Miami Sen. Ileana García faced some new Miami Beach constituents. They were not happy
With the brand new Florida Senate districts map approved ahead of this year’s election, some incumbents are starting to pitch themselves to their new voters. And after a legislative session riddled with contentious bills and viral moments, some of those encounters come with more than a little friction.
Take Miami Sen. Ileana García’s example. An unapologetic conservative — García founded the Latinas for Trump coalition and worked as a spokesperson for the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security — she showed up to answer questions Tuesday morning from liberal voters in South Beach. From her support of the Parental Rights in Education law, which critics call the “don’t say gay” law, and her refusal to carve out an exemption for rape, incest or human trafficking in the 15-week abortion ban, attendees did not hold back.
“Why did you vote for a law that’s really going to hurt my family?” asked one woman, who has been married to a woman for almost three decades, and has a daughter attending public school. “I think you’ve been incredibly insensitive and unsympathetic.”
Another voter told García: “The message that
I’m listening from your party’s end is that we have to protect our children from the gangs. And that is a vilifying message, it’s attacking teachers, it’s attacking people with good intentions.”
Several attendees pointed to García’s comments on the Senate floor in discussing the Parental Rights in Education law, HB 1557, when she said during a 15-minute speech that “gay is not a permanent thing, LGBT is not a permanent thing.” García later tweeted an apology “to anyone I offended by my comments,” and has argued that her statements were taken out of context.
On Tuesday, García also answered questions on her reasoning behind voting against the amendment on the abortion bill that would have made an exception for human trafficking victims. Citing her experience working for DHS, García claimed that women who are trafficked and become pregnant are more likely to be released from the trafficking ring than those who are able to get an abortion.
“Human traffickers, as long as their commodity, which is the girls or the women, are not pregnant, they continue to use them. So what we would like ...to see in the future is more of these entities like Planned Parenthood to report these human traffickers because it’s copy, paste, repeat: When the girl or the woman gets pregnant and they can’t make her get an abortion or she doesn’t want to have an abortion or they can’t get her to a place to get an abortion, they don’t use her anymore. So they release her from the human trafficking ring,” García explained.
García’s old territory, Senate District 37, only went as far north as Fisher Island, included the heart of Little Havana and ran south along the coast to Cutler Ridge.
Because of the once-ina-decade redistricting process, her new turf, the new Senate District 36, cuts off the southern part of her old district and adopts all of Miami Beach south of 41st Street. It runs west all the way to Sweetwater along the Florida International University campus.
García was the special guest at the Miami Beach Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club, hosted by former Miami Beach Mayor Matti Bower, at CAO Bakery on 14th Street. The exchanges between García and the audience of about two dozen were chaotic at times, with Bower interjecting at several points to clarify it was “not a debate.” Adding to the tension was that most of the attendees were wearing navy blue Miami Beach state Rep. Michael Grieco shirts. Grieco, a Democrat, is opposing García in the Senate race, but she says they are friends.
“As a matter of fact, I’d love to show you some pictures of me and Grieco on my phone and a couple of really cute text messages he used to write to me before he decided he was going to bully and harass me,” García said.
Grieco, who has represented Miami Beach in state House District 113 since 2018, filed to run against García last November. He said the crowd’s response was predictable.
“She might as well have a town hall in my kitchen,” he said.