Days from deadline, just 5 of 13 active candidates have qualified for Miami Mayor’s race

The race for Miami Mayor is on track to be far less crowded come 6 p.m. Saturday.

That’s the deadline to qualify for what is now a 13-candidate contest to succeed term-limited Mayor Francis Suarez.

As of 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, just five candidates — Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, former City Manager Emilio González, former City Commissioner Ken Russell, entrepreneur Christian Cevallos and Laura Anderson, an affiliate of the Socialist Workers Party^[1] — have qualified.

Another candidate, Max Martinez, who placed second in the 2021 race for Mayor, has withdrawn from the contest.

Higgins, a Democrat, is alone so far in qualifying by petition^[2]. Her campaign submitted more than 3,000 signatures last month from Miami residents, well over the 2,048 required, to forgo having to pay a fee.

On Wednesday, Higgins announced she had officially qualified. The city’s election webpage^[3] hasn’t yet been updated to show that.

“As your County Commissioner, I’ve delivered results that matter — building affordable housing, making neighborhoods safer, and helping small businesses thrive,” Higgins said in a statement. “Now I’m running for Mayor to bring that same focus and integrity to City Hall.”

Cevallos, González, Russell and Anderson — two Republicans, a Democrat and a no-party candidate, respectively — each paid a $1,070 qualifying fee.

Russell, who unsuccessfully ran^[4] for Congress in 2022, was first to do so Sept. 5. In a statement^[5], he accused Miami leaders of prioritizing politics over the needs of their constituents.

“Miami now faces the worst affordable housing crisis in the country — the gap between what we earn and what it costs to live here is larger than in any other city,” he said. “That’s nothing to celebrate. It’s something we must confront and fix.”

González, who ran Miami’s operations from late 2017 to early 2020 after stints leading Miami International Airport and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, qualified by payment Tuesday.

He called it “a victory for the people of Miami” and pointed to his successful lawsuit^[6] that blocked city officials from delaying this year’s election to 2026, a move that would have given them an extra year in office without voter approval.

“When political insiders tried to strip away your right to vote, I fought back — and won,” he said in a statement. “Now, I’m taking that same fight to City Hall to end corruption, put residents first, and restore integrity to our government.”

Cevallos qualified late Wednesday afternoon. Anderson qualified Sept. 8. Unlike Higgins, González and Russell, she has virtually no campaign footprint online.

Others running include Republicans Alyssa Crocker, June Savage and Alex Díaz de la Portilla, a former Miami Commissioner; Democrats Ellijah Bowdre, Ijamyn Gray and Michael Hepburn; and no-party candidates Kenneth DeSantis and Xavier Suarez, a former Miami Mayor and the father of Francis Suarez.

Martinez, a Democrat who took about 11.6% of the vote when he challenged Francis Suarez four years ago, dropped out of this year’s race on Tuesday after spending $3,000 on marketing materials. He had run an almost exclusively self-funded campaign.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Martinez, who runs an athletics agency, said he couldn’t justify spending his or anybody else’s money on a contest he viewed as being actively engineered to favor a select few candidates.

“I’m not going to fight with my money so dang hard to speak over other people,” he said before rattling off a list of candidates he viewed as having sizable electoral advantages, like Díaz de la Portilla, Higgins, González, Russell and Suarez, and yet-to-file contenders like Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo and former Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola^[7], for whom text messages^[8] have been sent to Miami voters in recent weeks.

Martinez added that he’d been “offered things” from both Republican and Democratic candidates in the race, but turned them down. He didn’t elaborate.

“It’s crazy, by the way, because I never asked for any of that,” he said. “I only wanted to make my hometown a better place.”

Voters will weigh in on two other races.

For the District 3 seat on the City Commission, which Carollo currently holds, six candidates — Yvonne Bayona, Brenda Betancourt, Rolando Escalona, Rob Piper, Fayez Tanous and Denise Turros — have qualified. Two others, Oscar Alejandro and former Commissioner Frank Carollo, the current Commissioner’s younger brother, have filed but haven’t yet qualified.

And in the District 5 race, incumbent Commissioner Christine King and two people challenging her, Marion Brown and Frederick Bryant, have all qualified.

Miami’s election is Nov. 4. It’s technically nonpartisan. If no candidate in a given race receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters will compete in a runoff.

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