Gimenez won’t announce campaign plans this week because the ‘time is not right yet’
Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez may not have changed his mind about running for Congress. But he’s changed the timing of a potential announcement.
After privately telling supporters he would launch a congressional campaign Wednesday — and telling reporters he would have an announcement about something this week — Gimenez now says his timeline has changed.
“I changed my mind. The time is not right yet,” Gimenez told NBC 6 reporter Julia Bagg Friday morning.
Gimenez, who will leave his position as county mayor this November due to term limits, has flirted for months with running as a Republican for Florida’s 26th congressional district. He has been recruited by minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and encouraged to run by local conservatives who believe he’d pose a formidable challenge to Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
Widely known in Miami-Dade County, the mayor, who turned 66 Friday, would enter a Republican primary as the favorite. Democrats are already attacking him, and Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign organized a preemptive Wednesday press conference at County Hall to criticize his tenure.
“We’ve never known him to be a supporter of workers,” said Martha Baker, a nurse and president of a union that represents county workers at the tax-funded Jackson hospital system. “He’s been tried and true on that. I could not trust the man to go to Congress on behalf of South Florida.”
This is not the first time Gimenez has blown his own deadline for an announcement about his future as he floated possible runs for county commission, Miami mayor and other local offices during 2019.
He told the Miami Herald editorial board last spring to expect a decision by the end of the summer. “I’m going to have to start raising money for whatever it is I’m running for,” Gimenez said at the time.
When the fall arrived and speculation of a congressional run was added to the mix, Gimenez told Roberto Rodriguez Tejera’s Actualidad 1040 AM program that an announcement would come before the end of October.
At a press conference last week after his final State of the County address, reporters pressed Gimenez on when he would make an announcement to run. “What that next path is, it’s still to be determined,” he said. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 1:13 PM.
