On Monday, just hours after a judge ruled it was unlawful for the City of Miami to postpone its November 2025 election to 2026 without voter approval, the 76-year-old announced his plans to run for mayor again in the upcoming 2025 election. He said he plans to file his candidate paperwork at City Hall today.
"I'm energized," Suarez told the Miami Herald.
New to Miami and never heard of the guy? Or just need a quick refresher? Here's what you should know about Xavier Suarez:
Political Past
In 1985, Suarez succeeded Maurice Ferré and became the city’s first Cuban-born mayor. He was re-elected to a second term in 1987 and then again in 1989.His announcement sets the stage for a potential rematch of the messy 1997 mayoral race, when Suarez faced off against Joe Carollo, the current city commissioner who's been hinting at a November 2025 run for mayor. While Xavier Suarez defeated Carollo in a runoff election in November 1997 and was elected mayor, a judge tossed the election results in the spring of 1998 after finding evidence of absentee ballot fraud.
Suarez was ousted after only 111 days in office, and the courts handed the mayor's seat back to Carollo, who'd held it from 1996 to 1997.
Suarez later returned to local politics in 2011 when he was elected as a Miami-Dade County commissioner for District 7. He was re-elected in August 2016, then mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the county mayorship in 2020. He finished a distant fourth in the primary.
Family Dynasty
Born in Las Villas, Cuba, Suarez earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Villanova University in 1971, followed by a Master of Public Policy and Juris Doctor from Harvard University. He's a longtime attorney who has practiced healthcare, corporate, and real estate law.His son, Francis Suarez, has served as Miami mayor since 2017 and is slated to leave office at the end of the year, owing to term limits.
If Xavier Suarez wins in November and serves the full four-year term, a member of the Suarez family will have held the mayor’s office for 12 years straight.
Controversies
In 1990, Xavier Suarez drew national attention for refusing to greet South African President Nelson Mandela during his United States tour, which included a stop in Miami. Suarez objected to Mandela's praise of Cuban President Fidel Castro, whom Mandela had called a "comrade in arms" for his support of the African National Congress. This spurred a years-long boycott of Miami conventions by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other groups.However, the real chaos came during Suarez's 1997 political comeback.
While his second stint in office included a handful of bizarre episodes — such as a late-night visit to a constituent who had written him a critical letter — it was ultimately defined by the election scandal that led to his ousting.
After Carollo's campaign claimed that absentee ballots had been forged and paid for by representatives of Suarez's team, an investigation found that roughly 400 fraudulent ballots were, in fact, cast by dead people and felons. Roughly three dozen people were charged with mail-in-ballot fraud or other violations, including a Suarez campaign worker who was nabbed while wearing a "Suarez for Mayor" T-shirt. (Suarez later claimed: "I didn't even know we had T-shirts.")
A county prosecutor described the scheme as a "well-orchestrated conspiracy to steal the election," though Suarez himself was never directly tied to it.
