Jesse Scheckner
Former Key Biscayne Mayor Mike Davey is making another run at Congress.
Davey, who placed second in last year’s Democratic Primary for Florida’s 27th Congressional District, announced the launch of a 2026 campaign.
But while the campaign is new, the goal is the same: unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, who he said has failed her responsibility to deliver for Miami-Dade County residents and Americans nationwide.
“Washington isn’t working for everyday people, and María Elvira Salazar is part of the problem,” he said. “Salazar continues to put Donald Trump and his agenda ahead of what is best for this district. Thanks to her extreme partisanship and unwavering support of Trump’s agenda, we have to pay the price with our hard-earned dollars and constitutional rights. Our district deserves more.”
An employment lawyer and small business owner, Davey, 58, served for more than 12 years in local government, first as a City Council member and later as Mayor. During that time, his campaign said, he kept taxes and costs down while strengthening sustainability efforts and improving residents’ quality of life.
During last year’s election, he offered a more moderate platform in the leadup to the Primary, leaning into being a former Republican who left the party in 2019 after growing increasingly estranged from its adherents.
The final straw, he said, came when his daughter asked him “why Trump hates her because she’s not White.”
Davey is the son of first-generation American parents and grew up in a working-class family, he said. A press note from his campaign said he met his wife, Maria, after she fled Peru during the height of the Shining Path’s terrorist attacks. He later became a stepfather to her son before the couple had a daughter.
He ran for District 112 in the Florida House in 2016, but didn’t make it out of the Primary.
Last year, he matched the fundraising of his Primary opponent, former Miami-Dade School Board member Lucia Báez-Geller, amassing $355,000 in donations. He also added $200,000 from his bank account.
Salazar, meanwhile, stacked more than $3 million and spent about half that to keep her seat. She reported raising about $97,000 in the first three months of 2025, adding to a war chest of about 15 times that sum.
Davey said he’s running again because the residents of CD 27 “deserve a representative who will fight for us, who will listen to us, and who will put our interests first.”
“My opponent, María Elvira Salazar, has stood by and enabled this destructive agenda. She is nothing less than Donald Trump’s partner in this historic destruction of our nation. She’s part of a Washington that’s out of touch, a Washington that puts partisanship over people, a Washington that has failed the very people it’s supposed to serve,” he said.
“The road ahead won’t be easy. The forces of cynicism and division are powerful. But I believe, with every fiber of my being, that the people of this district are stronger. I believe that when we come together, when we stand united, there’s nothing we can’t achieve.”
Federal Election Commission records showed that as of 7 p.m. Monday, he hadn’t yet filed for the CD 27 race, or his paperwork was still being processed.
Salazar, 63, is already running for a fourth term. Democrat Richard Lamondin, a 37-year-old entrepreneur, filed to challenge her Friday, one month after teasing a potential run.
CD 27 covers Miami, Coral Gables, Cutler Bay, Key Biscayne, Pinecrest, North Bay Village, South Miami, West Miami and several unincorporated areas. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has designated it a “District in Play.”
Salazar defeated Báez-Geller last year by nearly 21 points. But April 1 Special Elections eroded Trump’s November margins of victory by double digits in Florida’s 1st and 6th Congressional Districts, giving Democrats hope for a flip in less-red CD 27.
