Miami’s Republican Mayor Francis Suarez refused to commit today to voting for President Trump in November.
“I want to see what both candidates have to offer for the urban communities before making up my mind on who I’m going to support,” Suarez said in an interview.
The non-committal answer from a swing state Republican elected official provides a look into Trump’s uphill battle to win Florida for a second time.
Former Vice President Joe Biden leads Trump by five percentage points in Florida, according to the RealClear Politics polling average.
Trump narrowly won the state by 1.2 percentage points in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Florida Republicans enjoyed success in the 2018 midterms, ushering in Ron DeSantis as governor and Rick Scott as senator.
But President Trump is trailing in the polls and recently re-hired a veteran political operative for his Florida team.
Trump has long made Florida key to his reelection efforts, shifting his residence there from New York in 2019.
Suarez, who said he has been a Republican since the age of 18, was elected mayor of Miami in 2017.
He is the son of former Miami Mayor and Cuban immigrant Xavier Suarez.
The Miami mayor has become a regular presence on cable news during the coronavirus pandemic, and he said he anticipates Trump will wear a mask when he visits the city on Friday.
“The president is expected to follow the rules just like everybody else,” Suarez said.
The mayor’s refusal to throw his support behind the Republican president follows criticism of Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood — and others like it — by a key Trump administration official.
NBC reporter Jacob Soboroff’s new book on Trump’s immigration policies quotes Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director Katie Miller as saying “I believe that if you come to America, you should assimilate. Why do we need to have Little Havana?”
Little Havana is a neighborhood in Miami home to many Cuban exiles who fled the country during Fidel Castro’s regime.
Cuban-Americans have historically been a solidly Republican voting bloc in Miami-Dade County, although younger Cuban-Americans hold more liberal beliefs than past generations.