Who is Miami Mayor and new presidential candidate Francis Suarez?

Francis Suarez would like to break a nearly 250-year losing streak by becoming the first mayor to be elected president of the United States.

Having governed Miami since 2017, Suarez announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for the Oval Office in a video released Thursday morning.

“I’m going to run for your children and mine,” the 45-year-old Cuban American said. “Let’s give them the future they deserve.”

In a GOP primary field dominated by Donald Trump, Suarez likely stands little chance of becoming the Republican nominee for the presidency next year. But his bid is significant all the same. He will bring a confident moderate voice to a conversation dominated by hard-line conservatives.

Watch from our partners: Miami Mayor Francis Suarez tries to set himself apart from other GOP presidential candidates

Following his father into politics

Francis is the son of Xavier Suarez, a native of Cuba who served as the mayor of Miami throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Once dubbed “one of Miami's weirdest political legends” and “Mayor Loco,” the elder Suarez ultimately saw his tenure marred by allegations of voter fraud.

Francis followed his father’s footsteps into politics. First elected to Miami's City Council in 2009, Francis Suarez was elected mayor in 2017. Despite the fact that Miami is a Democratic city, he won with 85% of the vote. He would win reelection in 2021 with a similarly decisive 79% margin.

Suarez has positioned himself as a moderate Republican who could broaden the party’s appeal. “I don’t think right now the Republican Party is attracting Latinos or African-Americans in droves ... even in drips,” he told Politico in 2018.

Suarez has recently worked to remake Miami into a high-tech hub, an effort that appears to have been helped by the pandemic. He is an ardent enthusiast of cryptocurrency and was a champion of Sam Bankman-Fried, the bitcoin whiz kid who has been charged with orchestrating a massive financial fraud.

Suarez could face legal troubles of his own, related to payments from a local developer. The mayor has dismissed those accusations.

Read more from Yahoo Finance: From ‘brain drain to brain gain’: Miami mayor’s plan to turn the city into a tech hub

How Suarez could influence the race

In a party beholden to Trump and his divisive politics, Suarez could remind voters of the Republican Party that, after Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat, wanted to broaden its appeal beyond older, less-educated whites who make up the GOP base.

Suarez has cast himself as a figure of optimism and youth. "I'm not a boomer, obviously. I'm someone who believes in a positive aspirational message,” he said last year. “I'm someone who has a track record of success and a formula for success.”

Watch more from our partners: Leadership During Crisis: A Conversation with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez

No friend of DeSantis, Trump — or Biden

Like many elected officials in Florida, Suarez appears to dislike the state’s governor. In recent months he has criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis for harboring a “personal vendetta” against Disney, and he has observed that DeSantis “seems to struggle with relationships.”

Suarez did not vote for DeSantis in 2018, but did back him in DeSantis's reelection bid last year. He did not vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020, something that isn’t likely to endear him to the MAGA faithful who make up the party’s base.

But he also has taken on President Biden. At a mayors’ summit at the White House earlier this year, he criticized progressive criminal justice policies that Biden supports, while the president stood next to him.

Watch more from our partners: Francis Suarez talks run for president on 'GMA'

Why his candidacy matters

All presidential runs are motivated by a high degree of ambition, not to mention more than a little vanity. The question, often, is whether there is more to any given campaign than that.

Suarez may not be burning up the polls, but his campaign does have a logic of its own. In a 2021 interview with Politico, he summarized his philosophy in a message to other elected officials: “Start thinking more like mayors.”

In that sense, Miami is arguably representative of the challenges faced by the nation as a whole: climate change, immigration, crime, technology.

“Miami, I think, is a microcosm of what the United States looks like and will look like over the course of the next few decades,” he said at a 2020 event, in reference to the city’s ethnic diversity. “So I think we should embrace the fact that we are a country of immigrants, and that should strengthen us and not something we should vilify.”

Much like DeSantis, Suarez has touted his wide margin of victory as evidence that he has the right formula for Republican success. But whereas DeSantis appeals to the GOP base, Suarez describes his own supporters as an “inclusive conservative majority,” a coalition that, in his view, can be replicated nationwide.

And while many Republicans continue to deny the reality of climate change, Suarez does not have that luxury, given that Miami is already dealing with the effects of higher sea levels and stronger storms — and could soon be underwater.

His message here is straightforward: “It’s real.”

Read more from our partners: What’s really driving ‘climate gentrification’ in Miami? It isn’t fear of sea-level rise

But what does he really want?

Suarez says he wants to be president, but why run if you can’t win?

The question can be fairly posed to any Republican candidate not named Donald Trump, given how completely the former president dominates the Republican field, with 53% of potential Republican primary voters behind him, according to recent polls.

Suspected reasons for running all the same — as many others are doing — range from a desire for visibility to staging an audition for the vice presidency or a Cabinet position.

The sharp-elbowed editorial board of the Miami Herald praised Suarez as “young, telegenic and a good fundraiser” but wondered about his exact motivation.

“If he raises enough money and gets a couple of viral soundbites at a presidential debate, Suarez might line up his next job,” the editors opined. “Perhaps as someone’s VP pick or as a paid political commentator or top political consultant.”

Read more from our partners: This billionaire and major DeSantis donor gave Miami Mayor Francis Suarez $1 million