After losing bid for Miami mayor, Joe Carollo says he won’t run for office again
After his fourth-place loss in the crowded race for Miami mayor Tuesday, longtime City Commissioner Joe Carollo said he will not seek elected office again.
“Today is the first day of my life. My future life,” Carollo told the Miami Herald Wednesday morning. “I’m 70 years old. I’m not going to be doing this again.”
The development marks an end to a decades-long reign in City Hall for Carollo, who has also served twice as mayor. In recent years, his political brand has been marred by a maelstrom of litigation, most notoriously the lawsuit and resulting $63 million judgment that a jury awarded two Little Havana businessmen in 2023, finding that they were victims of a political retaliation campaign pushed by Carollo after they supported his opponent in 2017.
Carollo’s tenure in local politics spans decades. He was first elected to the City Commission 46 years ago in 1979. He went on to be elected two more times to the commission before becoming mayor in 1996 and again in 1998. He lost his bid for reelection in 2001 but made a political comeback 16 years later in 2017, when he was elected to the District 3 commission seat that he’s occupied since.
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Carollo, now term-limited on the commission, had long been teasing another run for mayor, although he didn’t formally enter the race until late September, months after his main opponents had begun actively campaigning.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins and former Miami City Manager Emilio González were the top two vote-getters in the mayoral race Tuesday, securing 36% and 19%, respectively, to head to a Dec. 9 runoff. Carollo declined to say Wednesday which of the two he plans to vote for next month.
While Carollo said he doesn’t plan to seek elected office, he’s not ready to leave politics entirely.
“I’m not going to run for office, but I’m going to be involved in different ways at different levels,” Carollo said.
While he failed to make the runoff for mayor, Carollo still has a few weeks left on the City Commission. His younger brother, Frank Carollo, is running to succeed Joe in the open District 3 seat but failed to get more than 50% of the vote Tuesday. That means Frank is also headed to a Dec. 9 runoff against Rolando Escalona, the general manager at Brickell’s Sexy Fish restaurant.
Regardless of who wins, the dynamics in City Hall are bound to shift in the absence of one of Miami’s most polarizing politicians.
“One thing’s for sure,” Carollo said. “You can’t blame me for anything anymore.”
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