Jesse Scheckner
A super PAC supporting Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s imminent run at the White House is running a new, multistate ad positioning him as a “tough-on-crime” alternative to President Joe Biden.
The two-minute video will run in New Hampshire, Iowa and Nevada, according to a press note from SOS America PAC, which will spend “six figures” on ad buys.
“America needs conservative Mayor Suarez for President,” said PAC spokesperson Chapin Fay, who previously worked as an aide to former Republican U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York.
“As our nation faces anti-police and pro-crime Democrat leadership in cities across the nation like Baltimore, Portland and New York City, the achievements of first-generation American Mayor Suarez underscore the need for immediate nationwide adoption of his approach.”
Previously called America for Everyone — a nominal riff on Suarez’s still-active state-level political committee, Miami for Everyone — SOS America PAC last year raised more than $6 million, including sizable contributions from big givers to the Mayor’s past campaigns.
After entering the increasingly crowded GOP field for the Republican nomination in 2024, Suarez would become the first Hispanic candidate seeking the nomination for either party this election cycle. He’d also be the third current or formerly elected official from Florida to enter the race, following Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, both of whom he’s cast ballots against in prior elections.
Suarez, who is scheduled to speak Thursday at the Reagan Library in California, has indeed overseen some successes in his home city. Miami is now enjoying a record-low tax rate, 12% job growth since he took office as Mayor in 2017 and the city’s lowest per-capita homicide rate since 1964.
By the close of 2022, more than two years after a short tweet by Suarez helped ignite a rush of corporate relocations from California and New York to South Florida, the Miami metro area ranked eighth in the country for venture capital with $5.5 billion across 423 deals, according to the Q4 2022 Pitchbook-NVCA Venture Monitor — an 11.6% yearly increase. That’s particularly significant considering larger tech hubs are seeing 25% to 40% decreases.
But the Mayor is not without baggage. He’s currently under investigation by the FBI, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s office and the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust for payments he received from a local real estate developer who sought approval of a $70-million project.
MiamiCoin, a city-specific cryptocurrency Suarez promoted as potentially enabling residents to skip paying taxes, is an abject failure. The only exchange that hosted MiamiCoin activity, OKCoin, halted trading of the crypto in March after its value plummeted by more than 90% less than a year after its launch.
He also did nothing to defend former Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo, whom Suarez recruited from Houston, when a majority of the City Commission led a successful call for his termination over allegations Acevedo made about their interference with law enforcement affairs.
The ringleader of the group, Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo, was recently found liable for $63.5 million in damages for, among other things, directing city police to harass two business owners in the city.
2 comments
PeterH
June 14, 2023 at 6:47 pm
So now we have at the beginning of hurricane season……Florida’s Governor and the Mayor of Florida’s largest city ….. traveling around the country instead of governing. What could possibly go wrong?
Dont Say FLA
June 15, 2023 at 9:53 am
Suarez says his approach must be adopted immediately, but it would be 19 more months before he took office if he were somehow to win.
That’s an advance admission that he will fail, and he will claim his failure was because his approach was adopted 19 months too late.
Might as well go home to Miami, Suarez. Admitting failure nearly 2 years prior to a theoretical Suarez presidency. That, as Florida’s Rhonda would say, AIN’T a winning strategery, as Dubya would say for strategy.
Them GOPs, they ain’t great with the English words (en-us). No wonder they can’t deal with pronouns.
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