City of Miami Mayor and Republican presidential candidate Francis Xavier Suarez, 45, is buff, rested and ready.
But how ready is he really, and for what? What’s the pitch and what’s the angle?
Suarez is America’s No. 1 evangelist for the “Miami Model” of low taxes, safe streets, soaring property values, business-friendly regulation, immigrant grit, optimism and aspiration, and fresh money from New York, Chicago and San Francisco, as venture capital, private equity and private wealth management firms shift their operations here. There’s no question about Miami’s growing importance.
(Twitter)
Pitchman Mayor Francis Suarez selling Miami as “the future of finance and the capital of capital” at the April 2022 Bitcoin Conference, in front of the city’s newly minted bull.
With all this, Miami – this place of titanic booms and busts – and Suarez as its tribune have a great story to tell, at least for now. The city’s 1.8% unemployment rate is the lowest in the land and its wage growth is among the strongest. Building is booming with a spreading skyline redolent of Dubai, though it masks some real problems.
The city’s average household income is nearly $80,000 and its median is just under $48,000, bespeaking some of the highest inequality in the land. Only 30% of the households are owner-occupied in this high-rent, low-wage economy. It is the least affordable housing market in the nation, relative to the average wage. Property insurance rates are soaring and the city, always on edge, often feels as if it’s one hurricane or nasty recession away from disaster.
Crowded Field, Thin Résumé
That said, Suarez’s message can compel. To get a sense of his tone, check his June 15 Twitter post about his two-minute, six-figure, June 14 ad buy targeted to Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, paid for by super-PAC SOS America.
“I have always been a runner,” announces Suarez, a married father of two, as he laces up his sneakers with “Chariots of Fire”-style music in the background before galloping through the city while voicing over Miami successes under his watch, as it were.
The ad concludes with an homage to his dad, Xavier L. Suarez, now 74, the city’s first Cuban-born mayor:
“My dad taught me that you get to choose your battles. And I am choosing the biggest one of my life. I’m going to run for president. I’m going to run for your children and mine.”
Among a crowded Republican field dominated by scowls and snarls, Suarez radiates optimism and hope. He is a two-term city commissioner now on his second term as a largely ceremonial mayor, making about $130,000 with perks. He has no vote or direct executive or budgetary control but can veto the hiring and firing of a city manager. And Miami is a city of 450,000 in a county of 2.7 million, where Mayor Daniella Levine Cava wields far more power.
Since 2021, Suarez has also been employed simultaneously as an of-counsel real estate lawyer at a national firm and a partner in a Coral Gables private equity firm.
That relatively thin résumé for the biggest job in the country is one rub; lack of national name recognition is another.
Rep. Carlos Giménez, a Republican who preceded Levine Cava as a strong Miami-Dade County mayor, doesn’t shy away from telling anyone what he thinks of Suarez, and did so on “Fox & Friends.”
(Gimenez.House.Gov)
My Approved Portraits
U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez on Francis Suarez
“I don’t think he’s qualified to be president of the United States in any way, shape, or form … he got elected by a total of 20,000 people … he’s not qualified to be anything … he fools a lot of people into thinking that he’s a lot bigger than what he really is … I wouldn’t waste my time with him … he’s a fraud,” said Giménez, on the same conservative network where Suarez is trying to elevate his thin credentials.
Cloud of Investigation
That said, Suarez’s skills are most evident as a convener, a storyteller and a friendly persuader. He used his just-ended term as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors to spread the Miami gospel, and develop and deepen his networking contacts and skills.
Suarez earned the name “Mayor Crypto” for his wholehearted embrace of cryptocurrency and FTX. That ultimately did not go well. The FTX currency exchange collapsed in a $2 trillion crypto bust, and founder Sam Bankman-Fried, all of 31, is now awaiting criminal trial in October on charges of fraud and money laundering. While Suarez was not accused of criminal wrongdoing, the collapse certainly dinged his brand and Miami’s, though Suarez remains a fan of cryptocurrency.
Even closer to the nerve, Suarez is enmeshed in criminal and civil investigations by the FBI, the SEC, the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office and the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust over $170,000 in payments he did not report from a developer building a big mixed-use project in Coconut Grove. That story was unearthed by the Miami Herald.
While this may seem trivial compared with the current and potential tidal waves of felony indictments facing former President Donald Trump, it’s certainly a hindrance.
In this and other matters, Suarez has generally tacked away from local media, preferring Fox News or even Tucker Carlson to local news anchors Jim DeFede or Glenna Milberg.
Trying for Gipper 2.0
Suarez delivered his national pitch in a 26-minute speech nearly 2,400 miles away from home at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library just outside Los Angeles.
There, as part of a speech series called “A Time for Choosing,” named for Reagan’s 30-minute endorsement speech for Barry Goldwater in October 1964, Suarez riffed on Reagan’s 1989 “shining city on a hill” farewell speech, presenting himself as a Cuban American Gipper 2.0, while casting indirect shade on the likes of Trump and Florida Gov. DeSantis:
“I believe America is still a shining city on a hill whose eyes of the world are upon us and whose promise needs to be restored. I believe this city needs more than a shouter (Trump?) or a fighter (DeSantis?), I believe it needs a servant. It needs a mayor. My name is Francis Suarez and I am here to help.”
Never mind that the last words work as a play on the oft-cited Reagan quote: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” The pitch of Suarez and libertarian Miami tech-venture capital-real estate bros is that the government is there to serve business and innovation, rather than the other way round. Suarez proudly wears Miami Vice-retro blue pastel special socks designed by a Twitter follower, inscribed, “How can I help?”
Riding the Capitalist Surf
Perhaps Suarez’s happiest place is among innovative funders. The litany of companies and names migrating here in the last five years is impressive, including Blackstone, I Squared Capital, Citadel, Icahn Enterprises and Starwood Capital, and the Founders Fund, with partners Peter Thiel and Kenneth Rabois, the latter a fellow Miami evangelist and workout buddy of Suarez.
That’s the surf Suarez is riding. One third-party endorsement came at an April Miami Tech forum with Suarez and Rabois in matching navy polo shirts from no less than Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun, who is opening his 14th campus in Miami in September.
“Miami is the epicenter of the world,” Aoun said, prompting a “There you go!” and a fist-bump from Suarez. “When Dubai asked us to be there I said, ‘No, we are already in the epicenter the world.”
To which Suarez replied: “Oof. Wow!”
The Miami Herald Editorial Board speculated that Suarez might be angling for a consolation prize on his run from Miami City Hall to commander-in-chief. If so, what would that be? Vice president? Secretary of Commerce? One could speculate that he might consider shooting for governor of Florida in 2026.
In any event, Suarez has suited up for a marathon that could take him well past this year or next, possibly beyond 2024, 2026 or even 2028. Can a two-term councilman and ceremonial mayor rise to the occasion?