Trump-endorsed candidate for Miami mayor shrugs off Trump’s Mamdani moment
On the campaign trail to be elected Miami’s next mayor, Trump-endorsed candidate Emilio González has warned about what he sees as the creeping scourge of socialism. But one day after Donald Trump shared a glowing moment in the oval office with democratic socialist New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, González said he wasn’t questioning the president.
“Clearly, New York City is an important city and I’m sure the president meets with all sorts of people,” González told the Miami Herald Saturday. “I’ve got my race to concentrate on.”
In a chummy post-meeting press conference Friday, Donald Trump said some of Mamdani’s “ideas really are the same ideas that I have.”
When a reporter asked Trump Friday about calling Mamdani a communist — as he did multiple times during a speech earlier this month in Miami — Trump said, “He’s got views out there, but who knows. I mean, we’re going to see what works.”
For González, those ideas are a nonstarter: “We won’t be trying them in Miami, that’s for sure.”
Trump’s warm moment with Mamdani – one advisor to the mayor-elect called it a “bromance” – could make for awkward politics for Florida Republicans, most immediately in Miami’s mayoral race. The Florida GOP, and Republican politicians around the country, have spent the last three weeks pointing to Mamdani as a boogeyman-to-come if voters elect Democrats, even in races like Miami’s thousands of miles away.
“The Democrats are trying to elect a “democratic socialist” in the City of Miami of all places,” said Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, referring to mayoral candidate Eileen Higgins — who does not identify as a democratic socialist. Higgins’ campaign manager Christian Ulvert called the comments “ridiculous” and “scare tactics.” Exile politics have long influenced elections in Miami, which has been led by a Cuban-American mayor the last three decades.
Collins is not alone, however, in trying to inject Mamdani into local politics. Gov. Ron DeSantis, Congressman Byron Donalds, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Trump himself have all given speeches in recent weeks in Miami denouncing Mamdani as a threat to Florida.
“Democrats are so extreme that Miami will soon be the refuge of those fleeing communism in New York City,” Trump said the day after Mamdani was elected. Trump’s face-to-face meeting, however, painted a much different picture. “I think he’s going to surprise some conservative people, actually. And some very liberal people, he won’t surprise them, because they already like him,” Trump said Friday.
Robert Wolf, a Barack Obama ally who consulted Mamdani ahead of his meeting with Trump and called the result a “Trump-Mamdani bromance,” said Mamdani intentionally focused on affordability during his meeting with Trump to find common ground. “They both have a bit of a populist slant,” Wolf said on Fox News Saturday. “Their focus is all on affordability. So if you look at that as kind of what we spoke about in our prep, there was some sort of confidence that it would go well.”
James Fishback, an anti-immigrant, hard-right candidate teasing a Florida’s governor’s race run, told the Herald earlier this month he too admired Mamdani’s focus on affordability — which could add another layer to how Florida Republicans message about Mamdani in the coming months, if he jumps in the race.
“Zohran and I disagree on the solutions, but if there’s one thing, one single thing that I agree with Zohran Mamdani on, it’s that affordability is the number one priority for Americans,” Fishback said. In Congress, ahead of Mamdani’s meeting with the president, Miami Republicans tried to convey a very different message than the one Trump eventually did. The House took a floor vote Friday on a resolution sponsored by Miami Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar “denouncing the horrors of socialism.” “The recent election of a self-proclaimed, anti-American socialist mayor in one of the country’s major cities underscores the urgency of condemning socialism,” Miami Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart said on social media Friday ahead of the vote.
“NYC elects a proud SOCIALIST,” Salazar said. “This is why we must remember socialism’s record of death and destruction.”
Her office did not respond to a request for comment after Trump’s glowing comments about the mayor-elect.
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