Zohran Mamdani's victory in New York City's mayoral race shows what's coming for America's big cities — because it follows the socialist-populist playbook once wielded by Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Each promised equality and delivered ruin. Each created enemies to consolidate control. Each left behind poverty, censorship, and exile. New York, once the capital of capitalism, has now chosen a man eager to run the same playbook. And when the consequences come — as they always do — they won't stay contained to the five boroughs.
Florida has become the new New York, and Miami-Dade the new capital of opportunity in America today. The difference? This community knows better. Ours is a population forged by those who fled socialism's misery, while far too many New Yorkers still daydream about its imagined rewards.
Go to a bakery in Little Havana, and a man will tell you over a cafecito how the brutal Castro dictatorship's foot-soldiers, blind with ideological belief, expropriated his Catholic church and tortured his nephew for dissent. Or go to Doral and order some tequeños. A Venezuelan woman will tell you how the Chavista revolutionary thugs intimidated homeowners or walked people out of small businesses, which were then given to connected government workers. In Argentina, President Javier Milei is still un-banging the pots of an entitled political class whose raises by government edict caused hyperinflation.
In Miami-Dade County, socialism got its fair hearing. Its trial witnesses were those exhibitions of injustice, those stains of tears and blood. Socialism was described, debunked, and convicted as the virus on the body and soul that it is. This translates into political outcomes that would shock any pundit. Between 2016 and 2024, the heavily Hispanic native-and-immigrant voters in our county experienced a nearly 41-point net shift toward the Republican Party, the "Trump/DeSantis effect."
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At the same time, Florida Republican enrollment now surpasses Democrat enrollment by some 1.4 million and has steadily risen in recent years.
Miami-Dade County residents know socialism all too well and call it a dirty word. Far too many New Yorkers do not. With talk of New York refugees heading here, we must tell them in no uncertain terms: you are welcome, but do not bring the romanticizing of socialism of the Castro-Chávez-de Kirchner-Mamdani variety. The consequences are higher than you can bear.
Today's destination for domestic and international political refugees escaping socialism is Miami-Dade County. If an influx of newcomers who forget socialism's evils because they think "this time will be different" arrives here and begins voting for Socialism Lite, we will chart the same dark path New York is about to embark upon. Florida is already warning that unchecked migration of ideological refugees from New York could burden fiscal and social systems, and Governor DeSantis has even floated a "tariff" on transplants from states whose politics conflict with ours.
Florida's family- and business-friendly policies, limited government showing surpluses under Governor Ron DeSantis and others, must be the blueprint for states. Miami-Dade County, as Florida's largest metro area, should be the blueprint for U.S. metropolitan areas in the near future. The combination of strong individual liberty locally, as well as checks on government reach, cost and danger, are what make us the top destination for families, capital and business formation.
When we say, "Don't New York our Miami-Dade County," we mean you are welcome—but leave behind your unfounded faith in socialism even when it is under a major political party label. Socialism's price is far greater than you imagine. Trust Miami-Dade County when we say we know all too well that New York is unprepared for the socialism it voted for.
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