Ron DeSantis.
Miami didn’t fall because Democrats suddenly found a message that worked. Miami fell because Ron DeSantis, in all his trademark ego, stubbornness, and strategic incompetence, fought the one reform that would have saved the city. Move Miami’s elections to even-numbered years, boost turnout, save taxpayers money, and stop Democrats from exploiting low-engagement cycles.
Outgoing Mayor Francis Suarez and city commissioners warned us that odd-year elections choke turnout. Voters aren’t expecting an election between two holidays, participation collapses, and the city wastes nearly a million dollars on a redundant process that delivers a distorted electorate. Democrats thrive in that vacuum; Republicans don’t. Voters supported the change. The law allowed it. The city attorney confirmed it. Other Miami-Dade cities already made the shift.
Any governor with an ounce of political instinct would have backed it.
But Ron DeSantis fought it aggressively.
Because that’s who he is: a politician who will oppose a good idea simply because he didn’t come up with it. A guy so obsessed with control that he’d rather lose a Republican-leaning mayor’s office than let a local reform succeed without his fingerprints on it. He didn’t just fail to act. He blocked the fix, kept Miami stuck in a turnout death zone, and protected the conditions Democrats rely on to punch above their weight.
Democrats didn’t even run a great candidate. And it didn’t help that DeSantis, in peak DeSantis fashion, backed a weak candidate who ran to settle a personal vendetta rather than make Miami even better.
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And yes, Trump eventually endorsed him, but only because DeSantis left him no real choice.
By the time the governor set the field, boxed out better options, and kneecapped the one reform that would have ensured a fair fight, Trump’s hand was already forced. A president doesn’t abandon the Republican on the ballot, even when it’s the wrong Republican propped up by the wrong governor. If DeSantis hadn’t meddled, blocked, and blundered his way through the process, Trump would have had an actual contender to support. Instead, he inherited DeSantis’s mess and did what any party leader has to do: back the nominee, even when the nominee isn’t the one you would’ve picked.
This is what makes the loss unmistakably DeSantis’s.
He fought the reform.
He backed the wrong candidate.
He preserved the system Democrats needed.
And he acted shocked when Miami flipped exactly the way we warned it would.
It’s not even the first time he’s done this.
The last mayor’s race DeSantis stuck his nose into — Jacksonville — flipped blue, too. Two major Florida cities lost on his watch. Two races Democrats had no business winning. Two preventable disasters tied directly to one Republican’s inability to think beyond his own ego.
And the failures don’t stop there. This is the same man who backstabbed the president who made him and lit $300 million on fire in a delusional presidential campaign, only to lose every county in Iowa and return home with nothing but excuses and bitterness.
So yes, Miami flipped.
But not because Democrats earned it.
Not because the city changed.
Not because the candidate was strong.
Not because of Trump.
Miami flipped because Ron DeSantis backed the wrong Republican, blocked the right reform, and gave Democrats exactly what they needed, when they needed it.
And in the end, after all the warnings, all the data, all the math laid out in front of him, he watched the mayor’s office slip away the only way it ever could under his leadership: right through his pudding fingers.
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