Miami’s mayor-elect makes history as first woman to lead the city : NPR

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Miami has a new mayor-elect, and a history-making one at that, when voters there elected the city’s first female mayor last night, Eileen Higgins, a former county commissioner. She’s also the first Democrat to hold the seat in nearly 30 years. She beat Republican Emilio Gonzalez, who had the support of President Trump. For more on this, we turn now to Joshua Ceballos with member station WLRN. Good morning, Joshua.

JOSHUA CEBALLOS, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.

MARTIN: So tell us more about last night’s election results. I understand you were at the Higgins watch party last night. What was it like?

CEBALLOS: Yeah. It was a really exciting moment. I mean, Eileen Higgins won by 19 percentage points against her opponent, Emilio Gonzalez. I was there at the watch party at the Miami Woman’s Club, and there was, like, palpable excitement. You could tell that people felt this was a huge moment not just for the city, but for the rest of the country. Even though this was just a local mayors race, it is being celebrated nationally as a big win for Democrats.

MARTIN: You know, the mayor’s office is technically nonpartisan. At least, the race is technically nonpartisan. So were there local issues that dominated, or was it always a national race?

CEBALLOS: Yeah. I mean, funny enough, the candidates were pretty close on platform. They both talked about bringing order to City Hall, which has had a reputation for being pretty dysfunctional because of some political drama. They both talked about addressing Miami’s high cost of living, which I think was top of mind for a lot of voters I spoke to throughout the election. And Higgins ran on bread-and-butter issues at the local level – affordability, transit, protecting the local environment. But she also made certain nods to more national and statewide issues, like protecting the LGBTQ+ community and being a home for migrants. Gonzalez has not held elected office, so there wasn’t a legislative record he could point to, but his platform included rolling back property taxes, which is a line that local Republicans in Florida have been pushing.

MARTIN: How are both parties reacting to this? So let’s start with the Democrats.

CEBALLOS: Yeah. The party sees this as a huge win and a real response to President Trump’s policies, particularly on immigration. After Higgins’ victory, I spoke with Laura Kelley, who’s the chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. She said this win was a rebuke of Trump and a sign that the Democratic Party is not dead in Florida.

LAURA KELLEY: It speaks to the moment. It speaks to what the country is feeling. And I hope that our elected representatives in Tallahassee and in Washington, D.C., are listening to us in Miami and in Miami Beach and they make different choices.

CEBALLOS: Both candidates tried to run a fairly nonpartisan race, but they couldn’t help things becoming pretty partisan when Trump endorsed Gonzalez. My colleague Daniel Rivero was at Gonzalez’s watch party, and local Republicans told him they believe this is a bad sign for their party going into the next year’s midterm elections.

MARTIN: You know, Miami is a majority Latino city. It’s, like, something like 70% Latino. Does this say anything about the Latino vote writ large? Does this signal anything about a wider trend heading into these midterms next year?

CEBALLOS: That is the big question. You know, experts I spoke to were watching this race to see if the Latino vote would shift from being overwhelmingly Republican after the first year of President Trump’s new term. Many pockets of Miami were staunch Trump supporters in the last few elections. But – so this may result – this result might signal a turn. There’s a sense that president’s immigration policies, like ICE detentions and rising cost of living, have perhaps soured some voters on Trump. And I should note that this – that Eileen Higgins is the first non-Hispanic to hold the office since 1996.

MARTIN: That is Joshua Ceballos with WLRN in Miami. Joshua, thank you.

CEBALLOS: Thank you very much.

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