Stymied by City Hall, Miami’s mayor turns to ‘Cafecito Talks,’ tweets with Elon Musk
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez launched his reelection campaign this week, but you wouldn’t know it from his on-camera appearances and social media feeds.
Less than nine months from Election Day, the city’s first Gen X mayor is too busy courting Elon Musk and hosting tech roundtables in the mayor’s suite to spend much time talking about winning a second term.
These days, Suarez has converted the second floor of City Hall into Miami’s chief marketing office, using his platform and a publicly funded media machine to advertise himself and the city to the world. After struggling to manage a famously tumultuous City Hall during his first two years in office — and losing a campaign to control the levers of power — he’s thriving in a new role as Miami’s chief pitchman.
“I’ve never been shy about big ideas,” Suarez said in an interview.
The mayor has been on a hot streak while getting chummy with a wave of tech investors and leaning into a largely ceremonial job. While he can’t vote on legislation or order around the city’s 4,000-person workforce, he can launch a talk show on YouTube and furiously retweet his pro-business, pro-tech followers — especially those showering praise on him.
The 43-year-old attorney spoke Friday with Musk about boring a tunnel under the Miami River to connect Brickell Avenue to Biscayne Boulevard. He just launched a web series called “Cafecito Talk,” hosting guests like former soccer star David Beckham and Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy in his office. And he applauded as Miami-based tech investor Marcelo Claure came on his program last week to announce a plan to invest $100 million into Miami-based tech companies.
Suarez appears to have found his niche under the bright lights of Sunday morning news programs and tech publications. The affable mayor, dressed in tailored suits and known for always going in for the hug pre-pandemic, can rattle off the top of his head the number of TV appearances he’s made in the last year and how many impressions his latest tweet had.
He talks about the city as a billion-dollar business, and himself as its CEO.
It’s all about the brand
Ever-conscious of branding, Suarez — who once gave a key to the city to motivational speaker Tony Robbins, despite sexual misconduct allegations against him — this week also rolled out a new website that offers $25 T-shirts imprinted with an image of a now-viral December tweet in which Suarez responded to a tweet about moving Silicon Valley to Miami by asking: “How can I help?”
Proceeds go to a non-profit, according to the website.
Manny Medina, the longtime South Florida developer-turned tech entrepreneur, praised Suarez for the momentum he has generated toward transforming Miami’s economy.
“I have a lot of scars from advocating for South Florida over the years,” Medina said. “So it makes me proud. It’s the realization of a vision we’ve been saying for years.”
Medina said one of the longest-running obstacles has been getting local politicians to believe in that vision.
“If you weren’t talking about the airport, or tourism, or development, then it didn’t matter,” he said.
Suarez — whose rise to national relevance began after he contracted COVID-19 early last year — is aware of the moment and eager to promote his city and his success to the rest of the country.
“I’m going to be the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in January, which is a pretty big deal,” Suarez, a Republican in a non-partisan post, told McCarthy when the U.S. House of Representatives’ minority leader visited him at City Hall last month.
First two years were rough
Suarez’s sudden ascendance is a considerable turnaround from his first two years as mayor, when petty infighting, campaign losses and personal controversies overshadowed his agenda.
A real estate attorney who is of-counsel at Greenspoon Marder, the mayor took criticism for refusing to disclose his list of clients, which at one point included Fisher Island, the wealthiest ZIP code in Miami. In 2018, his first year in office, he blew a $3 million campaign kitty and tons of political capital on a failed referendum to give him control over the city’s managerial decisions. Televised city meetings often devolved into contemptuous arguments.
Even an early win was controversial. Suarez pushed the 2018 referendum to allow the city to negotiate a deal for the redevelopment of Melreese golf course into a sprawling office and commercial campus with a Major League Soccer stadium. The ballot measure passed with about 60% of the vote. But negotiations have dragged on, and it’s unclear when the deal will reach a commission vote.
Claure, who announced his investment fund on Suarez’s show, is a partner in the group seeking to land the stadium deal.
Suarez, who spent nine years as a city commissioner before his election as mayor, acknowledged Wednesday in an interview that he overestimated his ability to manage the personalities at City Hall.
“When you get elected by 86% and you’d been in government as long as I had been, there was a sense I had a pretty good handle on things,” said Suarez, who hired former Republican Congressman Carlos Curbelo to help him at Dinner Key. “And I think I learned over time, I was starting over from scratch.”
On Wednesday, Curbelo said the mood improved drastically after changes on Suarez’s staff and better communication with commissioners, including meetings where Curbelo served as a sort of emissary for the mayor. “I can tell you that a lot of principals at City Hall felt excluded. They felt neglected,” Curbelo said, adding that there was a “breakdown in trust.”
COVID creates opportunity
Suarez’s fortunes changed materially when the coronavirus pandemic emerged. He stepped out front to be the primary voice announcing Miami’s response. Commissioners — who were previously at each other’s throats — worked with Suarez amid a crisis and stood by his side as he told reporters that Ultra Music Festival and Calle Ocho Festival would be canceled, decisions that were criticized by some in the local political establishment.
The early decisions appeared to be prescient, and the moment marked a turning point for the mayor’s relationship with the commission. Within weeks, commercial activity across the county was drastically scaled back, and Suarez entered isolation on March 12 after he caught the novel coronavirus — one of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in Miami-Dade County.
Since then, Suarez’s profile surged as he became a defacto spokesman for the state of the pandemic in South Florida.
“That’s where his leadership has been tested, and I think he’s risen to the occasion,” said Sean Foreman, a Barry University political science professor. “Suarez gets national attention for being the mayor of Miami, so his platform has grown.”
With Election Day in view — and his fundraising efforts having only recently reignited — his profile has never been higher. Suarez has drawn one opponent so far, 29-year-old Maxwell Martinez. The Brickell resident is a political newcomer who has raised less than $1,000 so far.
On Friday, Suarez spoke with Musk — a big fish for a mayor seeking to lure tech companies to Miami. During the phone call, Musk estimated he could build the long-discussed Brickell tunnel, a project estimated to cost $900 million, for closer to $30 million. Suarez plans to go to Las Vegas to discuss projects by The Boring Company, Musk’s firm that is building tunnels under that city’s convention center.
Curbelo said that “right now, [Suarez] is at the strongest and at the steadiest he’s ever been in his political career.”
“Rather than shifting into campaign mode as many politicians do,” Curbelo said, “he just needs to keep doing what he’s doing.”
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the year of the Melreese referendum and incorrectly attributed quotes to Barry University professor Sean Foreman.
This story was originally published February 7, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
