The Trump-rejecting Florida Republican who has a plan to fix the GOP

Politico ^ | 28/4/21 | Sabrina Rodriguez

[Eleutheria5]

MIAMI — The future of the Republican Party runs through Florida. And the future of the Florida Republican Party runs through Miami.

The state long considered the nation’s biggest battleground reported solid red in November. Florida is now home to former President Donald Trump and his children. Out-of-state Republicans are flocking here for fundraisers, retreats and to make appearances at Mar-a-Lago. The state is led by conservative rising star Gov. Ron DeSantis, an early 2024 favorite on the right.

ut Florida isn’t just the capital of Trumpism, and its electorate is no monolith. One Republican leader in the state has made a name for himself by rejecting the Trump vision and is now yearning for a GOP less focused on divisive politics and more grounded in solutions.

That’s the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez.

Suarez is a Cuban Republican, but he doesn’t match some of the usual headlines surrounding Cuban American voters. For one, he didn’t vote for Trump in the 2020 election. He doesn’t have a great relationship with DeSantis, either, and has criticized him openly and done little to support him politically. He even voted for DeSantis’ 2018 Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum.

Suarez has transcended local and state politics and repeatedly found himself in the national spotlight over the past year: He was one of the first U.S. elected officials to announce he tested positive for the coronavirus. With just a tweet, he launched a campaign to court tech investors in an effort to make Miami the next Silicon Valley. He publicly disagreed with the governor on his Covid-19 measures on CBS’ Face the Nation. And, earlier this year, he met with President Joe Biden at the White House to discuss the coronavirus relief package.

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[BillyBoy]

>> Curiously, when he ran in 2017, he seemed to be the choice of both parties as he got 86%. <<

Shades of Earl Warren when he was Governor of California, a "bipartisan consensus builder" who had "widespread support across the political spectrum", he got the nominations of the GOP, RAT Party, and I believe the Progressive Party too. Some Prohibition Party candidate was the lone conservative alternative to Warren, and that poor guy got like 8%

[fieldmarshaldj]

I don’t think we knew for certain Warren would turn into an ultraleft subversive on SCOTUS judging just by his Gubernatorial record, unfortunately.

Then-Attorney General Earl Warren almost got the Dem nomination for Governor as well in 1942, losing to the incompetent Sinclairite leftist incumbent, Culbert Olson, by just 11% (52-41%) (conversely, Olson wasn’t officially a candidate on the GOP line, but got half-a-percent as a write-in). I noticed on OurCampaigns, I endorsed Fred Dyster as the Prohibitionist that year (and Henry R. Schmidt, the ‘46 opponent of Warren you referenced).

It was curious that when he ran for reelection in 1946 that he beat his Democrat successor as Attorney General, Robert Walker Kenny, in the Dem primary. Kenny had been considered an up-and-comer (and a former Republican) and expected to face off with him in the general. Instead, it ended his elective career (Kenny got 8% in the GOP primary), although 2 decades later Gov. Pat Brown put him on a lower court position. Apparently, Kenny was to the left of Warren and was like the Ramsey Clark of his era with ultra-leftist and Communist causes and helped found the notorious Soviet front group National Lawyers Guild (he also endorsed the Soviet dupe ex-VP Henry Wallace over Truman in the 1948 Dem primary for President). Kenny would be in the “mainstream” of the Stalinazi Demonrat Party today.