Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is running for president, a long-shot bid that would nonetheless raise the national profile of the 45-year-old mayor who once dubbed his city the “crypto capital of the world.”
(Bloomberg) — Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is running for president, a long-shot bid that would nonetheless raise the national profile of the 45-year-old mayor who once dubbed his city the “crypto capital of the world.”
Suarez filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, becoming the latest in a list of GOP hopefuls challenging former President Donald Trump.
Suarez begins his campaign with a $12 million war chest after winning two elections as mayor of Florida’s second-largest city, a part-time, non-partisan office. The son of former Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez, he also serves as president of the US Conference of Mayors and has supplemented his $97,000 salary as mayor with side jobs as an attorney, real estate agent, development consultant and as senior operating partner at venture capital firm DaGrosa Capital Partners.
As mayor, Suarez aggressively courted financial and technology jobs — taking his mayoral salary in Bitcoin and convincing cryptocurrency firm founder Sam Bankman-Fried to take over the naming rights for the Miami Heat’s home court, giving it the name FTX Arena, before the company entered bankruptcy 18 months later.
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Suarez has been laying the groundwork for a presidential run with donor meetings in Washington and grassroots events in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“I’m someone who needs to be better known by this country,” he told CBS News recently. “Because I represent something different and I can appeal to a different segment of our country.”
A Cuban-American, Suarez said he’s uniquely positioned to help Republicans win over young people, urban dwellers and Hispanics — “a voting demographic that’s growing and that’s trending more Republican.”
No incumbent mayor has ever been elected president — and the last former mayor to do it was Calvin Coolidge. But Suarez could be setting himself up as a possible vice presidential nominee, with Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway touting him as a potential running mate. Suarez has said he’s flattered about the vice presidential talk but is a candidate in his own right.
“Francis Suarez is yet another contender in the race for the MAGA base who has supported key pieces of Donald Trump’s agenda,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, said in a statement. “As mayor of Miami, Suarez has repeatedly used his position to benefit himself, prioritizing pay raises for himself, accepting lavish gifts, and taking shady payments – all while ignoring the biggest challenges facing the people he was elected to serve.”
Polls show Trump is the clear frontrunner for the GOP field. Trump had hoped to clear the field by announcing his candidacy days after last year’s midterm elections but was instead followed by his former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Vice President Mike Pence.
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