Eileen Higgins won the race for mayor of Miami on Tuesday, becoming the first woman to lead the city of Miami. She is also the first Democrat to end her party’s nearly three-decade losing streak in the city.
“Tonight, the people of Miami made history,” Higgins said in a statement after the results were announced.
She said she would try to turn the more ceremonial role of mayor into a full-time job and not take on another job, which has raised ethical concerns for the current mayor, the term-limited Francis Suarez.
“I don’t have an outside job now. I’ve been a full-time commissioner. I’m going to be a full-time mayor,” Higgins said as the interviewer continued to press her about whether that meant not taking any outside employment.
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Who is Eileen Higgins?
Eileen Higgins, 61, is a Democrat who wrote the script to be the first woman mayor of the city of Miami.
She previously served as a Miami-Dade County Commissioner. Graduated as a mechanical engineer with an MBA from Cornell University, former director of the Peace Corps in Belize and former diplomat at the US State Department.
She is committed to focusing her administration on practical issues and is known nationally for innovative policy on transportation, artificial intelligence and housing affordability, according to her LinkedIn profile.
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When she first entered politics in 2018, she decided to introduce herself to voters as “La Gringa,” a term Spanish-speakers use for white Americans, because many people didn’t know how to pronounce her name.
“It just helps people understand who I am, and you know what? I’m a gringa. So what am I going to do, deny it?” she told the AP.
Higgins, who speaks Spanish, represented a district that is conservative and includes the Cuban neighborhood of Little Havana.
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Eileen Higgins: Political scumbag
Eileen Higgins has spoken frequently in the Hispanic-majority city about U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and said she heard from many people in Miami who were worried about family members being detained.
Her pitch to voters included finding city-owned land that could be converted to affordable housing and cutting unnecessary spending.
Higgins talked about Miami signing up to a federal program that delegates immigration authority to local police, county sheriffs and state agencies, and said she would find legal ways to loosen that decision to rebuild trust between residents and law enforcement.
“When we start enforcing any scams coming out of the federal government to randomly pick people up, we could erode that trust,” she said.
