The mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, is so far the only Latino candidate in the running for next year’s presidential elections in the United States. 

Suarez, a 45-year-old lawyer and the son of Cubans who came to Florida at the ages of 12 and 7, announced in mid-June that he would seek to run in the Republican primary. So far, the main opponents will be former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, although there are currently 10 more Republican primary candidates. 

The lawyer first became mayor of Miami in 2017 and was re-elected in 2021. He had previously served as Miami commissioner for District 4.

Suarez comes from a family of politicians. His father, Xavier Suarez, was mayor of Miami twice, though his political career came to an end in 1998 when a Florida court found fraud in his last election.

The New York Times reported that Suarez’s supporters announced a Super PAC before the candidacy was made official, a key step in financing his campaign. The committee, called SOS America PAC, already has a US$6 million base to support his electoral race. 

In an interview granted to MSNBC after confirming his run, Suarez said that he shares Republican values and, for that reason, will seek to position himself in the party’s internal contest. 

“My candidacy is different,” he told José Díaz-Balart on MSNBC. He added that he would pardon Donald Trump, although he also said that he didn’t vote for him in the 2016 or 2020 elections.

“If I became the president… I would use the pardon power to heal the country”, he told Díaz-Balart. “The president is innocent until proven guilty. He’s got to respond to a jury of his peers, so that process has to play out before any sort of a discussion about pardons can happen.”

About immigration policy, Suarez said he wants to “solve the problem”. According to him, that means “securing the borders” and building a hemispheric strategy to reduce poverty, because that is ultimately what “creates immigration pressures”. 
He was the first politician to collect his salary entirely in cryptocurrencies and has sought to establish Florida as a new Silicon Valley.