Miami’s next mayor will be decided Tuesday as a former city official competes with a former county officeholder in a runoff to lead one of the most vulnerable U.S. cities to climate impacts.
Eileen Higgins, a Democrat and former Miami-Dade County commissioner, and Emilio González, Miami’s former city manager and a member of the Trump administration’s 2016 transition, emerged as the first- and second-place finishers, respectively, in a November election that featured more than a dozen candidates.
Because no candidate cleared 50 percent, Higgins and González advanced to the December runoff. Incumbent Mayor Francis Suarez, who briefly ran in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, is term-limited.
The election winner will take office as Miami spends hundreds of millions of dollars to protect the city from flooding — an effort that both Higgins and González have criticized as too slow and ineffective. They’ll also be grappling with a push by Florida Republicans to curtail local property taxes, which Miami uses to finance its climate resilience work, along with other government services.
