Pete Buttigieg to hold roundtable with city Mayors in Miami

Image via AP.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is coming to the Magic City to meet with current and former Mayors to discuss the impacts of the coming election.

Buttigieg, a former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, will host a roundtable in Miami with several top-ranking city officials. Among them: South Miami Mayor Javier Fernandez, North Bay Village Mayor Brent Latham, Miami Gardens Mayor Rodney Harris and former Miami Shores Village Mayor Crystal Wagar.

“The Mayors will emphasize the stakes of the election for Florida residents and the contrast between President (Joe) Biden and Vice President (Kamala) Harris’ work to lower costs for families and Donald Trump’s threats to our freedoms, our democracy, and our economy,” a press note from the campaign said.

The announcement made clear that Buttigieg is “participating in this event in his personal capacity and may not be referred to using any official title.”

Buttigieg’s Friday stop in the Sunshine State comes weeks after the Florida Supreme Court ruled to allow a six-week ban on abortion to go into effect while also letting voters decide whether to amend the state constitution to protect abortion rights until viability.

Democrats are hoping the issue energizes progressive voters in Florida, a state that Trump won by 3.3 percentage points in 2020. In the election’s aftermath, Republicans overtook Democrats on the state voter rolls for the first time in history. Today, the Florida GOP holds supermajorities in both chambers of the state Legislature.

All Florida Cabinet members are Republican too, and the GOP enjoys a more than 890,000-voter edge over Democrats statewide, according to the most recent Division of Elections numbers.

Abortion is a strong wedge issue for Democrats, even in red-shifting Florida. Fifty-six percent of Floridians believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases compared to 39% who think it should be banned, the Pew Research Center found.

But it’s not the only subject likely to be raised at the 4:30 p.m. event. A Biden-Harris campaign official told Florida Politics that Buttigieg will also discuss Trump’s threat to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and since-walked-back comments about cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Florida has the highest number of ACA enrollees in the nation. Medicare enrollment in Florida stood at 4,985,731 residents last May, representing nearly 23% of the state population. National enrollment then was about 19.5%, according to HealthInsurance.org.

Buttigieg is also likely to talk about gun safety and LGBTQ rights.

Biden signed the first major gun safety legislation passed by Congress in nearly 30 years in June 2022, following a pair of mass shootings in Texas and New York. Trump vowed in February to repeal it.

He has also criticized gender-affirming care for minors, transgender participation in sports and promised to cut federal funding for schools that teach critical race theory or LGBTQ-inclusive lessons.

Buttigieg may also touch on issues impacting African American voters in Florida, including a contested congressional map by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration that diminished the voting power of Black residents in North Florida and new state education standards requiring that students be taught how slaves developed skills that could be “applied for their personal benefit.”

Miami Gardens is the largest predominantly African American municipality in Florida.

Buttigieg, a former naval officer who served as South Bend Mayor from 2012 to 2020, has been Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation since Feb. 3, 2021. He is the youngest person in Biden’s Cabinet and the youngest person to ever serve as Transportation Secretary.

He became the first openly gay candidate to win a presidential Primary or Caucus during the 2020 election cycle when he beat all other Democratic candidates, including Biden, in Iowa. He dropped out of the race on March 1, 2020, and endorsed Biden the following day.

The Biden-Harris administration is not publicly disclosing the location of Friday’s roundtable event for security reasons.