‘That would be interesting’: Francis Suarez again floats Governor’s run

Image via AP.

Francis Suarez is still keen on a potential bid for Governor.

Speaking to media this week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the twice-elected Miami Mayor said running for Florida’s top executive office remains a future possibility.

“One thing that would be interesting is looking at an ecosystem like the state of Florida, potentially running for Governor,” he told Tom Llamas of NBC News.

“It’s something that I would consider, for sure.”

He added that he’d also be attracted to a federal position under a second Donald Trump administration if the former President wins in November.

Suarez’s comments Thursday weren’t the first time he flirted with a gubernatorial run. In September, just under a month after suspending his short-lived presidential campaign, he told CBS News Miami’s Ivan Taylor that “running for Governor is something that would interest” him.

He said the same to NBC 6’s Steve Litz around the same time.

“(Florida’s) the third most populous state in the country, 20 million people, $100 billion budget,” he told Litz. “In running for President, there were people that told me, ‘Look, we would really like you to run for Governor before doing that.’ So, it’s something that I would consider.”

Both interviews came as Suarez, who endorsed Trump in March, was under scrutiny over allegations he misused his elected office for personal gain.

He faced two complaints, both filed by Democratic activist and Miami resident Thomas Kennedy. One alleged that he violated state ethics laws by using taxpayer-funded security during his presidential bid. The other accused him of accepting pricey event tickets in exchange for governmental influence.

The Florida Ethics Commission dismissed both.

Another probe at the federal level involves Rishi Kapoor, a local developer who sought project approval with the city and paid Suarez $10,000 a month through a subsidiary. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Kapoor in December, accusing him of defrauding investors. Miami Herald reporters — including Sarah Blaskey and Joey Flechas, with whom Suarez had a slight scuffle at City Hall in September — reported that the Mayor was subpoenaed to give sworn testimony for the case in April, but was not named as a defendant.

Suarez’s side jobs, which netted him millions in just a few years, were the subject of another investigation. State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle confirmed in January that her office and the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust were conducting the probe.

None of those issues arose during Suarez’s talk with Llamas this week, when the Mayor delivered a polished analysis of Florida’s rightward-shifting voter composition that has affected even the once dependably Democratic county of Miami-Dade.

“In 2016, Democrats — Hillary Clinton specifically — won Dade County by 30 points. In the Midterm, just in 2022, (Gov. Ron) DeSantis and Marco Rubio won Dade County by 10 and 12 points respectively,” he said. “That’s a 40-point swing, which means the policies implemented by the Republican Party have resonated with the specific categories of Hispanics in Dade County.”

That includes policies implemented in Miami since he first took office, Suarez said, that have led to record reductions in crime and homicides, historically low property taxes, the lowest unemployment rate of any large U.S. metro area and nation-leading wage growth at the county level.

“I inherited a bankrupt city,” he said. “We turned it around.”

Suarez holds a “weak Mayor” position, meaning his office provides little administrative muscle other than being able to fire the City Manager. He twice attempted, and failed, to shift Miami to a strong Mayor form of government that would grant him executive powers.

Instead, his role is largely as a figurehead, and it’s one he’s leveraged to convince myriad tech and finance companies from the West Coast and New York City to uproot their headquarters for sunny South Florida.

His success on that front in 2021 helped him secure a second four-year term with 79% of the vote. Bipartisan plaudits that year also earned him a place in Fortune magazine’s list of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” and a “Politician of the Year” nod from Florida Politics.

If he runs for and wins a future Governor’s race, Suarez would likely bring a set of policy priorities to the job different than those of DeSantis, whom he’s had an unsteady relationship with since the pandemic.

In August, Suarez criticized the Governor’s refusal to admit his administration erred in backing changes to the state’s Black history curriculum, including new requirements that students be taught how enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

He’s also taken aim at DeSantis’ struggles with retail politics and restrictive abortion stance that helped pave the way for Florida’s current ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

But while he’s more progressive than the current occupant of the Governor’s Mansion on some subjects, Suarez is decidedly conservative on others, including the use of the gender-neutral terms like “Latinx,” which he’s described as nonsensical.

Latinos — who now comprise almost 15% of the American electorate and more than a quarter of Florida’s voters — don’t want to be “treated as a monolith,” he told Llamas.

“What the Democratic Party did at some level was take them for granted by calling them Latinx and sort of branding them monolithically,” he said. “Cubans have different issues than Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, etcetera.”

Suarez would be the second person of Hispanic heritage to serve as Governor after Robert Martinez. He’d be the first Cuban to hold the job.

Suarez’s current term ends next year. The Governorship is up for grabs in 2026.