Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is reportedly considering Miami mayor Francis Suarez as her running mate for a 2024 Republican presidential primary bid. Suarez, among other issues, voted for Democrat Andrew Gillum against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2018.
According to Politico, Haley was spotted with Suarez at Miami City Hall for a meeting that was “arranged with the explicit goal of allowing Haley to gauge the 43-year-old Republican as a potential running mate in 2024, according to a source familiar with the huddle.”
Politico reported:
Another source told us that while a joint ticket wasn’t explicitly discussed, it hung over the entire conversation. An intriguing sidenote: Suarez is known to have a chilly relationship with Gov. Ron DeSantis, another 2024 White House hopeful and favorite of Donald Trump. [Emphasis added]
In the 2018 Florida gubernatorial race, Suarez voted for Gillum against DeSantis.
Gracias, Mayor @FrancisSuarez! Let's make Florida work better for everyday people. #BringItHome https://t.co/px8WjlYXcJ
— Andrew Gillum (@AndrewGillum) November 6, 2018
In March 2020, officers with the Miami Beach Police Department said they found Gillum and two men in a hotel room with three baggies of crystal meth. Police said Gillum was so inebriated that he was not able to communicate with officers.
A month after the incident, the Miami Beach Police Department released photos and bodycam footage taken from the night Gillum was found in the hotel room. Police revealed several bottles of prescription medication spilled onto the hotel room floor, along with a blood pressure monitor on the rug near the bed and a vomit-splattered pillow.
As Breitbart News reported, Gillum got his start in politics working for the George Soros-financed People for the American Way (PFAW). From 2005 to January 2017, he served as Director of Youth Leadership Programs for PFAW. Gillum departed PFAW just ahead of his gubernatorial run.
While Gillum was at PFAW, he worked on radical leftist agenda items that included challenging U.S. “predatory capitalism,” abolishing the prison system, fighting a “spiritual resistance” battle against “Christian hegemony,” redefining the meaning of a nation’s “borders,” aiding illegal aliens, and enacting the “collective liberation” of “communities of color” amid what it described as the scourge of “white supremacy.”
In the same election where Suarez voted for Gillum, Miami voters rejected his campaign to massively expand his powers in office. Ads cut against the failed initiative — which cost $3 million to promote — called the position Suarez was trying to create a “dictator-mayor.”
Suarez recently attacked DeSantis for throwing out mask mandates in Florida in September, where businesses are not confined to capacity limits and masks are not required by state government decrees.
“We’ve been restricted from being able to put in mitigation measures,” Suarez told ABC’s Face the Nation. ” … now we’re not allowed to implement masks in public order.”
The Florida GOP quickly called out Suarez for violating his own mask mandate and social distancing in June 2020. Three days after holding a press conference urging Miami residents to wear masks and social distance, Saurez was seen out at a popular restaurant in the area without a mask and in between two other men.
“Another ‘good for thee, but not for me’ politician,” the Florida GOP wrote in a post.
.@MiamiMayor @FrancisSuarez complains on @FacetheNation that he wants a mask mandate. Yet he himself violated his own mandate in the summer of 2020. Another “good for thee, but not for me” politician. https://t.co/v9B9O29UUG
— Florida GOP (@FloridaGOP) February 1, 2021
In June 2018, Suarez also joined Democrat mayors like Bill de Blasio of New York City and Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles to slam former President Trump’s immigration agenda at the United States-Mexico border.
Two years later, Suarez refused to commit to voting for Trump against then-Democrat nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election cycle.
In recent months, while DeSantis has sought to limit the power of giant tech corporations and punish online censors, Suarez is reportedly trying to court tech corporations to move their offices from Silicon Valley, California, to Miami, along with Wall Street firms.
Bloomberg Businessweek reported:
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has been on a quest to diversify even further beyond Wall Street South, tweeting prolifically about luring technology companies to the region—a sort of Silicon Beach. Suarez is pushing to increase money available through the Miami Downtown Development Authority to finance and tech businesses moving into the urban core, potentially raising grants from a current $150,000 per business or boosting the pool of funds so that more can benefit. The incentives can seem paltry if you’re a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, but movers say they’re glad to be courted, accusing governments in the Northeast and California of taking them for granted. “It’s just trying to capture the moment,” Suarez says. [Emphasis added]
During a video discussion, posted to Instagram this week, Haley called Suarez a “rockstar mayor” and touted her experience as South California’s governor, where she said she kept a close connection with business owners.
“I made sure every company had my personal cellphone number,” Haley said. “I made sure they took care of their employees. I made sure … we checked to make sure that we were union-busters, we didn’t wany any unions, and we made sure that if you take care of your employees, we’ll never have to have a union.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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