On December 9, 2025, Miami made history. Eileen Higgins, a Democrat and former Miami-Dade Commissioner, swept to victory in the mayoral runoff, defeating Trump-endorsed Republican Emilio González by nearly 20 points and capturing 59.5% of the vote. Her win marks a seismic shift in a city where, just a year earlier, Donald Trump lost by less than a percentage point and where Republicans had long counted on strong support from Cuban-Americans and other Latino voters. But as the dust settles, it’s clear that Miami’s political winds are changing—and the entire nation is watching.
Higgins’s victory is historic in more ways than one. She is the first woman, the first Democrat, and the first non-Cuban to be elected mayor of Miami in more than two decades, according to Florida Politics and other outlets. Her decisive win is a sharp reversal from recent years: in 2022, outgoing Republican Mayor Francis Suarez cruised to re-election with 79% of the vote, and in 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris barely eked out a win in the city. Now, with Higgins at the helm, Miami is signaling a new direction—one driven by mounting concerns over affordability, government dysfunction, and the fallout from national immigration policies.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” just two days after her victory, Higgins credited her win to a confluence of factors. She pointed to the city’s “long history of corruption”—a reference to a string of scandals involving outgoing officials like Joe Carollo, Francis Suarez, Alex Díaz de la Portilla, and Victoria Méndez, as reported by The Miami Herald and Florida Politics. But she also cited a more urgent and personal fear gripping Miami’s large immigrant population: the impact of President Trump’s hard-line anti-immigration policies.
“There’s this politics of trickle-down hatred, where our immigrant population is not only insulted but also really afraid of the federal government,” Higgins said, playing on the Reagan-era phrase “trickle-down economics.” She described hearing worries from residents across Miami that they, their relatives, or friends could be swept up in raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2025, ICE received a massive budget increase to ramp up detainment and deportation efforts—a move that sent shockwaves through communities with deep immigrant roots.
Higgins didn’t mince words about the effect this had on the election. “People are afraid,” she told viewers. “I’ve never experienced that in any of my elections before. People want government to work for them. They were never afraid of government, and that’s changed.” For many, the fear was not abstract. Since January 2025, immigration enforcement has aggressively pursued deportations, even targeting Cuban nationals who, under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, had long enjoyed a privileged status. The administration’s efforts to deport Cubans within their first year in the U.S. sparked outrage in Miami, particularly after one high-profile case in which a Trump-supporting Cuban national began a hunger strike following deportation to a maximum-security prison in Eswatini, according to The Nation.
Higgins, herself a Catholic, called the administration’s approach “inhumane” and “cruel.” She told El Pais in early December, “He [Trump] and I have very different points of view on how we should treat our residents, many of whom are immigrants.” She also emphasized the economic consequences of mass deportations: “Are we really going to deport 300,000 people and ruin the economy of South Florida? To me, this anti-immigrant fervor, it’s gone too far. It’s inhumane. It’s cruel. I’m Catholic, so I think it’s a sin. And it’s bad for the economy.”
But it wasn’t just immigration that drove voters to the polls. Miami’s affordability crisis—already notorious—reached a breaking point this year. The median price for condos and single-family homes has skyrocketed by 80% since the pandemic, making Miami one of the least affordable metro areas in the country, as noted by The Nation. Higgins made housing affordability the centerpiece of her campaign, vowing to build thousands of units of affordable housing and highlighting the squeeze on both families and small businesses. “Our housing affordability crisis has existed for some time,” she said. “You also have what’s going on with this tariff issue, which is raising prices at the grocery store, at the drug store and for small businesses. We forget about that. You can go into a hair salon (where) the price of extensions (has) gone up by $20. And do they cut their profits or do they charge their customers in Little Havana $20 more? Neither of those people can afford that. So, affordability is all over the map.”
The election was also a referendum on Miami’s entrenched political establishment. Outgoing Mayor Suarez, once a darling of developers and tech billionaires, has faced multiple investigations for alleged corruption, including accepting bribes and expensive gifts from city contractors, according to The Nation. City Commissioner Joe Carollo, a fixture in Miami politics for four decades, was ordered in 2023 to pay nearly $64 million in damages to local club owners after being found to have used law enforcement to target their businesses. The city commission even attempted to delay the 2025 elections, but González sued to ensure they proceeded, a move that briefly endeared him to voters frustrated with the status quo.
Yet, González’s stand against Miami’s establishment wasn’t enough to overcome his association with Trump—whose popularity among Cuban-Americans has plummeted. In 2024, Trump won 70% of the Cuban-American vote in Florida, but by 2025, his approval rating among that group had dropped to just 27%, including an 18-point decline among Latino Republicans, according to The Nation. Many Latino voters who once supported Trump in hopes of economic improvement have grown disillusioned as the city’s cost of living crisis deepened and immigration enforcement became harsher.
The national implications of Higgins’s win haven’t gone unnoticed. On CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip, political commentator Joe Borelli argued that “the solution is not less Trump, it’s actually more Trump.” The comment was met with a flurry of criticism from viewers, many of whom took to social media to voice their frustration. “The solution is NO Trump,” one person declared. Another quipped, “That’s like saying you need more diarrhea.” The backlash underscored the growing divide within the Republican Party and the electorate at large about the future direction of American politics.
At her victory party, Higgins struck a hopeful tone. “Miami chose a new direction... you chose competence over chaos,” she told cheering supporters. She pledged to “lead a city that belongs to everyone” and made clear that her win was “the beginning of the work ahead.” For Miami’s diverse, dynamic population, that work will mean addressing affordability, restoring trust in local government, and, perhaps most importantly, ensuring that the city remains a welcoming place for all its residents—no matter where they come from.
As Miami turns the page, the rest of the country is watching closely. The city’s dramatic political shift could be a preview of what’s to come in the 2026 midterms and beyond—a sign that, in a changing America, old alliances and assumptions are no longer set in stone.
