Who is Francis Suarez? The Mayor of Miami is the 1st candidate to drop out of the presidential race

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez says: “The Left has taken Hispanics for granted for far too long, and it is no surprise that so many are finding a home in America’s conservative movement. Our party must continue doing more to include and attract this vibrant community that believes in our country’s foundational value,” he posted on Twitter.

He did not participate in the Republican debate last week because he didn’t meet the Committee’s polling conditions.

Who is Francis Suarez? What we know about the Mayor of Miami and his presidential bid

Suarez, 45, was born and raised in Miami and earned both his undergraduate and law degree at Florida-based schools. He is the eldest child of the Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor, Xavier Suarez, who served during the 1980s and 1990s.

Voters in Florida’s second-most populous city have elected the younger Suarez to the mayorship twice with an overwhelming majority of the vote both times. Prior to serving in the top post starting 2017, he was a Miami city commissioner for eight years. Suarez was also the president of the bipartisan US Conference of Mayors until recently.

The Miami mayor says that his tenure has seen the city experience an economic boom as he lowered taxes which helped it become “a major technology hub.” The mayor wants to make Miami the new Silicon Valley by wooing technology and innovation companies like those in cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.

In a campaign video he released, he says that his city, just like every other major city, struggles with homelessness. However, under his administration they have developed tools to “fight addiction and mental illness” and that the number of people living on the streets has dropped from 6,000 to only 608.

Suarez Considers himself a Reaganite

The Miami mayor compared himself with Ronald Reagan, casting himself as a traditional conservative that believes in limited government.

Suarez butted heads with DeSantis over the lifting of covid-19 restrictions and the governor’s claims of election fraud in the state. More recently has been critical of the governor over his fight with Disney. While Suarez supports the law that sparked the feud between the company and DeSantis, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay bill”, he says the governor, and presidential hopeful, is carrying out a “personal vendetta” against Florida’s largest employer. One which has cost the state around 2,000 new white-collar jobs when Walt Disney Co cancelled a planned $1 billion office campus project in the state.

As for Trump, Suarez says that he did not vote for the former president in 2020, nor in 2016. When asked what he thought about Trump’s indictment for hoarding classified documents “Good Morning America,” he tried to avoid answering the question but eventually said: “It’s not what I would have done… I would have turned over the documents.”