Francis Suarez

Francis Xavier Suarez (born October 6, 1977) is an American lawyer and politician who is the 43rd and current mayor of Miami since November 2017. The son of former Miami mayor Xavier Suarez, he previously served on the Miami City Commission from 2009 to 2017.

Suarez is a graduate of Florida International University (FIU), where he earned a bachelor's degree in finance. After that he earned a J.D. from the University of Florida in 2004. He was first elected to represent the 4th district in the Miami City Commission in 2009 and was reelected in 2011 and 2015. He served until 2017 when he was elected mayor of Miami. He was re-elected in 2021. During his mayoralty, Suarez has been noted for his advocacy for cryptocurrency.

Suarez was a candidate in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries, but withdrew from the race after he failed to qualify for the first primary debate.

Early life and education
The oldest of four siblings, Suarez is the son of Rita and Xavier Suarez, two-time Miami mayor. His aunt, Lala, is the mother of U.S. Congressman Alex Mooney from West Virginia.

Suarez attended Immaculata-LaSalle High School. He graduated in 1996 and went on to graduate in the top 10% of his class from Florida International University (FIU) with a bachelor's degree in finance. Following college, Suarez chose to attend the University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law, receiving his J.D. degree cum laude in 2004.

Legal career
After law school, Suarez became an attorney with the law firm Greenspoon Marder, specializing in corporate and real estate transactions.

In 2021 Suarez joined the newly established Miami office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. On July 1, 2023, due to his ongoing presidential candidacy, Suarez went on unpaid leave from the firm.

Early political activity
In 1998 Suarez's father Xavier Suarez was removed from Miami's mayoral office by the Florida circuit court. The lawsuit by Joe Carollo alleging voter fraud in the first round of the mayoral election, the court found that it had merit. During the lawsuit, Suarez's father was confronted with witness signatures for invalid absentee ballots by Carollo's lawyers. The signatory "F. Suarez" did not reside at any of the addresses given. Suarez's father denied any involvement with witnessing absentee ballots. Observers found, that the sample of signatures given by Suarez's father did bear some resemblance to the signatures on the witness ballots.

Before serving in the city government, Suarez first served on his local homeowner association. Suarez cited a home burglary that he had suffered as his motivation for getting involved.

Miami city commissioner (2009–2017)
Suarez was first elected to the Miami City Commission's District 4 seat in 2009. in a special election to replace Tomás Regalado who had resigned as mayor. The initial round of the election was held was on November 3, 2009. Suarez advanced to a runoff election against Manolo Reyes after receiving 44.74 percent of the vote in the initial round, with Reyes receiving 40.50 percent, Denis Rod receiving 5.15 percent and Oscar Rodriguez-Fonts receiving 9.61 percent. District 4 represented portions of the city's westernmost reaches. The runoff election was on 17 November 2009. Suarez won with 51.41 percent of the vote. He was reelected unopposed in both 2011 and 2015.

In January 2013 the Miami Herald wrote that in his first three years on the City Commission "Suarez has had mixed results passing policy." Suarez introduced a controversial motion that was passed by the City Commission, resulting in a decrease to city employees salaries. He also was an advocate for changes that were made to the zoning code of the city aimed at easing the ability to construct affordable housing. However, Suarez was unsuccessful in a push to move the city from using a weak mayor form of government to adopting a strong mayor form of government.

Suarez was initially a close ally of Mayor Regaldo. In late 2011, Regaldo asked Suarez to hold the chairmanship of the City Commission. After Regaldo was at odds with Police Chief Miguel Exposito, Suarez introduced a controversial motion to fire Exposito, which was passed by the City Commission. However, in mid-2012 Suarez became critical of Regaldo's leadership, attacking high turnover among Regaldo's staff and questioning the finance department's ability to balance the city's budget on time. Suarez even came to criticize Regaldo's feud with former police chief Exposito. Suarez ultimately announced a campaign to unseat Regaldo in the 2013 mayoral election.

Suarez was an opponent of red light cameras in the city, which had become a controversial issue in Miami.

2013 mayoral campaign
Suarez was widely anticipated to challenge incumbent Miami mayor Tomás Regaldo in the November 2013 mayoral election. In anticipation of his campaign, Suarez fundraised significantly at the end of 2012, with his "political communications organization" raising $460,000. This eclipsed the $160,000 that Regaldo had raised for his reelection by the end of 2012. Contributors to Suarez included Jackson Health System CEO and former Miami city manager Carlos A. Migoya as well as former Miami mayor Manny Diaz.

On January 15, 2013, Suarez officially announced his candidacy in a press conference he held outside of his personal resident in the Coral Gate neighborhood. Suarez's father attended the press conference and supported Suarez's candidacy. Suarez stated that, if elected, he would provide the city with "forward-thinking and innovative" governance. Suarez declared his campaign platform would focus on increasing the city's emergency financial reserves, helping small businesses, strengthen the city's police department, and elevating the city's national prominence. Upon the launch of Suarez's campaign, political analysts predicted a competitive election. Despite his strong fundraising and support from prominent political players, Suarez was regarded to be the underdog due to Regaldo's popularity with likely voters. Suarez being the scion of a former mayor was regarded as both a boon and a potential liability, as voter sentiments on his father's tenures as mayor varied, with his father having both a strong fan base but also carrying negative baggage with other voters. Suarez's age (thirty years Regaldo's junior) was seen as a likely liability to his candidacy, opening him up to accusations of inexperience. However, Suarez claimed his candidacy provided, "an opportunity for our generation to take a leadership role in the community."

For his campaign, Suarez hired experienced local political consultants, a media firm based in Washington, D.C., as well as a Virginia-based pollster. However, the primary actors in Suarez's campaign operation were relatives of his, including his cousin Steve Suarez, who served as his campaign manager.

Suarez's candidacy garnered the support of fellow Miami city commissioners Marc Sarnon, Michelle Spence-Jones, and Willy Gort.

Suarez's candidacy was rocked by controversies regarding the conduct of staffers. Two staffers became the subject of criminal investigations for forging signatures of acquaintances on absentee ballot request forms. Another staffer submitted twenty online absentee ballot requests in violation of Florida law, which dictated that online requests could only be made by the voter or a member of their immediate family. Suarez's father was accused of possibly attempting to influence a witness in the investigations when he reached out by email one of the voters for whom a ballot request had been illegally submitted. These scandals led to both this staffer and the campaign manager (Steve Suarez) each pleading guilty to misdemeanors resulting in probation. These scandals ultimately led Suarez to end his campaign on August 26, 2013. In ending his candidacy, Suarez cited several factors including "mistakes" made by his campaign team.

Mayor of Miami (2017–present)
Suarez was elected mayor of Miami in the 2017 election. The Miami Herald noted that his candidacy benefited from a strong effort to motivate voters to cast absentee ballots for him. Suarez is Miami's first local-born mayor. He is also the first mayor to not be born in Cuba since 1996, when mayor Stephen P. Clark died in office. Suarez was re-elected in the 2021 Miami mayoral election, receiving over 78% of the vote in the first ballot.

Miami has a weak mayor system under which the mayor holds little authority, The city's mayoralty is a part-time position and does not have power over the city's administration. Its limited powers include a veto over city commission legislation and the ability to declare emergencies. The mayor of Miami can also hire and fire the city manager who runs Miami's government, though the city commissioners have the ability to overrule a mayor's choice.

In June 2020, Suarez was elected by American mayors to serve as the second vice president of the United States Conference of Mayors and in June 2021, he was elected as the first vice president of the organization. From June 2022 to June 2023, he served as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Suarez was included in Fortune magazine's 2021 list of the "World's 50 Greatest Leaders".

Unsuccessful "strong mayor" ballot measure
As mayor, Suarez pushed to transition the city to a strong mayor system. A November 2018 municipal referendum was held on a ballot measure that would have changed the mayor's authority, with a heavy majority of voters rejecting such a change. The adoption of the ballot measure, which would have led to the mayor having power over city administration (including power over staffing offices that administer permitting and zoning departments), had been supported by many of the city's largest real estate developers, real estate brokers, and land use lawyers. More the $1.2 million was raised from such sources for Suarez's political action committee to promote a "yes" vote.

Miami Forever Bond
As mayor, Suarez has overseen a $400 million municipal bond initiative, sometimes called the Miami Forever Bond, to combat rising sea levels and support affordable housing.

Digitalization of bureaucratic processes
Suarez has advocated for the modernizing of Miami's bureaucracy. In 2018, the city adopted the Electronic Plans Review System to digitize the submission of site plans and zoning requests to the Planning and Zoning Department. This was something that Suarez had pushed for. Miami further digitized its bureaucracy by adopting the eStart system to digitize its process for getting building permits. Suarez touted this as streamlining the ability for businesses to get needed permits. Suarez proposed eStart in 2019, and it was launched in January 2021.

Climate change
In February 2019 Suarez wrote an article with former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon on how Miami is defending itself from the effects of climate change.

In November 2019 the Miami City Commission unanimously adopted a resolution submitted by Suarez amounting to a climate emergency declaration for Miami. The resolution was symbolic, having no attached actions or plans. Suarez pledged to spend funds raised from the Miami Forever Bond to address climate matters and to pursue additional state and federal funding.

Business
Suarez has promoted the city of Miami to investors as being a profitable location for tech and finance firms to locate their offices. In 2022, Suarez spoke at the World Economic Forum. Suarez is a cryptocurrency-friendly politician, who has promoted the development of Miami as a cryptocurrency hub. He intends for Miami to be the next Silicon Valley

As part of his friendliness towards cryptocurrency, Suarez touted the naming rights deal for Kaseya Center (renamed "FTX Arena") with cryptocurrency exchange FTX, appearing repeatedly with Sam Bankman-Fried. When the company filed for bankruptcy amid charges of fraud, the deal was terminated.

MiamiCoin
In September 2021, Saurez revealed that his ultimate plan for the city of Miami is to abolish taxes. Instead, he hopes to fund the city's activities via the issuance and continued mining of a city-specific blockchain token called MiamiCoin – which has led to him being nicknamed "Mayor Ponzi Postalita" by documentary-maker and director Billy Corben. He also stated that Miami is looking to allow its residents to get paid in Bitcoin, and to be able to pay their taxes using Bitcoin. In November 2021, Suarez became the first U.S. politician to take their salary in cryptocurrency.

Less than a year after the launch of MiamiCoin, the token was delisted from its last exchange, OKCoin, after losing over 90% of its value. Suarez lost $2,500 personally on MiamiCoin. Suarez continued to tout the money earned from MiamiCoin, and maintained his support for cryptocurrency.

Transportation
At the time he was elected mayor, Suarez was a member of the Miami-Dade Transportation Planning Organization. Suarez opted to retain this position after becoming mayor.

In 2021, after seeing the Las Vegas Loop constructed by Elon Musk's The Boring Company, Suarez raised the possibility of using tunneling to relieve congestion problems in Miami, proposing, "something that could potentially connect Brickell to downtown to the Grand Central station to Miami World Center to the Omni area to Edgewater, potentially to Wynwood."

Payments from real estate developer
In a disclosure of financial statements to investors, a real estate development company named Location Ventures revealed that they had paid Suarez at least $170,000 to push a development project in Coconut Grove. Records showed that Suarez, Location Ventures CEO Rishi Kapoor, and City Manager Art Noriega met to discuss a zoning hurdle for the development. As mayor, Suarez also works as a private real estate attorney, and has not disclosed his clients. This was criticized, since city officials cannot avoid potential conflicts of interest. On June 10, the Miami Herald noted that "special agents with the FBI's public corruption squad began questioning witnesses this week" on whether $10,000 monthly payments made to Suarez from London Ventures constituted bribery.

Response to COVID-19 pandemic
On March 2, 2020, Suarez responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by announcing preparations for a potential outbreak in Miami. Though no cases had yet to reported in Miami, two cases were confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in other areas of the state of Florida. On March 4, 2020, Suarez announced plans to cancel the upcoming Ultra Music Festival, stating that the tourists attending would greatly enhance the likelihood of Miami having cases of COVID-19. On March 6, 2020, Suarez and the Miami municipal government responded to the outbreak, which by then had resulted in even more confirmed coronavirus cases in the state of Florida, by cancelling the local Calle Ocho Festival as well. Suarez and two other city officials confirmed this during a press conference.

Suarez contracted the virus, which he confirmed during an interview with the Miami Herald on March 13, 2020. He was the second person confirmed to be infected in Miami-Dade County. He began posting daily video diaries to Instagram, showing the progression of his COVID-19 infection.

In April 2020, Suarez wrote to President Trump urging the president to take action to stop flights from COVID-19 "hot spots" from entering Miami International Airport. Carlos A. Giménez, the mayor of Miami-Dade County, came into conflict with Suarez over this. As Gimenez's position held oversight of the airport, he urged Trump to ignore Suarez's letter since the airport was not Suarez's purview.

In July 2020, Suarez dedicated 39 police officers to the task of enforcing a Miami-wide mask-wearing ordinance.

Republican Party politics
During the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election, Suarez voted against Republican nominee and eventual winner Ron DeSantis and instead voted for his Democratic opponent Andrew Gillum. He voted for DeSantis in the 2022 gubernatorial election. Suarez did not vote for incumbent Republican Donald Trump in both the 2016 presidential election and 2020 presidential election; he wrote in Marco Rubio and Mike Pence instead. Suarez endorsed former President Donald Trump for the 2024 United States presidential election.

Ethics investigation
On September 28, 2023, an investigation was opened by the Florida Ethics Committee after reports surfaced that Suarez did not disclose travel "gifts" worth well over $100. The "gifts" include all expenses paid flights and VIP seating for the 2022 Miami Grand Prix and the 2022 World Cup. Suarez claims to have repaid all the expenses of these "gifts" with the latter purportedly coming from David Beckham, who Suarez was seen with in his luxury box at the World Cup, who is a registered lobbyist for the new MLS stadium built on city land.

2024 presidential campaign
In April 2021, reports that Suarez could serve as a running-mate to potential 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley emerged. A report by The Hill in September 2021 indicated that Suarez was interested in running for president in his own right. Suarez spoke on Fox News Sunday on June 11, 2023, touting visits to early primary states, saying "when I take the message to people, they want to hear more."

He urged people to tune into a speech he is due to give at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on June 15, calling it a "big speech" about the "future of our country," the clearest indication yet of a presidential campaign announcement.

Launch of campaign
Suarez filed to run for president with the Federal Election Commission on June 14 and officially launched his bid the next day. Political scientists such as Sean Freeder of the University of North Florida publicly expressed doubts that he would be a viable contender, noting that he was likely to face two other Floridians: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. While appearing on Hugh Hewitt's podcast on June 27, 2023, Hewitt asked Suarez about the ongoing persecution of the Uyghurs in China, to which Suarez asked "What's a Uyghur?" Suarez then assured Hewitt that he would research the ethnic group. After the podcast concluded and news of the gaffe broke, Suarez told the media that he was confused by Hewitt's pronunciation of the term 'Uyghur' and is very familiar with the crisis. The gaffe was compared to 2016 presidential candidate Gary Johnson's infamous "What is Aleppo" comment amid the Syrian civil war.

On July 5, 2023, a super PAC supporting Suarez launched a chatbot that uses his face and voice to answer questions about his campaign. The bot directs users to campaign videos based on the questions asked, and is capable of mocking other presidential candidates such as Ron DeSantis. The program is one of a number of examples of the use of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election, with major presidential contenders DeSantis and Trump using text-to-image models in official campaign videos.

On August 4, Suarez announced that his campaign would accept donations in Bitcoin, as part of his pro-cryptocurrency platform.

On August 8, Suarez announced that he had met the donor requirements to attend the first Republican primary debate in Milwaukee. However, the RNC had to verify this claim before he could be officially added to the roster. He stated in an interview with The Hill that if he did not qualify for the first debate, he may leave the race. Besides having 40,000 unique donors from 20 different states, the other requirement to attend a debate was to be consistently present in polls, which he was not.

A super PAC backing Suarez, the SOS America PAC, complained that Suarez was being excluded from polls saying that the zero and one percent that he was polling at was not reflective of his true popularity. Suarez himself argued that the polling requirement was unfair for "relatively unknown" figures such as himself who are competing against candidates who have been national figures for years.

In addition to saying he would drop out if he did not meet the debate requirements, Suarez also called upon all other candidates to drop out if they failed to qualify for the debate at an event in Iowa. Suarez argues that "if you can’t meet the minimum thresholds, you shouldn’t be trying to take the time involved away from being productive.” Suarez did not meet the minimum thresholds and did not qualify for the first Republican debate on August 23.

End of presidential candidacy
Following his failure to meet the guidelines to attend the first debate, and his call that all candidates that cannot reach these guidelines drop out, Suarez was called upon to follow his own suggestion and drop out of the race by the Miami Herald, Business Insider, Fox News, and Congressman Carlos A. Giménez. Suarez would stay true to his promise and suspended his campaign on August 29, 2023, becoming the first in the 2024 race to drop out.

During his campaign Suarez promised ten dollar gift cards to people who gave a one dollar donation to his campaign. However, he has yet to fulfill these promises, and many of his supporters are still waiting for their gift cards and Suarez, and his campaign, has refused to comment on the issue.

On March 1, 2024, Suarez endorsed Trump's campaign.

Political positions
While Suarez identifies himself as a conservative Republican, he is commonly described as being a moderate or liberal Republican.

According to an analyst for FiveThirtyEight, Suarez's "policies remain conservative (lowering taxes and keeping them low has been a focus of his administration, for example), but he takes a slightly more moderate stance on issues like climate change and immigration." He has said climate change is real and he declared a climate emergency in Miami. However, Suarez has also criticized climate activists for being alarmist about the impacts that they expect climate change will have on Miami.

Suarez has supported LGBT pride events. He supported the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act as originally signed, which prohibited some classroom instruction on LGBT issues from kindergarten through third grade. However, he opposed its later expansion to all grades. In 2020, Suarez approved of Miami offering certification for businesses by the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce making Miami the largest city in Florida to do so. He also signed an LGBTQ Ordinance recognizing the contributions of LGBTQ people to the City of Miami.

Suarez identifies as "pro-life" or anti-abortion and supported the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision which had legalized abortion nationwide. He announced that he supports a nationwide ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. However, he also supported exceptions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and called abortion a "very nuanced" issue. Suarez would not say whether he supported a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, saying instead, "the country is not there yet."

Suarez, a first generation Cuban American, criticized the idea of repealing the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship during his presidential campaign. Suarez noted that without birthright citizenship he would have lacked American citizenship. He also argued that refugees from Venezuela should be granted temporary protected status in the US.