Why California? Suarez travels to GOP island in blue state to launch presidential bid
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez will give his first speech as a Republican presidential candidate in solid-blue California, about 2,700 miles away from the city where he was born and raised in politics.
He is set to speak at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, outside Los Angeles, as part of the library’s conservative speaker series entitled “A Time For Choosing.” Suarez, 45, is the city’s first Miami-born mayor, and son of Xavier Suarez, Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor.
So why California, the nation’s most populous state and a bastion of Democratic voters?
You can see Suarez’s speech on YouTube on Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT
Several other GOP primary candidates have spoken at the Reagan Library in the last eight months. Former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley gave a speech in October. Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared there in November. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave an address there in March.
Later this year, the second Republican primary debate will be at the Reagan Library.
“Ronald Reagan brought our community into the GOP, so it’s fitting that a Cuban American would launch his presidential campaign at the Reagan Library,” said Luis Gazitua, a Miami lobbyist and a board member of Maverick PAC, a political action committee designed to increase activism among young Republican professionals.
While the Republican Party has made major inroads in Florida and especially in South Florida as the GOP’s appeal to Hispanic voters has turned Miami-Dade County from solidly Democratic to a tossup, Suarez’s choice of California is seen as an attempt to reach a broader, more national Hispanic Republican audience.
Read more: Francis Suarez, Miami’s Republican mayor, files to run for president in GOP primary
An appearance in California also affords Suarez some geographic distance from controversy back home. The FBI is investigating the mayor’s private consulting work for a real estate developer who sought City Hall permitting approvals on a Coconut Grove real estate project.
The choice suggests Suarez could try to brand himself as a “Reagan Republican” in a field where the leading GOP candidate, former President Donald Trump, reportedly sees the term as an insult he can use against DeSantis, according to an Axios report from March. A Trump insider told the news outlet that the Reagan Republican viewpoint does not square with the “populist nationalist feeling” of the broader Republican party.
Trump has not been invited to appear for the library’s speaker series. The former president has criticized the decision to host a primary debate there.
Suarez has also never run in a partisan race before. As Miami’s second-term mayor who was first elected as a commissioner in 2009, he’s successfully run for nonpartisan offices in City Hall, but his White House bid thrusts him into a new spotlight where he’ll be forced to bolster his conservative credentials more than ever before. A speech at the Reagan Library could be seen as an appropriate venue to launch that effort — although he’s already faced criticism from members of his own party who note that Suarez didn’t vote for Trump twice and voted for DeSantis’ opponent in the 2018 gubernatorial race.
Suarez’s political team did not respond to the Herald request for comment.
The mayor is scheduled to speak at 9 p.m. EDT Thursday.
