Hours after launching run for Congress, Miami-Dade mayor wins Trump’s endorsement

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez announced his run for Congress Thursday in a Twitter post that led with gratitude for President Donald Trump, and hours later the president returned the favor with his endorsement of Gimenez to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in what’s expected to be one of the most expensive and hard-fought races in the country.

“Carlos will win big, very exciting,” read the message posted on Trump’s Twitter account at 9:52 p.m. “Great for Florida, great for USA! He has my complete and total Endorsement!”

The unequivocal praise from Trump deflates one potential liability for Gimenez as he heads into a GOP primary against two lesser-known Republicans. Gimenez broke with Trump in the 2016 election and announced plans to vote for Hillary Clinton, statements that had already been fueling attacks saying that the mayor wasn’t loyal enough to Trump to win the nomination.

The late-night tweet capped a congressional campaign launch that the two-term mayor centered on Trump, including leading the welcoming party at Miami International Airport for the president’s trip to a Republican event at his Doral golf resort.

Gimenez launched his campaign for Florida’s 26th Congressional District via tweet from a new campaign Twitter account at 2:24 p.m., hours before President Donald Trump was set to travel to Doral for an appearance at the Republican National Committee winter meeting, held at his own resort.

“Welcome to Miami @realDonaldTrump. Thank you for all you’ve done for our economy & to fight socialism,” Gimenez tweeted in something of a departure from his normally moderate tone. “I look forward to standing w/ you against the radical left who are determined to turn the U.S. into Venezuela. I’m running!”

Gimenez, who declined to answer questions in person on Thursday, gives Republicans a prominent candidate in a key swing district stretching from Kendall to Key West that the party lost in 2018 amid a Democratic wave midterm election that immediately preceded Trump’s impeachment. He was heavily recruited by Washington Republicans despite having aired some very public criticisms of Trump in recent years.

Gimenez’s campaign announcement came one week after a final “state of the county” speech in which the mayor laid out an argument that he helped pull Miami-Dade County from the depths of a recession and turn around its economy.

“He is now perhaps the strongest challenger in the country,” said Carlos Curbelo, a Republican political analyst for MSNBC and Telemundo who held the seat for two terms before losing in 2018 to relative newcomer Mucarsel-Powell. “He has a lot to contribute in Congress.”

But while Gimenez’s recruitment and candidacy are indicative of a new pragmatism by Trump Republicans eager to undo their midterm losses, the 65-year-old mayor faces an uphill campaign in an increasingly liberal district. Running in a presidential election year, he will test not only the boundaries of his popularity, but also the extent of the vulnerabilities of freshmen Democrats in the House.

“President Trump wants to win reelection and he wants to win the House of Representatives back,” said Michael Caputo, a Miami Republican and 2016 Trump campaign aide. “Those two aspirations intersect in the state of Florida and make a purple district like the 26th ground zero.”

Over the last decade, the voters of Florida’s 26th Congressional District — where half the community was born in another country — have strongly supported Democrats for president but proven more conservative further down the ballot.

Gimenez’s political assets — and the term limits forcing him from office in November — made him an attractive prospect for House Republicans in search of a big-name candidate. He broke fundraising records by raising more than $7 million for his 2016 reelection campaign, and he is easily the most powerful politician in Miami-Dade County, where for the last nine years he has been the top executive for a county of nearly 3 million people.

His Republican bona fides are somewhat suspect: He once flirted with leaving the party and called for Trump to drop out of the 2016 presidential race. But Caputo, who himself was recruited by Republicans to run for Congress in New York, said there’s a willingness with Trump and with his voters to forgive Republicans who have bucked the president if it means winning back the House.

To encourage Gimenez to run, Washington Republicans commissioned a poll back in October that found Gimenez was better known than Mucarsel-Powell in her own district. And on Thursday, Trump met Gimenez at Miami International Airport after retweeting the mayor’s congressional announcement, which Curbelo said would “bankrupt” efforts that were already underway Thursday to attack Gimenez from the right.

Later in the evening, during a roughly 90-minute speech delivered to Republican Party leaders from around the country, Trump mentioned Gimenez and said he will “take back” a key congressional seat for the party, according to Miami-Dade Republican Party Chairman Nelson Diaz.

Still, in a district that went for Clinton over Trump by 16 points in 2016, Gimenez will face considerable headwinds — and if he can overcome them, it would likely be a bad sign for vulnerable Democrats in purple seats.

“The 30 Democrats who won in purple districts that were once part of the Republican caucus are an endangered species this time around,” said Caputo. “The fact is that the [National Republican Campaign Committee] has a strategy for this that they’re following very closely, and it’s one the White House political operation has been paying very close attention to.”

Democrats have identified more than 40 vulnerable members of the party’s House caucus heading into 2020. Mucarsel-Powell is on that list, but she is not among the 31 Democratic members of Congress who represent districts that voted for Trump in 2016.

Mucarsel-Powell won her seat in 2018 by defeating a Republican — Curbelo — who two years earlier withstood Trump’s poor performance in his district and won reelection. The Cook Political Index, which handicaps campaigns, is predicting that Florida’s 26th district is likely to stick with Mucarsel-Powell in the November general election.

“If you’re organized, strategic and if you start communicating early, that brings you victory,” Mucarsel-Powell said in an interview last week during which she did not presume that Gimenez would win the August Republican primary. “I think ultimately no matter who comes out of that primary, the race will be between the people of Florida’s 26th Congressional District and old, establishment special interests.”

But a challenge by the mayor of Miami-Dade County will not be a typical campaign — he brings a vast network of contacts and high name recognition with him — and there are ways in which the political landscape could shift in Gimenez’s favor. Part of the recruitment pitch by Republicans banked on the idea that the odds against Republicans in South Florida aren’t as bad as the left believes, especially if liberal U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders win the Democratic nomination for president.

“Someone like Bernie, who is a self-identified socialist? Carlos is probably on his knees praying that Bernie is the nominee for that reason,” said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based pollster and political consultant. “But in 2018, Carlos Curbelo was probably the perfect Republican candidate to run for that seat. He still got torched.”

Democrats clearly view Gimenez as a threat.

In the days leading up to his announcement, they released a campaign video attacking Gimenez’s tenure as mayor, calling him corrupt. They acquired the domain to GimenezforCongress.com and rolled out a website they called Corrupt Carlos — none of which they did to counter earlier Republican campaign announcements in Florida’s 26th district by former county firefighter union president Omar Blanco and Trump-friendly restaurateur Irina Vilariño.

Gimenez’s campaign thrusts county hall further into partisan politics at the start of his final year in the nonpartisan mayor’s seat. Juan Cuba, a former chairman of the Miami-Dade Democrats, filed an ethics complaint last week after county staff working for Gimenez compiled a retort to the attack ad put out by Florida Democrats after news leaked of the mayor’s congressional plans.

Myriam Marquez, the Gimenez spokeswoman who put out the statement that prompted Cuba’s ethics complaint, said the mayor’s office was “forced to respond with accurate information” to an attack they said was filled with inaccuracies. Jose Arrojo, director of Miami-Dade’s Ethics Commission, said in an interview that government employees of candidates are entitled to “defend” critical comments but shouldn’t be paid to answer political attacks.

“If it’s a purely political attack, I don’t think it’s appropriate for someone to respond,” he said.

In some ways, Gimenez isn’t just testing how vulnerable Mucarsel-Powell is. He’s also testing whether candidates still matter at a time when so much of the political discourse is dominated by feelings for and against Trump.

Ben Pollara, a Miami Democrat who worked on Gimenez’s 2012 nonpartisan mayoral reelection campaign, said he’s voted for Gimenez every time he’s been on the ballot but won’t consider supporting the mayor “once you put an ‘R’ next to his name.” Pollara said the nonpartisan environment in which the “technocrat” Gimenez has thrived won’t be there to save a mayor whose platform will be based around local accomplishments and disconnected from the policy discussions that drive Washington.

“He’s a great guy, but I don’t know why in the hell he’s doing this or how in the hell he thinks he’s going to win,” Pollara said. “Carlos comes into the race with one gigantic thing in his favor and that’s name ID. Literally every other factor in this race works against him.”

Dan Sena, a campaign operative who oversaw Democratic congressional campaigns in 2018, said Mucarsel-Powell is a strong incumbent. He noted that she beat Curbelo — a moderate and affable politician — despite his moderate platform and endorsements by liberal organizations, such as Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety.

Mucarsel-Powell also won during a midterm election in which left-leaning Hispanic voters typically show up in lower numbers than their conservative counterparts. Those numbers historically balance out in presidential elections, making her a stronger candidate in 2020.

Sena, who was executive director of the DCCC during the midterm elections, dismissed the significance of the October recruitment poll published this month in Florida Politics that showed Gimenez ahead of Mucarsel-Powell.

“They’re sugar for candidates,” he said of recruitment polls. “That’s where the gun may sound but — just a reminder — the mayor still has a primary he has to get through where he’s going to be pushed on both sides.”

Sena also said it looks like Gimenez will face a contentious primary, even if he is the clear favorite. Meanwhile, as Gimenez begins to raise money, Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign says she raised $575,000 in the last quarter, giving her a total of more than $1.6 million to spend on her reelection campaign.

Still, at a volatile time in Washington, with Mucarsel-Powell voting to impeach the president and the Democratic Party’s moderate and liberal factions warring, the party’s incumbent is far from unbeatable.

“The big question,” Sena said, “is: ‘How Democratic is this district?’ ”

This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 2:51 PM.