Miami-Dade mayor links congressional rollout to Trump. First a tweet, then a handshake

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez greeted President Donald Trump at Miami International Airport on Thursday in a high-profile welcome arranged by the White House as the Republican mayor runs for Congress three years after saying he was voting for Hillary Clinton.

Gimenez was at the bottom of the stairs and shook Trump’s hand when the president stepped off Air Force One at 5:40 p.m. at the county-run airport on his way to a Republican event booked at the president’s Doral golf resort. Gimenez’s official welcoming role for Trump came hours after he thanked Trump on Twitter while announcing his entry into the Republican primary for the District 26 seat held by one-term Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

By the end of the evening, Trump left no doubt that Gimenez was his pick against lesser-known rivals in the GOP primary. “Carlos will win big, very exciting,” read a tweet posted on Trump’s Twitter account at 9:52 p.m. “Great for Florida, great for USA! He has my complete and total Endorsement!”

Already a top Republican recruit for Congress, Gimenez received the White House invitation this week to join Trump at MIA as he prepared to officially jump into the race. The high-profile presidential encounter came nearly two years after the Trump White House refused to let the mayor greet the president at the airport, highlighting the complicated relationship between the two.

The fourth word in Gimenez’s congressional announcement, which was posted shortly before 2:30 p.m., was Trump’s Twitter handle in a debut campaign message that signaled the former city manager’s embrace of a fight with Democrats. The Cuban-born Gimenez thanked Trump “for all you’ve done for our economy & to fight socialism” and said he looked forward “to standing w/ you against the radical left who are determined to turn the U.S. into Venezuela.”

Less than two hours later, Trump responded on Twitter: “On my way, see you soon!”

Also in the welcoming party at MIA were two Republican county commissioners, Esteban “Steve” Bovo and Jose “Pepe” Diaz. Bovo is running to succeed a term-limited Gimenez in 2020. Trump did not take questions from the press, and what was said between the president and a mayor with a history of family and political connections couldn’t be heard. Afterwards, Gimenez said he talked to Trump about Miami, his congressional race and a time when the two played golf together in Palm Beach.

“He asked me about my family,” Gimenez said. “And we started talking about the fact that I had a broken driver when I played with him.”

Thursday’s endorsement dramatically bolsters Gimenez’s front-runner status in the primary against two Republicans — county firefighter Omar Blanco, and restaurant owner Irina Vilariño, a prominent local Trump supporter. But it also highlights Gimenez’s status as a mayor with close ties to Trump, who donated to Gimenez’s 2016 reelection campaign and tried to negotiate a golf deal with his administration before running for president.

Even though he’s been elected three times countywide and a poll by a national Republican organization shows him trouncing the current Republican candidates, Gimenez faces questions about his anti-Trump baggage.

Running for reelection in 2016, Gimenez went on television days after Trump’s Access Hollywood vulgar comments about women became public to call for the Republican nominee to drop out of the presidential race over his “despicable” remarks from 2005. Gimenez then said: “I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump, that’s for sure...I’m voting for Hillary Clinton”

When Air Force One last flew to Miami, in 2018, the White House declined to let Gimenez join the welcoming party, a snub that led to a public back-and-forth between Trump’s staff and the mayor’s office.

Thursday’s chummy image also adds fodder for the anti-Gimenez campaign Mucarsel-Powell is already organizing as she prepares to run in a Democrat-leaning district against a Republican with arguably more ties to the president than any sitting mayor in the country.

Trump hired C.J. Gimenez, a son and top political adviser to the mayor, as a local lobbyist in Miami-Dade before the mogul ran for president. The younger Gimenez lobbied at the municipal level for the Trump Doral and with Trump’s Miss Universe pageant, but said he did no work for Trump at the county.

Trump also pursued a management deal for Miami-Dade’s Crandon golf course after broaching the idea with the mayor during a round at the waterfront park in 2013. The talks remained a secret through January 2015, when the elder Gimenez solicited a $15,000 campaign donation from Trump. News of the Crandon talks broke shortly thereafter. Gimenez quickly announced he was recusing himself form the negotiations, and the proposal fizzled amid opposition by county commissioners that May. Trump announced his presidential campaign six weeks later.

The two remained connected after Trump won the presidency, with Trump making it clear he wasn’t ignoring what Gimenez said about him. When Trump called Gimenez after the death of Fidel Castro in November 2016, Gimenez said the president-elect chastised him for backing Clinton. “He wasn’t happy I didn’t endorse him. I know that,” Gimenez said at the time. “It was a friendly conversation. It was kind of joking.”

More than a month later, Trump still wasn’t moving on from the Gimenez slight. When C.J. Gimenez secured a meeting at Trump Tower with the president-elect weeks before inauguration, his father was a topic of conversation, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

“’Your father said some very nasty things about me,’” Trump told the younger Gimenez at the Jan. 12, 2017, meeting attended by other local lobbyists and public-relations executives, according to two sources familiar with the encounter. The younger Gimenez was not available for comment.

Whatever grudge Trump might have held against Gimenez from 2016, it didn’t stop him from embracing the mayor after Gimenez upended county policy on detaining immigration offenders to mollify the new administration in early 2017. Facing a promised crackdown on “sanctuary” communities, Gimenez ordered local jails to start holding inmates an extra 48 hours if they were being sought for deportation.

Trump praised Gimenez on Twitter for being “Strong!,” setting off a firestorm of controversy over Miami’s tradition as a community largely led by immigrants. The county commission later backed Gimenez’s change of a 2013 policy refusing the detainment requests, and the new rules remain in effect.

The White House decision to invite Gimenez to greet Trump at MIA may be an example of political practicality, trying to get past prior conflicts from the 2016 race to boost Republican political fortunes in 2020.

Michael Caputo, a Miami-based Republican strategist who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, said earlier this month that the president and his supporters have increasingly forgiven people who crossed him four years ago, back when he was an insurgent Republican viewed as unlikely to win the presidency.

People who criticized Trump while supporting other candidates are now playing integral roles in his reelection campaign, like Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez, who is co-chairwoman of Trump’s Hispanic outreach effort — even after calling him a “con man” on Twitter in 2016. Others are working in the White House.

“Florida is one of the states where people are forgiving of statements made and activities undertaken in 2016 when it comes to [criticizing] President Trump,” Caputo said. “They don’t forget but they’re forgiving. The key in this regard would be what the president does or doesn’t say” about Gimenez.

Caputo said the controversy that erupted after the October 2016 publicizing of the Access Hollywood tape is seen as a “bellwether event” by Trump loyalists.

But he said Trump’s desire to beat back Democrat gains in Congress during the 2018 midterm elections has led to leniency in swing House districts where moderate candidates may be better poised to flip seats from blue to red.

“Those of us who go back a long way with the president saw that as a news cycle that separated the supporters from the band-wagoners. That’s not something we forget,” Caputo said. “But there are dozens of people [now] working in the White House that were on the wrong side of that equation for the Trump base. So, clearly all is forgiven.”

This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 6:54 PM.