Done in 76 days: Francis Suarez acknowledges his presidential campaign is over

Following his failure to qualify for the first Republican presidential debate, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez publicly acknowledged on Tuesday what had been evident for at least a week: that a years-long effort to build his national profile and mount a credible presidential campaign had gone bust.

Suarez, an attorney and private equity executive, announced his decision to end his campaign on social media.

His bid for the White House lasted 76 days.

“While I have decided to suspend my campaign for President, my commitment to making this a better nation for every American remains,” the 45-year-old mayor posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

While always viewed as a longshot, Suarez’s attempt to jump from City Hall to the White House drew only tepid interest from Republican voters, with the mayor polling around 0.2%, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of national polls. He quietly raised millions of dollars into a super PAC to fund a run for the long-haul, but his campaign — which he began teasing as far back as 2021 — struggled to earn attention in a crowded field.

Now, Suarez must return to city leadership with some political bruises as a term-limited mayor with little authority on the City Commission and no clear political trajectory.

“If you put this much energy into launching a presidential campaign, you hope you can stay in it and be relevant,” said Sean Foreman, a Barry University political science professor. “He really was not part of the equation at all.”

When Suarez launched his campaign on June 14, he had hoped to present himself as a young, optimistic option for Republican voters considering alternatives to former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP presidential candidates already running.

READ MORE: Miami Mayor Suarez is in GOP presidential race: ‘Unity is more powerful than division’

After entering the race late, he leaned into the fact that he was the only Hispanic candidate at a time when Republicans appear to be making some inroads with historically left-leaning Latino voters. He continued to promote himself as a tech-savvy politician, accepting donations in Bitcoin. On the trail, he talked up Miami’s successes and said he’d replicate them nationally, touting the city as an exception to declines in other major metro areas.

But even some of his own supporters now say he wasn’t prepared for the national stage, despite spending much of 2022 traveling the country as the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

“He proved that he’s not ready to run for president,” said developer Moishe Mana, downtown Miami’s largest single landowner, who gave $100,000 to a PAC supporting Suarez in December.

Neither Suarez nor his campaign representatives responded to requests for comment.

‘Was I deluding myself at some level?’

Suarez’s candidacy was largely viewed as an effort to build his national profile, rather than a legitimate threat to win the GOP nomination. But the short-lived campaign may not have built his brand the way he’d hoped.

Notable moments included a gaffe a conservative radio show, an AI chatbot Suarez-lookalike that repeated the mayor’s signature phrase, “how can I help?” and several fundraising gambits to solicit Venmo donations to try and get onto the GOP debate stage — including raffling front-row tickets to Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami debut and offering $20 gift cards in exchange for $1 contributions.

Suarez was also dogged in conservative media by his vote for president in 2016 against Trump and in 2018 for Andrew Gillum, the Democratic opponent of DeSantis in the Florida governor’s race. Other Florida Republicans trashed his campaign, including former Miami-Dade mayor and U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, who called him a “fraud” in an interview with Fox News the day after Suarez launched his campaign and accused him of taking credit for others’ accomplishments in Miami.

Ford O’Connell, a longtime Republican strategist, called Suarez’s campaign “a profile-building exercise … that collided with reality.”

“You really can’t run for president as a part-time executive on a whim and expect it to just automatically work out,” O’Connell said. “He’s telegenic, he’s athletic, he had the central casting part down. He was just missing the substance.”

O’Connell also noted that primary voters were turned off by his votes against Trump, though Suarez spent much of his campaign defending the former president — a tactic that confused at least one major campaign donor.

Mana, the Miami developer, told the Miami Herald in an interview last week that he contacted Suarez several times during the campaign to express disappointment with the mayor’s refusal to criticize Trump and to question the validity of the criminal indictments against the former president.

“I told him I totally disagreed with him,” Mana said.

He said Suarez eventually asked the developer to stop contacting him.

Suarez was also hounded on the campaign trail by the Miami Herald’s reporting about his private wealth and an FBI investigation into his work for a developer who had paid him $10,000 a month and leaned on his office to help cut through red tape at City Hall. (On Monday, just before suspending his campaign, Suarez filed a financial disclosure required for presidential candidates, revealing previously unknown sources of income.)

RELATED CONTENT: MAYOR FOR HIRE

But ultimately, the death knell for his White House aspirations was his failure to make the first presidential debate in Milwaukee — after erroneously declaring that he had qualified.

“It’s probably his last stab at trying to be relevant at all,” Keith Naughton, a Washington-based Republican consultant, said after Suarez released a video celebrating a debate appearance that never materialized. “But jumping the gun like this — if he doesn’t make it, it’s embarrassing.”

READ MORE: RNC advisers shoot down Suarez’s claim he qualified for the GOP debate in Milwaukee

Suarez often projected an air of confidence during his campaign, even declaring in the days before the debate that any candidate who couldn’t make the stage should get out of the race. But the mayor, during an Aug. 19 podcast interview with John Quinn of the Quinn Emanuel law firm, where Suarez is of counsel, acknowledged that the presidential campaign had been more challenging than anticipated, comparing it to an episode of Survivor.

During the interview, he compared the transition from campaigning for mayor to the presidency to going from high school basketball “directly to the pros.” He added that he thought he could parlay previous positive media coverage into regular appearances on primetime news channels.

“And that hasn’t happened,” Suarez said. “And that makes it harder to build a name.”

Suarez admitted there were times during the short-lived campaign where he doubted himself.

“Did I really make the right decision?” he recalled thinking throughout the process. “Was I deluding myself at some level? Did I miss some signs?”

Back to reality

Suarez’s announcement on Tuesday ended a week of silence. Since acknowledging that he had incorrectly announced that he would be on the presidential debate stage in Milwaukee, the mayor had stayed off social media, forgone interviews and ignored questions from reporters. His campaign and the SOS super PAC supporting his candidacy had stopped advertising on Facebook.

Loose ends likely remain from his campaign, such as paying staff and vendors. It’s unclear how much money he has left in his official campaign account or whether he will refund contributions, nor is it known what will happen with the money stashed away in the super PAC.

Also unclear: Suarez’s whereabouts over the last week. He was not at City Hall when a reporter showed up on Tuesday, nor was he at his home in Miami, according to a city police officer stationed outside the mayor’s house. Attempts to reach him and his spokesperson via cell phone went unanswered.

At the Suarez campaign headquarters in Coral Gables Tuesday morning, a couple stacks of mail and a few paper airplanes sat on the front desk, which was unoccupied. Barry Bennett, a campaign staffer who was previously an adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, told the Herald the Suarez campaign was still alive “for now,” and to “stay tuned.”

About an hour later, Suarez announced on social media that he had withdrawn from the race.

At some point, the mayor must return to Dinner Key, where Suarez will be tasked with addressing old, familiar problems from potholes to an ongoing housing crisis. Next month, his administration will need to get a new budget passed.

“The mayor is still the mayor,” said Commissioner Sabina Covo, “and we are colleagues that need to work together to improve the quality of life for our residents, which is my priority.”