Miami’s mayoral race has gone full partisan – just like Ladra warned

Miami’s supposedly nonpartisan mayoral race has blossomed into a full-blown red-versus-blue circus. Just like Political Cortadito warned months ago.
This week, any last veneer of “nonpartisan municipal election” finally dissolved like azúcar in a cortadito. Now we’ve got U.S. Senators, congressional hopefuls, national party operatives — even Mayor Pete Buttigieg chiming in from afar, and taking the wind out of former Commissioner Ken Russell‘s sails. Russell also endorsed Higgins in recent days.
It’s enough partisan branding to make a swing-state voter blush.
Former Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, who very much wants to be the first female Miami mayor, isn’t hiding the D next to her name anymore — even if the ballot technically does.
Read related: DNC goes ‘all in’ for Eileen Higgins in hyper partisan Miami mayoral race
On Friday, the Higgins camp posted a video of Buttigieg, a former Presidential candidate and U.S. secretary of transportation from 2021 to 2025, right before she rolled out a parade of Democratic electeds for the first day of early voting: Sen. Shevrin Jones, Rep. Ashley Gantt, Rep. Wallace Aristide, U.S. Senate candidate Jennifer Jenkins, and David Jolly, the former GOP congressman turned MSNBC Republican-in-Exile turned Democrat gubernatorial candidate.
On Sunday, she’s importing U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, the rising-star Democrat from Arizona and the first Latino elected to the Senate from that state. A national figure. A border-state Marine. A progressive fighter. A complete unknown in Miami. What does an Arizona senator have to do with potholes in Shenandoah or the turnover at City Hall or whatever’s happening at Virginia Key this week? Nada.
But, like Buttigieg, he’s got star power.
Is Higgins trying to send a national signal? Court Latino pride? Show Democratic muscle? Or is this a warning flare that she needs to beef up enthusiasm in a fractured Democratic base in a city where party labels don’t always behave the way party operatives wish they would?
Not to be outdone, the Emilio González campaign had its own partisan coming-out party. The Republican Party of Miami-Dade threw a “Get Out the Vote” rally at Versailles — because where else do Republicans in Miami go to get their photo-ops and croquetas at the same time?
Read related: Eileen and Emilio headed to Miami mayoral runoff as voters end the circus
Special guests included U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, who apparently took a break from signing her 120-page book version of her undignified “Dignity not citizenship” legislation, and red meat-loving Miami-Dade Commissioner Rob Gonzalez, whose aspirations to higher partisan office are no secret. With a “Keep Miami red” theme, it was practically a GOP pep rally with its own Cuban cafetera soundtrack.
On Saturday, anticommunist crusader Alex Otaola, who lost a bid against Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava last year but wants to recall her because he can’t take no for an answer, organized a caravan of support for Gonzalez.
Emilio, the retired colonel, is leaning all the way into the Republican embrace — and he isn’t pretending otherwise. He even says he’ll bring “real reform and accountability,” which is rich considering Miami’s corruption has historically been a bipartisan sport dominated by Republicans.
But hey, no one’s shying away from the branding anymore.
So what does this mean for the average Miami voter?  Two words: voter fatigue.
Turnout is under 12%, and has favored Democrats so far, but Republican voters are closing the gap in early voting. Still, with Democrat and no-party-affiliation voters almost double the number of GOP voters, it seems almost certain that Higgins will win if this is a partisan race.

But Miamians sholdn’t vote based on party registration in city races. They should vote on la calle, on relationships, on whether trash gets picked up on time and whether their rent went up $700 last month. I mean, who cares what the DNC or RNC thinks about the Baywalk?
Both campaigns are pushing national politics into local ground, dragging Miami voters into a proxy battle they didn’t sign up for.
Independents, who are the fastest-growing chunk of the voter rolls, are likely to see all this and roll their eyes so hard they’ll need chiropractic care. They just want a mayor who keeps developers from paving over their neighborhood, stops commissioners from publicly embarrassing us on national TV, and maybe, just maybe, isn’t under federal investigation.
Is that too much to ask?
Read related: Partisan divide is strong in Miami mayoral race, Gonzalez vs Higgins
This partisan squeeze comes with some risks. For Higgins, it’s looking like the candidate of national Democrats instead of local residents. For González, it’s looking like the GOP’s Miami beachhead instead of an independent city leader.
Miamians have a long history of not liking being told how to vote by outsiders — whether they come from Washington, Tallahassee, or even Broward.
And now both sides are doing exactly that.
So yes, the race has gone hyper-partisan. Just like Ladra warned weeks ago when this whole thing started smelling like a DNC versus RPOF turf war disguised as a municipal election.
But here’s the real chisme: In a city where half the voters don’t trust either party, and where corruption is the only truly bipartisan tradition, this nationalizing might backfire on one or both campaigns.
Miami voters may simply ask: Who’s actually going to fix the mess at City Hall — and who’s just trying to score national points?

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