Democrat Eileen Higgins won the Miami mayor’s race on Tuesday, defeating a Republican endorsed by Donald Trump to end her party’s nearly three-decade losing streak and give Democrats a boost in one of the last electoral battles ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Higgins, 61, will be the first woman to lead the city of Miami. She spoke frequently in the Hispanic-majority city about Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying she has heard of many people in Miami who were worried about family members being detained. She campaigned as a proud Democrat despite the race being officially nonpartisan and beat Trump-backed candidate Emilio Gonzalez, a former city manager, who said he called Higgins to congratulate her.
“We are facing rhetoric from elected officials that is so dehumanizing and cruel, especially against immigrant populations,” Higgins told The Associated Press after her victory speech. “The residents of Miami were ready to be done with that.”
Florida was famously an extremely purple state for many years, with nearly the exact same number of Rs and Ds. For many years, Florida had one Republican senator, and one Democratic senator.
Then MAGA hit, and Trump and DiSantis promoted Florida as MAGA HQ, and a lot of MAGAs started moving from Blue Northeast cities, and today there are a LOT more MAGAs than Dems. I just met a couple last night, who just moved from NYC to The Villages, which is a big MAGA stronghold, with about 90% loyalty. I didn’t ask, but I assumed they were MAGA.
The biggest Blue stronghold is Central Florida, and DiSantis has been harassing Central Florida politicians for years, investigating them for nothing, replacing Democratically elected politicians with MAGA operatives, etc.
Besides that, ever since Florida veered big into Election Fraud in 2000, stole a presidential election, and suffered absolutely no punishment, Election Fraud is Standard Operating Procedure for Florida MAGAs, and no Democrat ever wins anything unless the Rs allow it through gerrymandering.
Florida is going to remain Red for long time.