Gimenez’s path to victory complicated by virus, Trump
As Donald Trump’s popularity wanes amid coronavirus, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s attempt to campaign as a non-partisan mayor against Democratic congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is tougher.
Carlos Gimenez wanted to campaign on opposing socialism and his nine years as Miami-Dade County mayor.
But a force larger than politics — the coronavirus pandemic — is defining his race for Congress against Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and complicating his path to victory.
As the strong mayor of the hardest-hit county in Florida, Gimenez is responsible for protecting the public health of millions of residents and balancing the multibillion-dollar local economy. And yet, as a Republican running in a left-leaning congressional district, he also has to consider the president’s hardcore voters, some of whom shun masks and resist government lockdowns.
This week alone, Gimenez — who timed his campaign announcement in January to a Trump endorsement — issued a new mandate ordering that masks be worn in public at all times or those not complying will face fines, with few exceptions. He also ordered beaches and pools closed for the July Fourth weekend, set a 10 p.m. countywide curfew and has threatened to arrest business owners who don’t comply with health-related restrictions.
The moves set Gimenez apart from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has stressed that Florida is open for business, and Trump, who has refused to wear a mask in public and continues to predict that the virus will “disappear.”
But for Gimenez’s Democratic critics, it’s all too little, too late.
“People said he opened up too early. He’s now tightening again and I’m sure he’s going to get people snickering about mandating masks,” said Dario Moreno, a pollster, political consultant and associate
professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University. “It’s all interpreted through the lens of this partisan politics we’re currently engulfed in.”
Gimenez, who faces a Republican primary opponent, Miami-Dade Firefighter Lt. Omar Blanco, in August, says his coronavirus decisions as mayor are made irrespective of his campaign. He says he’s confident Democrats in Florida’s 26th Congressional District — which runs from Westchester to Key West — will split their ticket on Nov. 3 based on his record as mayor.
“The people of MiamiDade know me very well. I‘ve been in a nonpartisan post for 16 years. They know my positions. They know I’m a fiscal conservative but a social moderate,” Gimenez, a former county commissioner elected mayor in 2011, said in an interview. “I don’t have to introduce myself to them.”
Public health experts say the county’s response to the crisis has been imperfect but more proactive than many other parts of the state. Gimenez has been applauded for heeding the advice of experts while making politically difficult decisions, such as whether to shut down beaches for the long holiday weekend.
“It’s sad to close the beaches — but people gather,” Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease specialist at Florida International University who advises Gimenez, said Sunday on WPLG’s “This Week in South Florida.” “People gather in unsafe ways in the holiday, drinking all kinds of beverages that may change behavior.”
Marty, who has also appeared publicly with Mucarsel-Powell, said she has also advised Gimenez to make face masks mandatory in public under threat of fines, which he ordered on Thursday under his emergency powers as mayor.
Gimenez also has moved faster than DeSantis in response to rising case rates, restricting restaurant hours and limiting the late-night sale of alcohol. He shuttered bowling alleys, movie theaters and strip clubs Thursday not long after allowing them to reopen, and has also publicly disclosed hospitalization rates in MiamiDade for months while DeSantis said the rates would be disclosed statewide starting this week. Gimenez’s past threats to have police arrest business owners who thwart coronavirus restrictions are at odds with DeSantis’ frequent declarations that Florida has combated the virus without resorting to “draconian” measures.
Gimenez has also bucked Trump, to some extent. On Thursday, Gimenez said that if Trump visited Miami-Dade — home to the president’s biggest moneymaker, The Trump National Doral Miami — the mask-averse president would be expected to wear a mask in public.
“On the wearing of masks, again I’m a firefighter, a paramedic. I understand we have to wear masks,” Gimenez told the Miami Herald.
“My approach is different from the president. He has his approach and I have my approach.”
Gimenez’s relationship with the president poses a challenge for his campaign — his first ever in a partisan post.
Though he said in 2016 that he voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump — who lost Florida’s 26th district by 16 points — he tied himself closely to the president this campaign season by timing his campaign rollout to a Trump handshake and endorsement. The previous Republican incumbent in the district, Carlos Curbelo, frequently criticized Trump — and lost to Mucarsel-Powell two years ago by a few thousand votes.
“If Gimenez were to win, he would be beating an incumbent Democrat in a district that will [vote for] a Democrat for president by double digits,” said Kyle Kondik, who monitors House races around the country for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “The needle he has to thread is very tricky.”
Mucarsel-Powell pointed out that for all his technocratic talk, Gimenez sought and received Trump’s endorsement after tweeting he’s running against “the radical left who are determined to turn the U.S. into Venezuela.”
“How do you separate yourself from Donald Trump when you announced his endorsement at the beginning of your campaign?” MucarselPowell said in an interview.
She accused Gimenez of bowing to political pressure to kickstart Miami’s flagging economy, saying he “never really closed down the entire county,” and reopened businesses too quickly. She also has questioned Gimenez’s efforts to conduct contract tracing, the process by which health officials track people who have come into people who test positive for the coronavirus.
“He’s been following Trump and DeSantis and here we are,” MucarselPowell said of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Miami-Dade.
While Mucarsel-Powell and other Democrats have attacked Gimenez’s COVID-19 response, public health experts say the county has handled the crisis better than the rest of the state.
Bernard Ashby, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center on Miami Beach, said county officials have been more responsible than their state and federal counterparts in terms of advocating for safety measures and issuing orders to thwart the spread of the virus.
“I do appreciate the fact they’ve done better than most of the state of Florida,” Ashby said Thursday morning during a virtual press conference hosted by the Florida Democratic Party. “However, I do think they’ve been reactionary.
“We still need to focus on providing long-term strategic approaches, and that will require things like aggressive community engagement, an aggressive information campaign.”
Ashby said “the mayor of Miami-Dade County and Miami, in particular, have been leaders in wearing masks.”
There have been some campaign perks for Gimenez.
Though the coronavirus has all but ended retail politics, Gimenez has a larger platform than ever, with constant virtual and in-person press conferences and national media appearances to discuss the latest county mandates and ways to slow the spread.
But COVID-19 is consuming Gimenez’s campaign, and making it harder for the mayor to use his airtime to discuss other issues that may matter to voters. Even his campaign Twitter account, usually a candidate’s vehicle for partisan attacks, is almost solely devoted to the coronavirus.
Kondik, of the University of Virginia, noted that the political environment in January, when Gimenez announced his candidacy, was more favorable for Republicans.
But the coronavirus erased Trump’s argument that the economy prospered under his watch and his already shaky poll numbers have cratered in swing states across the country, including Florida.
“Whatever the numbers looked like in January, they’re probably not as good now,” Kondik said, adding that Democratic messaging on healthcare will likely intensify as voters worry about their wellbeing and how to cover potential medical bills during a pandemic. “Gimenez on paper is a really good recruit, but I just kind of wonder if some of these folks picked the wrong year to run.”