leaning Hispanic voters moved to Trump’s camp last year – as they did nationally – helping him amass 55% of the overall county vote in the 2024 presidential race.

In the first round of the Miami mayor’s race on November 4, Higgins garnered 36% of the vote in a crowded field of candidates, comfortably finishing in first place but short of the majority needed to win outright. Gonzalez was the No. 2 vote-getter with 18%.

That set the stage for Tuesday’s runoff. Neither Higgins nor Gonzalez, 68, a former city manager and retired U.S. Army colonel, started out running an overtly partisan campaign.

But their showdown took on national overtones in the aftermath of Democrats’ triumphs in a slew of off-year elections last month, including the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, New York City’s mayoral election and a redistricting referendum in California.

Then Trump weighed in on November 17 to publicly endorse Gonzalez on Truth Social, urging Miami voters: “GET OUT AND VOTE FOR EMILIO – HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”

The Democratic National Committee countered by throwing its support behind Higgins, as did several prominent Democrats, including US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Extrapolating national or even statewide political trends from local races can be fraught, however. Another Democratic non-Hispanic woman, Daniella Levine Cava, has been mayor of Miami-Dade since 2020 and was re-elected last year even though Trump carried the county in the White House race. – Rappler.com