A politician in Trump-loving Hialeah has left the Republican Party. Here’s why
Paul Hernandez, a Hialeah city councilman for the past decade, said Tuesday that he changed his voter registration from Republican to Democrat just hours after he watched a mob of Donald Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol.
City and county leaders in Miami-Dade serve in nonpartisan roles. But a defection from the Republican Party is notable in conservative Hialeah, where Hernandez is now the only registered Democrat representing the city at any level of government.
“Two weeks ago, as our government recovered from an attempted coup on the building that represents our first branch of government, on the evening of one of the darkest days in our Nation’s history, I made the decision to register as a Democrat,” Hernandez tweeted Tuesday. “Hello, @FlaDems. I’m here to help.”
The replies were mostly supportive, including from local Democrats like Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
Hernandez had supported Levine Cava’s Republican opponent, former county commissioner and Hialeah local Steve Bovo, in the November mayoral race.
Hialeah became a Trump stronghold over the four years of his presidency. In 2016, Trump barely defeated Hillary Clinton in the city, but in 2020, about two-thirds of voters in Hialeah voted for Trump.
But Hernandez, 33, said he has long held political views that put him at odds with some Republicans, including an opposition to fracking, support for LGBTQ rights and the
Affordable Care Act. Hernandez was born with a heart defect and has had five related surgeries, which he said has influenced his views on healthcare.
Hernandez said he cast a write-in vote for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for president in 2016 and voted for Joe Biden in November. He publicly announced his party switch the day before Biden’s inauguration. “I steadily felt more and more on the fringe of what the Republican Party had been representing,” Hernandez told the Herald.
On Jan. 6, Hernandez said he watched the Capitol riot unfold on TV with his wife and 6-month-old son and decided it was time to make the switch. He changed his party affiliation online that night around 10:30 after local elections attorney JuanCarlos Planas — a former Republican state representative who also joined the Democratic Party in November — sent him a link with instructions.
“Looking at my son and wife, I just thought, ‘I’d be ashamed to tell my son that I was somehow related in any way, shape or form to this,’ ” Hernandez said. “That’s not the idea of America that I want my son to have.”
Hernandez said he was a Republican in part because he supports low taxes and responsible spending, but he said he believes Republican officials in Florida haven’t lived up to those ideals in recent years. Hernandez’s father and brother are police officers, shaping his support for law enforcement. “But I watched a mob of Republicans [beat] a police officer on TV on the steps of the Capitol building,” Hernandez said. “There’s really nothing left for me to rationalize.”
Hernandez is the only local elected official in Miami-Dade who is known to have made a public break from the Republican Party in the weeks since a mob incited by Trump sought to stop Congress from certifying the election results.