Mayor Francis Suarez’s View from Miami

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Francis Suarez, the Republican mayor of Miami, is popular in the city he governs, and increasingly prominent beyond it. Conservative voices as disparate as Kanye West and George Will have floated him as a 2024 Presidential candidate. Suarez is a proudly dissident Republican: he loves tech companies, welcomes migrants, and thinks his party can lead the fight against climate change. He’s no culture warrior, and, though he shares a state with Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, he has kept both at arm’s length. So is he, Kelefa Sanneh wonders, a Republican at all? Suarez seems to be taking a long view. “Leadership,” he says, depends on whether “you have the talent to articulate a message, a vision, and a plan to get people to a place where people will follow—even if maybe they’re not so sure, maybe they’re not that comfortable with it.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.8	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm Kelif Asene.
0:13.3	I'm a staff writer here at The New Yorker, and I'm sitting in today for David Remnick.
0:18.2	Lots of people are nervous about the midterm elections. Americans are so polarized now
0:23.2	that governing is impossible. We hear this kind of thing all the time. Francis Suarez doesn't buy it.
0:29.9	Suarez is the Republican mayor of Miami. He's popular in the city and increasingly prominent
0:35.5	beyond it. He's the president of the U.S. Conference
0:38.7	of Mayors, and not long ago, the columnist George Will mentioned him as a potential presidential
0:43.7	candidate. Nikki Haley was said to be considering him as a possible running mate. But Suarez is a
0:49.9	proudly dissident Republican. He loves tech companies, and he thinks his party can lead the fight
0:55.8	to tackle climate change. So is he actually a Republican at all?
1:00.8	What's the word? Mr. Mayor.
1:03.5	What's happening? Last week, I caught up with him from his office in Miami.
1:09.0	So your father, Xavier Suarez, was elected mayor of Miami a few weeks after
1:14.5	your eighth birthday, if I have that right. That's right. Did he talk city politics at the dinner
1:19.2	table? Yes. City politics was a constant conversation at dinner table, the breakfast table,
1:26.8	the basketball court,
1:28.3	um, everywhere we went, you got to see that the person behind the scenes and all the
1:33.4	nitty gritty little decisions that people don't often see. I remember cable was licensed
1:38.0	through the city. And I remember one time coming home and we had all the channels mysteriously,
1:43.3	right? We had like HBO showtime that's the dream
1:47.0	man and so I went to my dad's like oh my god this is amazing dad look we have HBO we have showtime and my dad's
	...

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