Eileen Higgins goes into Miami City Hall with a fire extinguisher and a smile

Miami’s new mayor-elect says the circus is over
Miami Mayor-Elect Eileen Higgins held her first post-election press conference Wednesday, and the gist is that La Gringa no vino a jugar.
If Francis Suarez turned City Hall into a political Airbnb — you know, a place where he crashed between photo ops and travel jaunts — Higgins made it clear she’s coming to actually live in the building. Clean the kitchen. Fix the plumbing. Throw out the dead plants. Maybe fumigate.
And above all: turn off the damn reality show.
Read related: La Gringa Eileen Higgins makes history with Miami mayoral election victory
“First of all, the temperature on the dais has to go down,” Higgins told reporters at her campaign headquarters — in that measured, school-principal tone she uses right before she assigns homework.  “People must treat each other with respect. The era of commissioners yelling at one another and threatening to punch one another is going to stop.
“We have a new dais. We have new ideas and we certainly have people (who) are quieter and behave, in this case, in a more gentlemanly manner.”
She didn’t say the words Joe Carollo, but it was understood.
In Spanish, Higgins said what everyone has been thinking for years: the city’s meetings have become “más o menos un reality show.”
Honestly, that’s generous. Some meetings make an episode of La Casa de los Famosos look like C-SPAN.
Frankly, she’s got it a lot easier now that Commissioner Carollo has his last meeting Thursday. Joe i the msatch that sparks the fire, the kerosene that feeds it, and the guy running around the chamber tossing lit cigarettes just to watch the flames dance. There’s no way the rest of them, as clownish as they can be in their own right, can live up to the legend. Commissioner Miguel “Tony Soprano” Gabela won’t be goaded into a fist fight with Ralph Rosado or Damian Pardo. Joe Carollo termed out. He has gone to Shangrila. And his brother Frank Carollo lost to Rolando Escalona.
Suddenly the dais looks less like WrestleMania and more like… well, a workplace.
“We have a new dais, new ideas, and certainly people that are quieter and behave in a more gentlemanly manner,” Higgins said.
That kindness should also extend outside of City Hall, with “a government that treats residents as if they are customers,” Higgins added. She mentioned the permitting process nightmare and saying the city has to become more efficient, “has to be more modern in how it embraces technology.”
Higgins, also touched on affordable housing — her bread and butter issue — and the city’s controversial 287g agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which they entered this past summer. Suarez didn’t veto it and never said a thing. Classic Francis. Very on-brand for a mayor who showed up to the border trying to look serious, then ran for president for two weeks.
Read related: Miami could join 250 Florida cities with 287g contract to help ICE vs immigrants
The new mayor, on the other hand, has been a critic of state-level immigrant crackdowns and made it plain on Wednesday: “The city should never have entered into that agreement,” she said.
“This is the first election where when I speak to residents, it’s not just about frustration, it’s also about fear. They’ve never been afraid of their government before. And now they are,” Higgins said.
Can she get Miami out of the agreement? Maybe not. She was honest that the rules are unclear. But she can minimize the involvement “There’s no reason for our police department to be in the job of federal immigration enforcement.
“We are an immigrant city,” she said. “We have always been an immigrant city.”
That sound you hear is half of Miami exhaling in relief.
She also plans to replace City Manager Art Noriega, but not until after the holidays. And she said she would prefer to have a national search to find the best person for the job. What a concept!
Because here’s the thing: unlike half the people who say they want to fix Miami politics, Higgins — ever the note-taking nerd — actually brought a plan. A literal one. According to the Miami Herald, she has a thick, running, 300-item “mayor do” list that Ladra hears she’s been carrying around like a political security blanket.
Three. Hundred. Items.
Suarez didn’t even show up three hundred times.
Read related: Francis Suarez is the absent Mayor VIP of Miami — MIA at the worst time
Higgins says she will attend every commission meeting. Every. Single. One. Not just the morning ceremonial photo ops before slipping out the back for a donor lunch. She’s going to sit there, in the chamber, looking at them like a mom watching her kids take a math test — chancla in hand.
Higgins is not an outsider, which is exactly why the insiders should be nervous.
She’s known for drilling into policy until staffers run out of coffee, asking 20 questions when most politicians ask zero, working to actually fix real problems — like Miami-Dade’s broken suspended-license system — instead of staging them for Instagram.
The soonest Higgins can be sworn in is Dec. 17. Which means Suarez gets one more week to look busy, hand out certificates, and take a few more selfies before he packs up his ring light. He’s leaving office as the city’s first TikTok-flavored mayor, and Higgins is walking in as Miami’s first-ever woman mayor — and the first Democrat in nearly three decades.
It’s going to be a sharp contrast.
Higgins says she’ll be in the room. She’ll be hands-on. She’ll be focused. And she has — and this is the wild part — a fully organized punch list for her first 100 days.
Not a slogan. Not a podcast. Not a crypto pitch. An actual to-do list. A Miami mayor with a plan. Dios mío.
Eileen Higgins promised to “stop the chaos.” But turning off Miami’s political reality show won’t be easy. Chaos has been profitable for some people. Entertaining for others. And it has been normalized for way too long.
If Higgins can pull this off — even halfway — it won’t just be a new era. It’ll be another miracle.
The first one? The Carollos are gone.

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