Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s first re-election contest is wearing much tighter than expected in a Florida district that beat Hillary Clinton for issues in 20.
Mucarsel-Powell, 49, overthrew the blue of Florida’s 26th district in 2018, defeating centrist Republican Carlos Curbelo to get Democrats to get a majority in the House.
But his re-election contest opposed to Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez will be harshly at odds. The way the presidential race takes place in the district and whether President Trump regains the aid he lost in 2016 may end the vote to the race for Congress.
The Southern Florida District was created in 2012 and has replaced hands twice since. The community is located in the southwestern part of Miami-Dade County, where Cuban-American Giménez has been mayor since 2011, as well as Florida’s 3 national parks. adding the Everglades.
About two-thirds of the district’s eligible electorate is Latino, and a recent Miami-Dade County vote shows that Trump appears to be improving with the Latino electorate in the region than in 2016.
Giménez, 66, won the Republican number one in August, but it wasn’t a landslide, suggesting he has more to do to consolidate Republican aid in the district. Trump lost 30 issues in Miami-Dade County in 2016.
The mayor with a limited mandate also faces a serious challenge: the coronavirus pandemic. Giménez will likely be judged through the electorate on how he treated the pandemic, as Miami-Dade, Florida’s most populous county, has been a hot spot for the virus.
Giménez backed Trump, and Mucarsel-Powell tried to make the election in both the president’s and Miami-Dade mayor’s positions, while Giménez sought to link Mucarsel-Powell, backed through Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, to the far-left component of the Democratic Party.
The two applicants recently told the Miami Herald that their most sensible priority, if elected, is to control the pandemic. For Giménez, that means restoring America’s economy to its boom before the pandemic, adding tax cuts.
Mucarsel-Powell told the Miami Herald that a “clear and effective plan” was needed to push back the pandemic to allow schools and businesses to re-open and tourism in Florida to recover.
Candidates, however, are more remote on other topics, adding weapon and climate changes, while Mucarsel-Powell and his 2018 opponent, Curbelo, had more similar perspectives on those issues.
Mucarsel-Powell, whose father was shot dead in the open air of his home in Ecuador where she is more than two decades ago, brought several arms control expenses in his first two years in Congress. Giménez, for his part, strongly defends firearms rights and not the prohibition of firearms.
The mayor of Miami-Dade, whose county is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as the rise of the sea point, also does not have a carbon price. Curbelo, while in Congress, resisted his party over climate change and brought the first Republican-led change. carbon tax bill.