Gimenez to White House: Ignore Miami mayor’s call to halt some MIA flights over virus
After Miami Mayor Francis Suarez called on President Donald Trump to halt flights into the Miami area from coronavirus “hot spots,” the county mayor with authority over local airports said he told the White House to “disregard” the Suarez letter.
“It’s not his purview,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who has authority over Miami International Airport, a county agency. Gimenez noted passenger flights are also important parts of the supply chain, hauling cargo in and out of Miami, which is a global hub for pharmaceutical shipments.
“I’ve already spoken to the White House about it and said disregard the letter,” Gimenez said during an online press conference Friday. “It’s Miami-Dade County that controls MIA.”
On Thursday night, Suarez sent a letter to Trump urging him to immediately halt flights into Miami from “COVID-19 hotspots” in the United States and around the world. After Gimenez’s rebuke at a Friday press conference, Suarez said the county mayor should be calling for aggressive action at MIA.
“It’s unfortunate that at a time when unity is needed, Mayor Gimenez has refused to join me in asking the President to suspend flights from COVID hotspots,” Suarez said in a statement.
The dueling statements show the coronavirus has only amplified a longstanding rift between Miami-Dade’s two leading elected leaders. Gimenez and Suarez were divided early on the coronavirus, when Miami canceled the Ultra Music Festival and Calle Ocho street parties in early March. Miami-Dade had no discovered cases then, and Gimenez cited a low risk to the public at that time. “We would not have canceled it,” Gimenez, a Republican candidate for Congress, told WIOD on March 6.
Vindicated by the later outbreak in Miami-Dade, Suarez has cited the early action as proof Miami is on the leading edge of the coronavirus response. Miami and other cities have instituted the kind of curfews Gimenez says aren’t needed countywide, and issued “shelter-in-place” directives that the county mayor said can confuse residents into thinking the rules are stricter than they are.
“We have led, and the county has followed, on almost everything,” Suarez said March 31.
Through Gimenez orders, Miami-Dade was the first in Florida to shut down restaurants and nonessential businesses, along with parks, beaches and community swimming pools. When Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a statewide order instructing people to stay home unless leaving it for essential needs, he cited an order by Gimenez as a starting point for what Florida will consider essential businesses.
The friction between Gimenez and Suarez during the coronavirus pandemic makes them both look petty, said a Democratic pollster and veteran of Miami campaigns.
“During times of life and death crisis, the last thing residents want to see from their leaders is street fighting over ego-driven beefs,” said Fernand Amandi, a partner in the Coconut Grove firm, Bendixen and Amandi. “There are always territorial conflicts between elected leaders during times of crisis. Great leaders manage to keep those out of the public purview.”
The two Republican mayors were forced into coronavirus quarantine at the same time, following a Miami reception on March 9 with an aide to Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro who ended up testing positive for COVID-19. Gimenez tested negative for the disease, but Suarez tested positive.
The diagnosis thrust Suarez into the national spotlight as a mayor with COVID-19, while the outbreak in Miami-Dade saw Gimenez exercising unprecedented emergency power with a series of countywide directives shuttering businesses and parks in Miami and everywhere else in Miami-Dade.
On Friday evening, MIA director Lester Sola sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration making the case for rejecting Suarez’s request. Sola noted the limited number of international flights still leaving Miami allow foreign citizens trapped during the broad shutdown of international travel to have some chance of getting home.
With cargo still flying inside passenger flights, even more cuts in flights would not only further damage Miami-Dade economy but also put more strain on the nation’s supply chain, Sola wrote.
Suspending flights would not only “cause undue burden to the County, but it would also severely impact medication and food supplies,” Sola said.
Suarez did not specify how Trump should consider cities COVID-19 hot spots because he expects the White House to determine which areas should be subject to such a travel prohibition, said Soledad Cedro, the mayor’s communications director. “They have the lead on this, so they should decide,” Cedro said. “We need them to be proactive on that.”
In his letter to Trump, Suarez suggested halting flights would be an appropriate wartime measure.
“We are at war with a silent, deadly and merciless enemy,” wrote Suarez, who recently ended more than two weeks of quarantine. “I have personally witnessed its speed, its spread and its lethality among my residents in Miami and now in the State of Florida.”
Read Suarez’s letter below:
This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 2:17 PM.
