Eben Brown is live from Miami to discuss the mayoral election

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New mayor in Miami. Now, Evan Brown joins us our
Fox correspondent in Miami. Evan, welcome in, Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
So how many years has it been since there's been
a Democrat mayor in Miami. I mean, i've when I
was there. I lived in the eighties there, But my gosh,
it's close to thirty, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
I believe it was nineteen ninety eight, Okay, it was
the last time there was a Democratic mayor. So yeah,
it's been a while. It certainly has been. You know,
there's a lot of people who are trying to say
that this is some kind of Bellweather race, and I
don't know if that's really true. First of all, most
of the country when they think Miami, what they're really

(00:39):
thinking about is Miami Dade County as a whole, which
has two point seven million people and is a major
metropolitan area, certainly the most populous in Florida. But this
was a mayor's race for the city of Miami, which
is got maybe four hundred and fifty people total, and

(01:01):
there's maybe only less than two percent of Miami Dade County.
It's a it was a runoff from a mayoral race,
which was officially nonpartisans. So happens there was a Republican
and a Democrat who were the top two and that
were in the runoff, But it could have easily have
been to Republicans two Democrats and were at that. I
don't think there would have been that much attention paid

(01:21):
to this. Turnout was exceptionally low for this, and I'll
pull up the information here in just a moment. Yeah,
so out of one hundred and seventy five thousand registered voters,
this voter rate was like twenty one percent. Grand total

(01:41):
votes cast in this runoff thirty seven and thirty nine,
and the at the end of the day here, yes,
the the Democrat won by about twenty percent, but that
that's about eight seven thousand some odd votes. And I'm
wondering if this was not so much a reflection because

(02:04):
Republicans and Democrats really even nationally got involved in this.
They talked about affordability and ice and immigration and things
like that. But ultimately I think this might be more
reflective of how the parties organized around something and to
get the vote out. I can't believe that Republicans couldn't
have found another seven seventy five hundred voters if they

(02:27):
had tried, and they didn't seem to be very visible
in their campaigning here. So take that in what sense
thou wilt? I just don't know how indicative it is
of some kind of general sentiment about President Trump or
professional Democrats.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Well, I think it is a wake up call, as
you mentioned, to get people, get them out then, you know,
get the Republican base. This year is going to be
critical in midterms and then once again a couple of
years down the road when it comes to a new
presidential race. We have got to do a better job
of messaging to get people out to vote. And Democrats
do a great job of that. So let's talk about
this winner. She was former counselor commissioner or counselor person

(03:07):
there in that city. What are her policies? Are they
crazy like Madonna? Or is she kind of moderate, middle
of the road, I mean, where does she stay?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Her opponents painted her as radical. I don't know if
that's truly accurate. She's a long serving local politician, and
she did make appeals about affordability matters, and which certainly
is an important topic for younger voters. She certainly addressed

(03:40):
the issue of immigration raids, which affects a number of
minority communities within the city of Miami, many of whom
may have let's say, undocumented relatives. And so those were
some big topics and it was framed in the partisan manner.
At that point, she was talking about Republicans. And then

(04:02):
you know, President Trump did endorse the Republican other candidate,
Emilio Gonzales, but it was a written endorsement. There wasn't
a lot of campaigning from big, big name Republicans. The
state Republicans really didn't get involved too much in this,
whereas you know for Democrats, they brought a lot of
party big wigs to rally the base. Now this is

(04:23):
again it's an off year runoff only the most tried
and true politically, you know, overactive people are going to
come out and vote anyway, Right, So when the Democrats
bring in Ram Emmanuel, that's kind of a big deal.
Most other people, normal people may not know too much
about Ram Emanuel outside of Chicago, right, that's just you know,

(04:43):
you have to be kind of steeped in politics to
know who he is. But that's the type of voter
who votes in an off year runoff.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Well, I don't thank you so, Like you said, I
don't think this is a Bellweather thing that's like, oh
my gosh, here comes the wave of Democrats. This is
just an early sign. Once again. I think Florida in general,
Lean's conservative governor Sam is certainly conservative. She hasn't warned
anybody about changing policies in Miami, has she.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
I mean, what policies can she really change? Right? The
Miami mayor, first of all, is a part time job.
There is a city commission, which is what we call
a city council in Florida. But most of the governance
see a lot of other states don't get this, and
I don't know how things are in Alabama, but most
local governance in Florida is really done at the county level.

(05:31):
You know, incorporated cities do do some things, but most
of everything is handled at the county level.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, not so much, not so much in Alabama. I mean,
we've got county commissioners here, and you know, they are
certainly important and do a lot of things for the county.
But you know, the mayors and the cities basically have
their own you know, teams and run their own cities.
For the most part, but interesting. We'll have to keep
an eye on this one. Evan Brown, thank you in
Miami this morning.