Miami’s Mayor to national GOP: How can I help (raise money)?
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who has previously said he wouldn’t disqualify a run for president in 2024, says he’s ready to help his party fundraise to retake the U.S. House and Senate.
During a visit to Washington for the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors, Suarez told the Miami Herald on Friday that he’s planning to be more involved with the Republican Party in the run up to the 2022 midterm elections, and likely ahead of the 2024 presidential race. Suarez is a registered Republican who holds a nonpartisan office and often talks about bipartisan cooperation.
“Yeah, 100%,” Suarez replied when asked about his involvement with GOP fundraising efforts. “I want to be helpful in representing the Republican Party and trying to get control of the House and the Senate because I think that a lot of the policies, from an economic perspective, in particular, are policies that I think will make our country more competitive and our city more competitive.”
Suarez, who has spent most of the pandemic selling cryptocurrency investors and Silicon Valley billionaires on moving to Miami, has made an impression on some national Republicans. Last year, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was featured in one of Suarez’s “Cafecito Talks” to talk about developing Miami’s entrepreneurial scene. “I love what you’re doing ... I love the motivation you have to do this,” McCarthy told him at the time.
Both McCarthy and President Joe Biden addressed the country’s mayors on Friday at the Washington conference.
During a mayoral reelection campaign last year where he faced no established opponents, the mayor shattered his own fundraising record. Suarez raised more than $6.5 million from a range of donors, many of them new, including venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs. He only spent a fraction of the haul on his re-election, leaving millions unspent in one of his political committees, Miami For Everyone.
Among the mayor’s top tech donors: billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya, an early executive for Facebook and prominent venture capitalist based out of California, the Winklevoss twins, Keith Rabois and Shutterstock founder Jonathan Oringer. Suarez has also developed a relationship with billionaire Peter Thiel, a Republican donor who owns a home in Miami Beach.
And now Suarez, who in 2018 voted for the Democratic nominee for Florida governor, has a more prominent national role as the newest president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a bipartisan group whose members come from largely Democratic cities.
“Mayors across America have been elevated, in part because of COVID, in part because of the 24-hour news cycle, where mayors are taking on much, much more responsibility and have a higher profile,” said Suarez.
