Eileen Higgins Ends 30-Year Democratic Drought With Historic Miami Mayoral Win

Miami has elected a Democratic mayor for the first time in nearly three decades, handing former county commissioner Eileen Higgins a decisive victory in a runoff that is already being read as a signal about Florida’s political future.

Image Illustration. Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash

Higgins captured roughly 59% of the vote against former city manager Emilio González, who took about 41%, according to unofficial results from the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections. The victory ends a 30-year stretch in which Republicans controlled Miami’s mayor’s office and positions Higgins as both the city’s first Democratic mayor since 1997 and its first woman to hold the job. Those milestones were confirmed by election records and contemporary coverage of the 2025 race.

A Runoff That Redefined Miami Politics

Although officially nonpartisan, the Miami mayoral race unfolded as an unmistakably partisan showdown. Higgins ran as an openly proud Democrat, while González drew endorsements from leading Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In the end, Higgins turned that dynamic to her advantage, arguing that the contest had become a referendum on the GOP’s approach to immigration and governance in a city where nearly 60% of residents are Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Demographic data show that Miami is majority Hispanic, with large Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and other Latin American communities.

The runoff itself was the culmination of a crowded 13-candidate first round that produced no outright winner and forced Higgins and González into a head-to-head matchup. Turnout remained modest: 37,496 ballots were cast out of 175,692 registered voters in the city, a participation rate of just over 21%, according to county election data. That relatively low share is consistent with typical off-year local elections across the United States, where municipal turnout often falls below 30%.

Housing, Affordability and Climate at the Center

Higgins campaigned on a bread-and-butter agenda that focused on housing affordability, the cost of living, climate resilience and restoring trust at City Hall. She pledged to use city-owned land to build more homes for working- and middle-class families, streamline permitting and “cut red tape” for small businesses, and conduct a top-to-bottom review of city spending to root out waste and corruption.

Those promises are tailored to one of the hottest housing markets in the country. In recent years, Miami has ranked among the least affordable big cities in the United States when comparing median income to median rent and home prices. A 2024 analysis from housing researchers at Harvard University found that more than half of renter households in the Miami metro area were cost-burdened, spending at least 30% of their income on housing, one of the highest shares among major metros nationwide.

Climate resilience is another pillar of Higgins’ platform. She has called for updating city regulations to allow more permeable pavement, accelerating park construction to improve drainage and investing in infrastructure to manage chronic flooding. Miami and Miami Beach already face regular “sunny day” flooding as sea levels rise; federal tide gauge data show sea level in nearby Key West has risen by more than 9 inches since 1950, increasing flood risk for low-lying neighborhoods.

Immigration, Trump and a Symbolic Showdown

What elevated this municipal race beyond city limits was its collision with national politics. González ran as a close ally of Trump, who campaigned for him and framed the contest as a test of support for his immigration crackdown and law-and-order message. Higgins, by contrast, leaned into immigration as a local issue, arguing that aggressive enforcement and detention policies were tearing families apart and threatening Miami’s economy.

In interviews before the runoff, she frequently criticized the impact of federal and state actions on immigrants in South Florida, including Florida’s decision to deploy troopers in support of federal immigration enforcement and the opening of a controversial detention facility known colloquially as “Alligator Alcatraz.” She also condemned the termination of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, a move that immigrant advocates say could disrupt communities in South Florida where many Venezuelan TPS holders live and work.

González accused Higgins of importing national fights into a local job, arguing that the mayor of Miami should focus on policing, infrastructure and services rather than federal immigration battles. But voters ultimately sided with Higgins’ contention that federal policy is inseparable from life in a city where more than half of residents are foreign-born and where immigrant workers underpin critical sectors like hospitality, construction and health care.

First Woman to Lead a City Founded by a Woman

Beyond party labels, Higgins’ win carries a powerful symbolic weight in a city often called “the only major American city founded by a woman.” Businesswoman Julia Tuttle played a decisive role in Miami’s birth in the 1890s, yet for nearly 130 years the city had never elected a woman as mayor. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, herself the first woman to lead the county, hailed Higgins’ election as a milestone for representation and a clear message from voters that they are tired of “chaos, corruption and rising costs,” praising the result in a statement after the runoff.

The breakthrough also fits a broader national pattern: women have made significant gains in local and state executive offices over the past decade, though they still hold less than one-third of U.S. mayoralties in cities over 30,000 residents, according to data compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

A Legal Challenge That Made the Election Possible

Ironically, the man Higgins defeated is also the one who ensured that voters had a chance to choose their next mayor this year. González filed a lawsuit in July 2025 challenging the City of Miami’s decision to postpone the election to 2026, arguing that only voters—not commissioners—could change the election calendar. A judge sided with him, ruling the delay unconstitutional and ordering the race to proceed in 2025. That ruling set the stage for the November first round and December runoff that ultimately elevated Higgins to City Hall.

In his concession, González noted the irony of suing to force an election he ultimately lost, but insisted the case was “much bigger” than his own ambitions, casting it as a defense of voting rights and democratic norms at the local level.

National Implications Ahead of 2026

For Democrats, Higgins’ nearly 20-point win in a high-profile race backed by Trump is more than a local success story. Party strategists see it as evidence that a focus on affordability, competence and clean government can break through in a state that has tilted decisively Republican in recent election cycles. Florida has been one of the GOP’s biggest success stories of the Trump era, with Republicans sweeping statewide offices in 2022 and widening their registration advantage. Yet Democrats still outnumber Republicans among registered voters inside the city of Miami, with more than 61,000 Democrats on the city’s rolls, according to county statistics reviewed during the campaign.

Analysts caution against overinterpreting a single municipal race, but note that Higgins’ win joins a string of Democratic gains in mayors’ offices and state races around the country in 2025, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, that could shape expectations heading into the 2026 midterms. If nothing else, Miami’s shift suggests that Trump-style politics may face headwinds even in places where Republicans have recently thrived, especially when local concerns about affordability, climate and corruption dominate the conversation.

A Mandate—and a Long To-Do List

Higgins will arrive at City Hall with what amounts to a reformer’s mandate. She has vowed to make permitting faster, modernize city services, expand the five-member City Commission to nine seats to better represent Miami’s neighborhoods and strengthen oversight of development in a fast-growing urban core.

She will also inherit an array of intractable problems. Miami faces rising insurance costs tied to climate risk, an affordability crisis squeezing longtime residents, and lingering public distrust after years of ethics controversies and federal investigations into city officials. Researchers warn that without aggressive adaptation, coastal South Florida could see tens of billions of dollars in property at risk from sea-level rise and storm surge over the coming decades, underscoring the stakes of local leadership on climate and infrastructure planning.

On election night, Higgins framed her victory less as an endpoint than a starting line. She promised “a city that belongs to everyone”—from seniors trying to stay in their homes to young people seeking a future—and pledged to support law enforcement while strengthening community partnerships and protecting Biscayne Bay from pollution and overdevelopment.

Whether Higgins’ agenda can match the expectations raised by her historic win will depend on the same forces that shaped the campaign: a city wrestling with its identity, its growth and its vulnerability in a warming world—and a national political environment in which even local races no longer stay local.