Miami elects a new mayor at a pivotal moment

THE ELECTION marked many firsts. On December 9th voters chose Eileen Higgins to become Miami’s first female mayor and the first Democrat to hold the job this century. But in south Florida the county bureaucrat’s win signals something more: the end of decades of dynastic rule. For nearly 40 years a handful of powerful families have run the city like a grift. This year Ms Higgins won in a 13-candidate field full of them. She will take office halfway through a decade that is remaking Miami faster than it can handle, amid an affordability crisis that threatens its identity. The city’s residents crave stability. Can a new leader turn staggering growth into a city that works for everyone?

She might start by cleaning up corrupt city politics. Francis Suarez, the outgoing mayor whose father ran to succeed him, is under federal investigation for dubious dealings with developers. Since the job of Miami mayor is technically part-time, during his eight-year tenure he continued to practise law—most recently at a firm where the government of Saudi Arabia is his client—while his net worth ballooned. Joe Carollo, a former mayor who also ran against Ms Higgins, was caught weaponising the city code against his enemies while serving as a commissioner. Residents dubbed him “the $100m man” after lawsuits against him racked up costs for taxpayers and led the city commission’s legal insurer to pull its coverage. Their cases signal what has long been broken in Miami: the wealthy and well-connected prosper; for the rest there is bureaucracy.

That imposes a high cost on a city that is racing to build. At the start of the pandemic Florida’s politicians wooed northerners with the promise of good weather, no income tax and relief from Democratic lockdown policies. What began as a temporary escape from cities like New York and San Francisco became transformational when people chose to stay in Miami. Between 2020 and 2024 the city’s population swelled by nearly 45,000, a 10% increase. Developers built luxury high-rises; pilates studios proliferated. Locals will tell you that air-conditioning made Miami viable, but remote work has made it vibrant.

Mr Suarez was determined to draw the companies they worked for, too. In 2020 he replied to a tweet musing about moving Silicon Valley to Miami with a one-liner that went viral: “How can I help?” Already a hub for Latin American commerce, the city used lax regulations to lure domestic tech startups and finance firms. In a few dizzying years Miami recast itself as a young city with untapped potential—one that anyone with enough money could shape. In six years nearly 30,000 new businesses opened. Today Brickell, the city’s financial centre, is a glitzy maze of skyscrapers, billboards and sushi joints. An empty plot on the waterfront will soon become Florida’s tallest tower, a 54-storey headquarters for a hedge fund run by Ken Griffin, a Chicago billionaire who has moved his empire to Miami.

There is perhaps nothing more emblematic of the “Magic City” than that entrepreneurial spirit. Miami has always been a place where people came to chase the American dream. Boatloads of Latinos fleeing authoritarianism built middle-class lives here, and today the Miami-born son of a Cuban bartender is America’s secretary of state. Shadier characters took advantage, too. In the 1980s “cocaine cowboys” got rich and paid judges and politicians to look the other way. In the decades that followed, the black market fuelled economic expansion and corruption became ingrained, says Fernand Amandi, a political strategist. Last spring the Federal Trade Commission reported that the Miami metro area leads the country in fraud cases. “Everyone’s a Great Gatsby here,” says Billy Corben, a filmmaker.

The past few years of rapid growth have frayed the magic for ordinary people. The roads are clogged with traffic and the sewage system is so dated that faeces spill into the streets when it pours. Since 2020 Miami has been hit with the worst inflation in America: real wages have fallen by 10%, housing costs have soared by 40%. The average Miami resident spends a higher share of their income on rent than in any other city, including Los Angeles and New York. (The cost of flood insurance exacerbates that.) People now talk about “two Miamis”, one for the ultra-rich and another for the workers who serve them.

Ms Higgins sees the influx of newcomers as a “mixed blessing”. Although the mayor’s role is not a traditionally powerful one, the budget her administration will have to work with is more than triple what it was five years ago. She plans to be a full-time mayor, reform the permit process and build affordable housing. Backing her is a business community sprinting to “catch up”, says Alfred Sanchez, the head of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. Miami Dade College, America’s biggest community college, is scrambling to teach students the tech skills that new firms pay big salaries for.

Locals joke that the state bird of Florida is a construction crane. Miami has never had a lasting industry beyond hospitality and property and has always relied on new waves of immigrants to keep it humming. Now the mayor’s job description is different. Ms Higgins is not in charge of selling Miami, but of making it work for the people who have already arrived. ■