"Snowball's Chance in Hell": Congressman Giménez Skewers Mayor Suarez's Presidential Aspirations

For the past few years, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has not-so-subtly eyed a presidential run.

In 2021, he revealed in an interview on the "The Carlos Watson Show" that a run was "possible." Recently, money has been streaming into his super PAC, and he recruited Miami city hall staffers to his campaign team. Now the aspirations he has coyly teased for ages have materialized, with his June 14 filing for a White House bid.

But is Miami's two-term, crypto-crazed mayor presidential material?

Not everybody thinks so.

"I don't think he has any business running for president," former Miami-Dade mayor and current U.S. Congressman Carlos Giménez tells New Times. "He has never established himself as having the capacity to run anything in his life."

Giménez, a Republican who plans to throw his support behind Donald Trump for president (the pair was recently photographed golfing together in New Jersey ahead of Trump's Miami arraignment), says he doesn't believe Suarez has a "snowball's chance in hell" of securing the Republican nomination.

The congressman is unabashedly skeptical about the idea of Miami's mayor, whose job he calls "mostly ceremonial," seeking to become the nation's leader.

"He does not really run even the City of Miami," Giménez says. "So, why in the world does he think that he can run the most powerful nation in the world?"

Giménez previously had an intermittent war of words with Suarez and Suarez's father Xavier, who served two stints as City of Miami mayor in the 1980s and '90s.

Francis Suarez butted heads with Giménez in 2018 over the mayor's push to expand his position to a strong-mayor format that would give him control over the city's billion-dollar budget — a tiff that snowballed into the two men publicly trading barbs with one another. Later that year, the elder Suarez ran a radio ad with some pointed attacks at Giménez, criticizing his management of Miami-Dade Expressway Authority funds.

Giménez used to work under Xavier Suarez as Miami's fire chief.

After filing the paperwork for his presidential run, Francis Suarez, 45, is expected to discuss his White House bid on Thursday, June 15,  while speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s "Time for Choosing Speaker Series" in California. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley have all delivered remarks at the Reagan Institute in the past year.

The mayor is currently under an investigation by the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust into reports that he took $170,000 over two years from a developer whose Coconut Grove project he helped advance. The reported payments were uncovered by the Miami Herald, which has cited sources who claim the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission are probing the financial arrangement as well.

Suarez teased his presidential run announcement in an interview with Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream.

"My announcement is to stay tuned," Suarez said. "Next week, like you said, I’m going to be making a big speech in the Reagan library, and I think it’s one that Americans should tune into."

Suarez is expected to be a long-shot nominee against GOP frontrunners Trump, DeSantis, and Haley. A Fox News survey in late April showed Suarez polling just under 0.5 percent.

Giménez says he plans to "make sure people understand exactly who [Suarez] is, what he has stood for, and the things that he has done to make him completely unqualified to be president of the United States."

"He's done a good job of fooling a lot of people nationally, including donors, and some of the media that think that all mayors are the same," Giménez says. "But I can tell you that all mayors aren't the same, and certainly not him."

Suarez has defended his record as mayor by pointing to historically low homicide rates and unemployment in Miami.

In a May 18 interview with the Hill, he was asked about why he's been traveling around the country to early Republican primary voting states.

"There's an opportunity here to talk to number one, people in the 18- to 29-year-old demographic that Republicans lost to Joe Biden by 28 points, and also to have more Hispanics, which are trending Republican, continue in that trend and have someone that speaks to them, that can connect with them, that understands their nuances," Suarez said.

He noted the first Republican presidential primary debate is fast approaching in August.

"For someone like me, who's ascended quickly, but is still relatively unknown nationally, you have to be on the debate stage to tell your story," Suarez said.

Suarez's office has not responded to New Times' request for comment about Giménez's criticisms.