Emilio Gonzalez will ‘clean up’ Miami — but he was there when it got dirty

Part of a series of profiles about the Miami mayoral candidates
If you listen to Emilio T. González long enough, you might start to believe Miami’s former city manager really is the retired Army colonel who’s going to march into City Hall, root out the corruption — and straighten everyone’s ties while he’s at it.
But then you remember — he used to run the place.
Yes, the same man now promising to fix the dysfunction in Miami government was knee-deep in it from 2018 to 2020, when he served as City Manager under Mayor Francis Suarez. Back then, González managed a $1.7 billion budget, 4,400 employees, and one very fragile relationship with Commissioner Joe Carollo, who spent most of those two years accusing him of all sorts of things, including forging documents about his own home improvements.
González, who jumped into the 2025 race early and has come out grinning from every debate, was cleared of those charges. But it’s no surprise that in this year’s mayoral race, the ex-manager and the always-litigious Carollo are circling each other again, both trying to look like the hero riding in to save Miami from itself. But Carollo is increasingly seen as a clown. And Gonzalez is the man who did actually get the race back on the ballot through a lawsuit after the city commission cancelled it to move the elections to next year.
Read related: Ethics board clears former Miami city manager Emilio Gonzalez in deck case
Nobody else did that. Just Emilio Gonzalez. He deserves the hero status that some are giving him.
He doesn’t come, however, without the ifs, ands or buts — weakness that are also his strengths
First, the GOP support. Gonzalez has gotten endorsements from Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Rick Scott and, even as far away as Sen. Ted Cruz from Texas. These aren’t exactly a shock — they share Republican credentials. Gonzalez was the director of the National Security Council under President George W. Bush and then served as the director of the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services department. And the city of Miami’s core elderly Cuban voters are solidly Republican, so it sells with them.
But these electeds do not typically weigh in on a city of Miami election and it does make one wonder how much control Gonzalez would give to the state and the federal government if he is elected mayor. He has already been attacked by the Miami-Dade Democrats in mailers and texts that refer to him as the MAGA mayor. Can we trust him? Will he help to deport our neighbors?
Are those matching suits?
Gonzalez said he will be a mayor for all of Miami. And, while he went to Tallahassee weeks ago to talk to Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia about the DOGE audit of Miami and sat in the front row of the invitation-only press event last week, has been courting the black vote hard, going to inner city churches on Sundays. “My allegiance is to the working families of Miami,” he told Political Cortadito.
And Ladra has spoken to some non-GOP voters who were so impressed with his knowledge and his plans that they will bubble in his name. They see him more like a Reagan Republican than a Trumpster, but his loyalty to the GOP is still a little unsettling.
His penchant to bring up his Army service is another weakness that is also a strength. While some voters respect it as a sign of leadership and patriotism, younger voters, Dems and independents might think that means he would welcome troops sent to Miami by the Trump administration.
Read related: Partisan divide is strong in Miami mayoral race, Gonzalez vs Higgins
The third strike is also seen as a plus in some ways, and that is his city of Miami experience. González has been part of the leadership circle before. Plus: He knows where all the bones are buried. Minus: He may have helped bury some of those.
He’s not some fresh-faced reformer stumbling in from the suburbs. This is a man who’s been a federal bureaucrat, a national security advisor, an airport boss, and the city’s top administrator.
He’s been inside the machine. Now he’s running on fixing it.
“I’m running to restore trust in City Hall,” González said at his kickoff event. “Our residents have lost respect for our leaders. They don’t believe anything they say.”
González’s campaign theme is fiscal accountability. He says he wants to audit the city’s $400 million Miami Forever Bond — $100 million earmarked for affordable housing and $300 million for resiliency — to find out, in his words, “where it went.”
“When I left the city, our budget was $1.5 billion. Today it’s $3 billion,” he says. “We have doubled in five years. We got $400 million from the bond, $140 million from the feds. Where is it?”
That’s a great question. The problem is, Emilio was sitting in the manager’s chair when that bond money started flowing. If there are accountability measures missing, it could be his fault. He could have built them in then.
Still, his message resonates with Miamians who are sick of watching the same people trade favors and feuds while the grass at the parks rises with rents. González says he’ll run a leaner government, cut property taxes, and prioritize police and firefighters — “the real public servants,” as he calls them. He has a bunch of endorsements from former and current law enforcement.
Read related: In Miami mayoral bid, Emilio Gonzalez goes for the law and order vote
He backs the governor’s plan to phase out ad valorem property taxes altogether, which sounds nice until you realize that money funds half the city’s general budget. His answer? “If families can tighten their belts by ten percent, so can the city.”
Sure, Colonel. But when was the last time a family’s “ten percent” came out of code enforcement and pothole repairs?
González’s backstory reads like a Miami patriot’s dream résumé: born in Havana, raised in Tampa, served 26 years in the Army, taught at West Point, worked in the Bush administration, worked as a lobbyist and ran Miami International Airport for four years before taking over City Hall.
He calls himself “battle-tested.” And it’s true — the man’s been through bureaucratic wars in Washington and political minefields in Miami.
But Ladra’s skeptical when lifelong insiders try to sell themselves as reformers. You can’t be both the firefighter and the guy who built the house out of matchsticks.
González’s resignation in early 2020 came amid mounting tension on the dais — and, let’s be real, a toxic culture that didn’t start or end with him. He said he left to care for his sick wife, which Ladra respects deeply. But the whispers that he was pushed out have never quite gone away.
Now, five years later, he’s back with a vengeance, promising to audit, cut, streamline, and sanitize the very government that once spat him out. He says he will end the abuse of power and weaponization of government by having “swift and serious consequences,” including termination, for employees who “intimidate, investigate, or retaliate against residents, whistleblowers, or small business owners. He also says he will create a “permanent oversight presence” at city hall by inviting the Florida State Attorney’s Office, the Floria Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight (FAFO), the City of Miami’s new Inspector General Office, and federal law enforcement. Notice no mention of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, the county’s IG or the county commission on ethics, which is another sign of his GOP stripes.
Read related: Poll has Eileen Higgins in Miami mayoral runoff with Emilio Gonzalez
Nobody doubts that Gonzalez, the only one of the front runners never elected before, is a serious contender. He consistently is one of the top three in polls, hanging with Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins and former Miami Commissioner Ken Russell. And is campaign financing is also on par with Higgins’, with a political action committee that has collected more than $900,000 since March, including at least $500,000 from his own asset-management firm.
That’s either confidence in his own campaign or the most expensive self-love gift in Miami politics this year.
Emilio González is polished, prepared, and pragmatic. He knows how the city runs — and how it breaks. He’s saying the right things about accountability and corruption. But this isn’t his first cafecito at City Hall. If Miami’s voters want a real outsider to clean house, they might not find him in the former city manager’s office.
Still, Ladra will give him this: when he says Miami deserves better, he’s not wrong. The question is whether the colonel’s brand of “reform” means new rules — or just new generals.
Because in Miami politics, the war never really ends.

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The post Emilio Gonzalez will ‘clean up’ Miami — but he was there when it got dirty appeared first on Political Cortadito.

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