WASHINGTON: Miami voters elected Eileen Higgins as the Florida city’s new mayor on Tuesday, making her the first Democrat to hold the office in nearly 30 years.
Higgins received about 60 percent of votes in the runoff election, according to CNN and the Miami Herald newspaper, defeating Emilio T. Gonzalez, a Republican candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Despite winning by a double-digit margin, turnout in the off-year election was low, with only about 20 percent of registered voters participating.
With its high Latino population, Miami politics has been dominated by Republicans of Cuban descent for much of the past three decades.
Trump, who frequently weekends at his Mar-a-Lago Club — located about 107 kilometers north of Miami — won the state of Florida’s electoral votes in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
“Together, we turned the page on years of chaos and corruption and opened the door to a new era for our city — one defined by ethical, accountable leadership that delivers real results for the people,” Higgins said in a statement, according to media reports.
In addition to being the first Democrat to win the Miami mayoral race since the 1990s, Higgins, 61, is the first woman ever elected to the office.
She marks the latest Democratic victory in a sweep of election wins this year, following major state-level races in Virginia and New Jersey and the New York mayoralty.
The string of successful Democratic campaigns is widely interpreted as a rebuke to Trump’s return to power at the start of the year.