Life-sized cutouts and MAGA signs: A Trump endorsement shakes up Hialeah elections
In Hialeah’s mayoral election, Donald Trump is everywhere.
He’s on life-sized cutouts hanging on the backs of trucks. His name is plastered all over campaign posters.
And his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is printed on U.S. flags and yard signs — some, with a slight variation, read “Make Hialeah Great.”
In a competitive primary election with a lagging turnout, several mayoral candidates are banking on Trump’s name to give them an edge in the deeply conservative, majority Cuban-American city — the sixth most populous in Florida — that largely led Miami-Dade County’s rightward shift in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump is such a cultural marker in Hialeah that he decided to weigh in on the Nov. 2 municipal nonpartisan race, backing Esteban “Steve” Bovo in a statement last month, part of a slate of endorsements around the country where he’s hoping to put his thumb on the scale for Republican candidates who’ve been loyal to him ahead of 2024. The endorsement is also a sign of Trump’s doubling down on his gains with Hispanics around the country, including in MiamiDade County.
“Hialeah is a fascinating microcosm of this phenomenon because it’s a city where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were tied in 2016.
Four years later, La Ciudad Que Progresa went solidly ‘MAGA’ with Trump winning Hialeah by 38 points,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a Miami native who led the Trump campaign’s national Hispanic advertising.
Sopo said Trump’s involvement in the hyper-local election is in line with the Republicans’ 2022 strategy to maximize support from workingclass and Hispanic neighborhoods that voted overwhelmingly for Trump last year. As part of the national effort, the Republican National Committee opened a “Hispanic Community Center” in Doral earlier this month to target Latino voters in West Miami-Dade, one of several Republicans are planning to open across the country.
“We should expect to continue seeing a strong national GOP presence in Hispanic neighborhoods,” Sopo added.
It’s also confirmation to Florida Republicans, especially those hailing from MiamiDade, that Trump, who continues to peddle baseless claims about widespread voter fraud in last year’s presidential election, will be a fixture in South Florida politics.
“He surpassed all expectations in Miami, and it helped the party as well,” said Florida Rep. Daniel Perez, a Republican whose district runs through Doral, Westchester and Kendall. “Trump was an important part of that.”
IMPACT IN HIALEAH
Locally, Bovo’s Trump endorsement, whether it puts him over the top on Tuesday, has had a clear impact on the Hialeah race, where some candidates have continued to make unabashed efforts to appeal to voters by invoking Trump, and others claiming Bovo’s endorsement is fake.
“Trump endorsed Esteban Bovo because he doesn’t know who I am,” said Fernando Godo, a political commentator who hosts his own YouTube shows and is now running for Hialeah mayor. “If Donald Trump met me for five minutes, the candidate he would endorse would’ve been me and not the other one.”
Isis García-Martínez, Bovo’s main opponent who is also a Cuban-American Republican, says she doesn’t believe Trump actually endorsed Bovo because she’s skeptical he would weigh in on a local municipal race.
“To me, that honestly never happened. That’s something that was simply, like us Cubans say, un paripé,” or something that happened just for show and was not real, said Garcia-Martinez. “He doesn’t just do that, in no election like this one, at all.”
Trump’s endorsement was announced by Save America PAC, which is also the method by which Trump has been releasing statements since he was banned from Twitter and temporarily suspended from other social media platforms. The Miami Herald reached out to Taylor Budowich, communications director for Trump and Save America, but he did not respond to a request for comment.
Still, Bovo has gone to great lengths to make sure his voters know he’s the only one anointed by the former president himself. He’s used Trump’s name on posters
and on political mailers he reused a 2020 picture of them shaking hands. As voters showed up to vote early or drop off ballots, one of his campaign volunteers yelled through a bullhorn in Spanish, “Vote for Bovo, the only candidate represented by Donald Trump.”
“The president calls me, he’s aware of what’s going on in Hialeah, it’s a city that voted for him about 70%, and he endorsed me,” Bovo said Wednesday as he greeted voters and asked them to take pictures with him at the JFK Library early voting site. “There’s no other candidate that’s authorized to use his name, there’s no other candidate that has received that phone call.”
ISSUES OVER ENDORSEMENT
However controversial Trump’s endorsement has been in the race, some Hialeah voters are not as concerned about it. Bovo’s main opponent, García-Martínez, also has a political record as a former Hialeah councilwoman. In 2011, she became the first Hispanic woman to serve as Hialeah council president, a post she held for four years.
Frank Hernandez, an 81year-old voter who’s lived in Hialeah for over six decades, said he voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020 because he says Democrats “are with communism.”
But in this election, he’s not voting for Trump’s pick. He’s voting for García-Martínez.
“The other guy, Bovo, he was in Miami seeking to win the election and he lost, and now he’s coming to Hialeah to bother us. That lady has fought a lot for us here,” said Hernandez. “And more than anything, she’s a wonderful person. She also went to school with my grandkids. I know Isis personally.”
While COVID-19 politics played into many voters’ choice last year, Hernández said he’s bothered by the partisanship of the COVID-19 response in Florida, and it isn’t playing into his choice this election.
“That has been so politicized, it’s criminal. I think people should wear masks. Look, right now, I’m going on a cruise, and I have to be injected, vaccinated and everything,” Hernández said.
It’s a similar story for 78year-old voter Osmel Cardoso, who also cast his ballot for García-Martínez this week because he said he viewed Bovo as a career politician. Even though he voted for Bovo in the 2020 county mayor’s election, Cardoso said he decided not to vote for Bovo because of allegations from the García-Martínez campaign that Bovo helped his in-laws find Section 8 housing in a matter of months, skipping the line for others in Hialeah trying to find affordable housing.
“I’ve spent 13 years since I first applied for Section 8 and I have like over a hundred people before me,” said Cardoso. “I can’t be in favor of that. He pulled levers and used his friends to solve a problem.”
Bovo has previously denied the allegations, saying his in-laws first applied for Section 8 housing in 2011 and received it in 2016.
Still, Bovo has his experience in the Hialeah city council, the Florida Legislature and the Miami-Dade commission in his favor. Voter Jose Vega, 85, went to cast his ballot on Wednesday for Bovo.
“I think he has experience, I believe he’s honest,” said Vega. “It’s the tradition of Bovo. I think there’s no good politician, but you have to find the least bad one. And I think the least bad one is Bovo.”
Bianca Padró Ocasio: 305-376-2649, @BiancaJoanie