Miami’s mayor says Haley, not DeSantis, has ‘real shot’ at winning the GOP nomination
With the third Republican presidential debate set to kick off in his hometown Wednesday evening and the Iowa caucuses little more than two months away, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez says he only sees two candidates that “have a real shot at winning the Republican nomination.”
“It’ll probably be one of the two, which is the former president or Governor [Nikki] Haley,” Suarez told the Miami Herald during a brief interview from the spin room at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, where campaigns will send their surrogates to field interviews following the debate.
Noticeably absent from Suarez’s list: Ron DeSantis, the governor of the state hosting the debate.
DeSantis will be center stage Wednesday night, a sign of his standing among the candidates willing to attend the Republican National Committee’s debates. (Former President Donald Trump has refused to participate in the debates, and is instead holding a political rally in Hialeah.)
Haley, the former South Carolina governor, though, has been gaining support in polls.
“She seems to be the only one gaining momentum from the non-Trump group of voters,” Suarez said. “Anything can happen, I’m not committed to that, but that’s sort of where my mind is today.”
Suarez, who ended his own presidential campaign after falsely announcing that he’d qualified to make the RNC’s first debate, said that if DeSantis drops out of the race it “would be the disappointment of the campaign.”
“He had $100 million, he had Fox News giving him a tremendous amount of earned media and a lot of tailwind and he started out with 30% [support in polls], very within striking distance of the former president,” said Suarez, who in 2018 voted for DeSantis’ Democratic opponent for governor. “He seems to have gone in the wrong direction.”
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This story was originally published November 8, 2023 at 7:44 PM.
