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The mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, has entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
On Thursday morning, he tweeted: “My dad taught me that you get to choose your battles, and I am choosing the biggest one of my life. I’m running for president.”
The tweet was accompanied by a video of Mr Suarez (45) out for a run.
Ahead of a speech at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, the Cuban American mayor also spoke to ABC News.
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“I think I have a different message,” he said, claiming to have “implemented generational change”, touting his experience leading a major city and winning election and re-election by large margins.
Mr Suarez will be an outsider in a crowded field dominated by two other Florida men: Donald Trump, the twice indicted former president, and Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor.
Mr Trump leads most polling averages by more than 30 points. The former vice-president Mike Pence leads the rest of the pack, way back.
Asked what he thought of Mr Trump’s indictment in Miami this week on 37 federal charges relating to his handling of classified materials, Mr Suarez tried to dodge the question, saying the city had avoided “anarchy” around the court appearance.
Pressed, he said Republicans thought there “isn’t an equal administration of justice”.
Quizzed again to say what he thought of the former president’s behaviour, Mr Suarez said he would have turned over documents, as Mr Trump refused to do, but also tried to link the case to an investigation of documents retained by Joe Biden.
“I’m not an expert on these kinds of matters,” Mr Suarez said. “But I do want to say this, that this conversation is not a healthy conversation. We should be talking about the issues the Americans care about.”
Mr Suarez insisted he was not running against Mr Trump, but “against Joe Biden’s America”.
The New York Times noted an ad buy in early voting states charging Biden with failing to control crime. The paper also referenced an FBI investigation that could damage Suarez’s run.
Mr Suarez is facing emerging allegations of influence-peddling on behalf of a real estate development company, the New York Times noted.
Mr Suarez told ABC he would pledge to support Mr Trump if he won the nomination, adding: “I’m the only candidate who’s Hispanic in both parties. I think that’s incredibly important because 20 per cent of the country is made up of Hispanics that are trending Republican.”
Mr Suarez was elected mayor in 2017 with 86 per cent of the vote, and re-elected four years later with 78 per cent. With his city at ground zero of the climate emergency, he has broken with many Republicans’ views and considers rising seas and global temperatures “a real crisis” facing the planet.
He has championed the Miami Forever bond, investing $400m of taxpayers’ money in projects to counter sea level rise and other consequences of the climate crisis, including increasingly prevalent flooding. - Guardian