Miami Mayor Francis Suarez details his tenure, citing 150% economic growth and record-low homicides despite inheriting bankruptcy in 2016. He argues restrictive gun laws fuel violence elsewhere, contrasting Miami's success with Zohran Mamdani's proposed $10B spending plan, which he warns could trigger economic collapse like Cuba's. Facing a likely runoff election against his father, Suarez critiques aggressive campaigning while addressing infrastructure deficits and the "boomerang effect" of returning residents. Ultimately, his analysis suggests that fiscal responsibility and strong enforcement drive urban vitality, challenging progressive narratives on public investment. [Automatically generated summary]
So in that you have had such a successful tenure here, and I'd love, and I know you love going through the numbers.
So I'd love to hear some numbers about the economy and homelessness.
I still tell people all the time that you literally once, I was live on air, I said something about the, like, I said something like, we have 100 homeless people in Miami and you texted me during the show and you gave me the actual number.
But I'm a little surprised that we don't have somebody that everyone is like, oh, this is going to be the winner in that we've had such a successful run with you.
Well, I think part of it is if you look at historically in Miami, you've had a dynamic mayor and then it's almost like the city needs to take a break from all the dynamism.
And then they hire someone who's not quite as dynamic.
So my predecessor wasn't a super dynamic guy, wasn't particularly a visionary.
His predecessor was a super dynamic guy.
So we've sort of followed that pattern.
It is a little bit worrisome to me as a lifelong Miamian, the first Miami-born mayor, that someone like us, we're about the same age, right?
Doesn't feel that they either can or have the desire to run for office in what we both are agreeing.
You just said, and I agree with you wholeheartedly, is the best city in America and arguably one of the best cities in the world, in my opinion.
And I have the numbers to prove it, of course.
But really, it's a little bit of an indictment on politics as a whole.
I think it's an indictment.
We're talking a little bit off the air about the mainstream media and the character assassinations and sort of how they make it really difficult for good people to want to serve.
Miami's unique.
I get to work in the private sector, which is nice.
And so I actually think part of our great success is the fact that I can be a professional.
And so I'm always tethered to the private sector.
So I'm have a foot in the private sector, foot in the public sector, obviously always being careful to avoid conflicts and any ethical issues that may come up.
But it's important.
If you look at the president of the United States, I think one of his main reasons for his success is how much time he's spent in the private sector.
He is not a prototypical politician, right?
And I think we were talking off the air as well about how he has changed what it's like to be presidential, right?
Presidential before we would think Ronald Reagan, right?
This guy who was the great communicator, buttoned up, always looking perfect, always saying the right thing.
And I think we struggled sometimes at the beginning with Trump.
I know I did, because he didn't fit that mold.
I think what he has demonstrated, particularly now in the second term, but certainly in the first term as well, is that he has redefined what it means to be presidential.
And he's done it by being a strong leader, by being a great negotiator, by being someone who is the most resilient person I've ever encountered.
I've never seen a person more resilient, more under attack, more able to glance at the blows.
I was in the White House a few weeks ago for the G20 announcement.
I'm sure you're going to want to talk about that.
And he, the way he manages the press, I mean, he's sitting in the resolute desk.
They're all there.
And it's like an elementary school teacher with elementary school students.
I think first off, you know, he was a great mayor in 1985 to 1980.
He was the first Cuban mayor.
I learned a tremendous amount from him.
I am in part who I am because of my father.
I think what makes it challenging is, you know, politics is about fundraising.
It's about a variety of things.
And, you know, my dad is kind of old school when it comes to that.
You know, he's the kind of guy that doesn't really believe in any of that stuff.
And it's understandable.
I mean, he ran and went door to door back in the 80s.
You know, he took graduate degrees from Harvard.
He's written like 11 books.
He's an intellectual.
So he's very idealistic in that sense.
I wish sometimes we were a little more pragmatic because I think to win elections nowadays, unfortunately, you have to, you know, publicize yourself, raise money.
And so I wish him the best.
Obviously, I hope that he comes out on top.
I think he's got a shot.
But there's also a possibility that it could become, it could go the other way, you know, in terms of Republican Democrat dynamic.
Well, when you look at, if you take out, you know, people talk about gun violence in America.
This is an interesting statistic.
You can do this on Chat GPT.
One of these guys can probably pull it up real quick.
So if you were to look at gun deaths in America, where does America rank?
We would rank up there, maybe top 20, great.
But if you pull out the top five or the top 10 blue cities in America, you take out their homicides, we'd go down to like 180 out of like 200 countries.
So we would be arguably one of the safest countries in America.
So, I mean, in the world.
So it's interesting that the cities that have the worst policies, in my opinion, and certainly very restrictive gun policies, have the highest homicide rates in all of America.
Everybody in Miami has guns, and we have the lowest homicide rate.
So is it a gun thing or is it a social policy thing?
We have the lowest unemployment in America.
We have the highest median wage growth in America.
We were ranked the happiest city in America and the healthiest city in America.
Look, I think what we did during that time was we let people express their First Amendment rights to protest under the condition that they not hurt anybody or not destroy any property.
We had a zero tolerance policy for those things.
But other than that, you know, we respect the First Amendment.
We want people to have the ability to say what they want to say in the public square.
And we're very, you know, we're very open about that.
But that cannot cross the line.
And I think once we saw, we articulated that policy during the George Floyd manifestations or demonstrations, you saw that there was no Antifa here.
There were none of the rabble rousers here because they knew that they weren't going to be able to create the kind of disorder that they were creating in other parts of the country.
So I think as a leader, you have to set expectations.
You have to be willing to make tough decisions, but you have to be clear and open about what your expectations are.
So this is the part that I'm a little confused about, about the initiative.
And I would welcome a conversation with him about it.
I'm happy to discuss it with him and get his perspective on this because the city of Miami, which has lowered the property tax rate to the lowest level ever, so which means we're the leanest we've ever been, right?
We have a surplus with the lowest tax rate.
So we're very fiscally sound.
I got the city in bankruptcy.
So we took it from bankruptcy to fiscally sound.
We were Doge before Doge existed, okay, because we had to cut in 2009, 20% of our budget in one year because we were 20% out of balance.
And I had to take on the unions to do it.
And it was very painful, right?
Nobody's ever had to do that.
The state's never had to do that.
The federal government certainly hasn't done that.
And we were the first ones and really the only ones to do that as a government.
The concern I have or the question that I have is the following.
So the city of Miami generates 45% of its revenue from property taxes.
Okay.
45%.
So it's not a question of leanness, right?
It's a question of if we had to reduce tomorrow or eliminate tomorrow 45% of our budget, how many police officers are we going to lay off?
How many firefighters are we going to lay off, right?
So if I'm the incoming mayor or if I were the mayor, if I could get reelected, that would be my concern, which is I can't look at my police officers in the face and tell me they take a 45% pay cut.
Or I can't let go of four out of 10 police officers because that homicide rate that I've been focusing on is a byproduct of the fact that as we've grown this 150% over the last 10 years, we've been able to hire more officers.
We want to continue to hire more because we need to be able to do that.
This is not, you know, sometimes I would get criticized for being, you know, too wanting to sort of grow the profile of the city and they would attract people.
First criticism, if you remember this, first people were concerned that it was going to change the politics of the city, right?
It was the Republicans that were leaving those places coming over here.
So Miami-Dade, just to remind you, went, I think, 20% or 24% for Biden plus 24.
No, fair, 24% for Hillary, 8% for Biden, and then plus 10 for Donald Trump against Kamala.
So it was almost a 40, 30-point swing from one to the other.
So the influx of people, politically at least, was beneficial to the county and beneficial to the state.
The state's now plus, I think, a million Republican voters.
So the state is a solid red state.
And there, I think the governor deserves a lot of credit because I think the governor really focused on registration, on ideology, on things that could drive that dynamic.
I think that's one of the biggest gifts that he gave the state actually was that.
And then, you know, what you're seeing is, of course, now with Mandami likely getting elected, if you're Jewish and you live in New York or you're high income.
I mean, you're already paying 60% of your income in taxes.
So I always joke that the government is your partner in business and you're the minority partner, right?
And you're the silent partner.
So I just don't understand how this guy thinks that he can squeeze.
This guy meaning Mondami thinks that he could squeeze more money out of people without seeing a mass exodus, which is going to create what I call the death spiral.
I've always said, Dave, that communism is the easiest selling politics because every society is an inverted pyramid, right?
There's always less wealthy people numerically, more people that are on the lower end of the economic pyramid.
And so it's very easy to tell them, look, guys, if things aren't working out, I have the answer.
I'm going to use government.
Government's going to be the vehicle to take more from these people.
Let's flatten that triangle.
The problem is it's the opposite of all, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats.
This is a sinking tide sinks all boats.
So it will literally, you know, I always joke about Fidel Castro that, you know, he said, give us all your property, give us all your businesses, and we'll make everybody equal.
And he did.
He made everybody equally poor, equally miserable, and equally destitute.
And that's what's going to happen in New York, unfortunately.
But I'm saying, in terms of cost, right, to actually build it.
Like the second avenue line was $2 billion a mile.
Okay.
So in Miami, since we're so horizontal, it's hard to efficiently move people because everybody loves a car.
They love the freedom of the car.
And so I think what I think is going to happen in the future, and I think we have to be more disruptive and more innovative in transportation, we're going to see things like the boring company potentially with Elon.
We're going to see urban air mobility, believe it or not, the Jetsons are coming.
It's happening.
It's going to happen.
We're going to see autonomous vehicles that are going to redefine how we move.
It's already amazing that you can get in your car and you know with precision what time you're going to arrive, but it's not a guesstimate anymore.
You can literally say, okay, I'm three minutes late.
How many times have you got a text with me?
ETA, eight minutes from now.
You know what I mean?
And like, so you know with precision, and that's all private sector technology, right?
That's our phone technology.
Micro mobility.
So you have scooters, development, the way you develop buildings.
You're seeing like Dayland is a great example, not too far.
You have these like little miniature cities that are walkable where you can live, work and play in the same ecosystem.
So I think all of that's going to help.
Remote work is going to help.
A lot of people work from home.
I like to work from home personally.
I'm just more efficient.
I don't have to travel.
I work out at home.
I work at home.
And then I don't have to go anywhere.
Right.
And so for me, every minute counts and every day, I'm sure it does for you.
So the less I have to move, the more efficient I am, regardless of whether traffic was good or not, right?
Like having to go to an office, even if there's no traffic.
And by the way, that's another argument for getting rid of property taxes because it's the OG Floridians who are paying the price of everything that's yeah.
I think one is we can build affordable housing, not in the old way, which was like it looked like an insane asylum, you know, with the public housing, right?
That you see in New York and even some here in Miami.
We do public-private partnerships.
We've built, we have built about 4,000 units in my mayoralty, and we have about 2,000 in the pipeline right now.
Because if the idea is you're going to go there because it's inexpensive and you're not going to use it as a stepping stone to the next point of prosperity in your life, then it certainly can be a trap for you.
I mean, I think we have to continue to create educational opportunities for people to be able to do better, right?
I think one role that government absolutely has is in education.
And the governor will tell you that.
Anybody will tell you that.
We are focusing a lot.
We in Miami and I have as mayor have done things that nobody else has ever done.
I'll tell you what we've done: kindergarten savings accounts.
So we funded savings accounts for kindergartners and we taught them in the public schools financial literacy and their parents' financial literacy.
So they learn how to save money so that they get out of this sort of cycle of desperation, if you will, right?
We did a tech charter school, high school with Miami-Day Community College called MIA, you know, or the initials of Miami, Miami Innovation Academy.
So it's an innovation tech charter school.
We created two scholarships, mostly privately funded, right?
I went out there and raised the money privately.
But if you're first in your family to go to college or you want to get a STEM degree and you're a Pell Grant recipient, which means you're someone of low means, we give you, we pick up the balance, we pick up the rest.
So it's a scholarship from the city.
Nobody's ever done that.
I don't know anybody's doing that in the country, to be frank.
And so we're giving people an opportunity to get out of the situation.
We also do a lot of vocational training type stuff.
We have coding boot camps and things like that that we've supported.
I've even done initiatives for 5,000 role models with Bitcoin.
I'm big into crypto.
I was actually looking at something on Twitter the other day on X, I guess, where we had done something two years ago where we gave kids $100 of Bitcoin at $30,000.
So all those kids from predominantly underprivileged neighborhoods in our community have learned about digital assets.
So we've tried to do a lot of things that are outside the box to try to whet the appetite of ambition and not say, hey, we're going to settle for affordable housing or that's the goal.
The goal is not affordable housing.
The goal is affordable housing to make sure people can, if you're a teacher, you're a doctor, I mean, if you're a teacher, you're a nurse, you're a police officer, and maybe you can't live in the city.
Most of them can't live in the city, can't afford to live with it.
Maybe that's an opportunity to do that.
Those are professions that are capped in terms of salary.
So you need something that they can afford.
But other than that, I think it's educational pathways and it's also creating an economy.
We have the highest median wage growth.
So we're bringing in companies that hopefully can hire Miamians at a high level.
You are here.
You have a staff.
These people were not hired before you were here.
And I know because we've had an employee that I worked for you who's phenomenal.
I mean, this is super talented people, right?
And you're giving people opportunities to work, make money, and live in this community.
And it's just like the federal government with military spending where we're getting killed on procurement.
We're getting killed with unionized labor, but we're also getting killed with procurement, which is making it harder for us to compete with the Chinese.
But in the airport, you've got to empower the airport director to just go out there and hire good people and get it going right away.
And I just think there's going to be a last day and I'm going to turn off the lights one last time and then I'm going to walk out of the building and that's going to be it.
So there are not a lot of political positions that I would want to have that I can do that.
So I have to get to a place financially.
I have a seven-year-old and an 11-year-old where, you know, hopefully money is not the predominant factor in my life decision-making wise.
And whenever that day comes, hopefully it comes sooner rather than later, I can really think about it.
The one thing I can say about politics, having been around this I was two years old.
I did my first political commercial on my dad's lap at two.
I looked into a camera and said, which means vote for my dad, please.
The one thing I can say about politics universally is there's a lot of opportunity.
There's never a shortage of opportunity.
So if the bug is really with me and I really want to serve and I think I can make a contribution in the airport, whatever, Congress, Senate, you know, I don't know, whatever you name it, the ambassadorship, whatever, I would certainly consider it.
I would certainly consider it.
And, you know, it would be something that I would give deep thought to, because even though it's financially tough, I've never been driven by money.
Money's never been the predominant motivator for me.
It's really been impact and passion.
And so, but I'm a father and I feel a sense of responsibility.
You're a father too.
You know, I feel a sense of responsibility to take care of my kids and make sure that, you know, that everything's going to be okay.
It's a huge part of the story in the same way that you doing this podcast has become a huge part of your story.
What's the common theme?
Virality of a new medium of communication, which is this sort of social media world, right?
This concept where you don't have to go through the traditional validators, right?
Mainstream media to make or break you.
And so I think politicians don't have to kowtow as much as they used to.
And it bothers the mainstream media.
Oh, yeah.
And that's why they go on the attack in many ways.
I think part of the reason why I got attacked so viciously by my local newspaper is because they saw I was getting so much national attention.
And then my social media was growing tremendously.
So I could go direct to consumer.
And so they basically, I didn't necessarily have to deal with them if they weren't going to be fair and honest with me.
And I felt like they weren't being fair and honest.
So I was basically shutting them out.
And they wanted me to pay for it.
And that's what they did.
They built a narrative.
This is who we believe he is.
And then they selected facts to try to build that narrative and blow that narrative up, you know, and at some level it worked because they, you know, my dad used to tell me, I used to remember back in the day, the saying, you don't, you don't pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrels, you know, because every single day they have the ability to put, and I think one year, the year around for president, they wrote like 70 negative articles about me in one year in one paper, you know what I mean?
Which I think, and I've talked to people in the paper about this, you know, that, you know, I believe, and maybe I'm wrong, that at some level, the media should be representative of the values of the community that it seeks to, you know, to cover, right?
In other words, you have customers, your viewers.
I have clients in my residents, right?
They're my boss.
And I have to serve them.
I don't serve myself.
I don't serve my own ideas.
I serve them.
Obviously, I have my own ideas and I try to influence my ideas insofar as I think I have good ideas and hopefully I can convince them of that.
But at the end of the day, it's their decision ultimately.
You know, I definitely had, I'll put it to you this way.
There were not a lot of bad days.
There were not a lot of bad days.
I think when you look at the totality of my tenure, both as commissioner and mayor, I used to tell my wife all the time, when we were in the bad moments, I used to tell her, honey, you know, we've lived a pretty charmed political life.
It's going to be nothing to 70% turnout elections.
So you have a much more engaged electorate with a broader cross-section of the population picking people.
So presumably they'll make better choices, right?
Because they're more plugged in and they're bigger.
Secondly, from a financial perspective, we have to finance our own elections since they're on off-cycle years.
So they cost over a million dollars.
So we're going to save over a million dollars every year for infinity, you know, so that's tens, if not hundreds of million dollars in savings for the city.
Plus, we align with state elections and presidential elections, which are much, much higher turnout elections.
So that was the, that was the rationale.
There was a state law that said that you could do it.
And, you know, the unfortunately the judges disagreed.
Wow, we had, I remember when we passed the inter-Miami deal to bring the interteam to Miami when they got Leo Messi.
That was a great day.
I have to say, being in the Oval Office for the announcement of the G20 was a pretty amazing day and it was funny, a funny day because the president's a funny guy and he's such an engaging guy.
And so we get there and he looks at me.
This is the beginning of the press conference and he literally looks at me and he goes, and I'm to his left.
You know, and so it's been a lot of victories, a lot of good days, but the defeats are also good.
They're important.
I think you learn more from the defeats.
The pain, pain, is a tool, right?
Of a learning lesson, learning tool.
And I think as you get older, and I don't want to speak for you, but as you get older, I think, you know, you learn that defeat or losing or having a setback, it's temporary.
And by the way, I think I've said it once on air, but Adi, who is my former chief of staff, who's now moved on and she's doing her own thing, we got her from you.
She was still working for you at the time.
And I called you because I didn't want to do anything.
I didn't want to do anything like under the table.
And you immediately were like, it's a great opportunity for her.
And I've always encouraged my staff members to do bigger and better things.
Government is not the end.
Right.
And it actually, to me, the way I view it is it's a benefit to me because now I have someone in your organization that I can rely on to communicate with you.
Or, you know, I've had people that I've gone to these incredible organizations and now I can tap into them for the benefit of the city.
And I've done that a bunch of times.
So, and I think it's a credit.
It actually helps you recruit too because you can show people like, hey, this is a stepping stone to Day Rubin.
This is a stepping stone to X or Y or Z. And so it is a great recruiting tool too.
I'm focused a lot right now on this conference that I'm doing in November, America Business Forum, November 5th and 6th, where we have the president speaking there.
So it's exciting that he's doing all these things.
And then he's going to be coming to the conference.
We have Leo Messi speaking at the conference, Jamie Diamond, Ken.
You know, the charter calls me the chief executive officer, but I've often thought of myself as the chief ecosystem officer.
And I think when you say we, it is we.
It's the ecosystem that is us.
I can only be as successful as you are.
And we can only be as successful as we both are.
And, you know, you've got to be able to pick up the phone and say, hey, man, I need you for this.
And I've got to be able to say yes and follow through and vice versa.
So I do think it's been a wee thing as greater Miamians have come here, as our Miamians have stayed, because a big, a big issue is, I call it the boomerang effect.
We've had a lot of Miamians come back.
You know, Miamians that were in Boston, if you were in, you know, if you're in biotech or New York if you're in finance or DC if you're in politics or, you know, California, if you're in tech, come back to Miami.
So we've had a big boomerang of, and I've had parents all over the place tell me, we're so grateful to you because you made it possible for my child to come back home.