Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Files 2024 Presidential Candidacy – Rolling Stone

Suarez, who is Cuban-American, is the first Hispanic candidate to enter the GOP primaries and has been a longtime critic of the race’s two frontrunners: former President Donald Trump and his own governor Ron DeSantis. 

Last month, Suarez made headlines after blasting DeSantis over the fallout of his “personal vendetta” against Disney after the company spoke out against anti-LGBTQ legislation passed by the Florida legislature last year. “He took an issue that was a winning issue that we all agreed on, which was parental rights for K through third-graders,” Suarez said. “Now it’s something that spite or maybe potentially a personal vendetta, which has cost the state now potentially 2,000 jobs in a billion-dollar investment.”

Suarez says he voted against Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections and has now joined the cohort of underdog candidates making long-shot bids to unseat Trump in 2024. But like many other Republican hopefuls, the Miami mayor softened his stance on the former president as he prepared to enter the race. 

On Sunday, Suarez told Fox News that he felt the criminal charges brought against Trump by the Department of Justice were “un-American” and “felt wrong at some level.” 

Despite past criticism of his rivals, Suarez is no stranger to controversy. Earlier this year The Miami Herald reported allegations that Suarez received $170,000 from a real estate development company to expedite a construction project in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami. The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust subsequently opened an investigation into Suarez’s role in the project. 

Suarez’s slim odds are likely to be further eroded by the allegations of corruption. In a statement reacting to his candidacy filing, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison wrote that “Suarez has repeatedly used his position to benefit himself, prioritizing pay raises for himself, accepting lavish gifts, and taking shady payments — all while ignoring the biggest challenges facing the people he was elected to serve.”