GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar wins re-election in Florida after clashing with Trump

GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar has won re-election in her Miami-based congressional district, NBC News projects, after clashing with President Donald Trump over his immigration agenda. A recount that was completed Tuesday, one week after Election Day, showed that Salazar was narrowly ahead of her Democratic challenger, Eliott Rodriguez, by roughly 1,000 votes. In 2024, Salazar won re-election by nearly 20 percentage points. Salazar drew national attention in September when she released an ad criticizing Trump’s aggressive deportation policy. She said that many Hispanics felt “betrayed” by the crackdown and that the administration’s tactics had “gone too far,” with many deportations targeting individuals without criminal records. Trump carried Salazar’s district, which is heavily Hispanic, by 15 points in the 2024 presidential election. He responded to the ad by amplifying social media posts that labeled Salazar a “backstabber” and called for her to be replaced as the district’s GOP candidate. Rodriguez, a former local news anchor, attempted to capitalize on the rift. He said Salazar had become “so politically toxic that now even Daddy Trump appears to be distancing himself from his problem child.” Democrat Eliott Rodriguez.Marta Lavandier / APBut Trump never officially rescinded his initial endorsement of Salazar. In 2024, Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Miami-Dade County in 36 years. Florida’s 27th District is now set to be home to Trump’s presidential library. With one of the largest concentrations of immigrants in the U.S., Miami has been on the front lines of Trump’s deportation campaign, with more than 130,000 pending removal cases — the most of any county in the nation. Salazar’s district has been heavily affected, as it spans multiple working-class, largely Hispanic enclaves, though it also encompasses some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the nation. Notably, the district is also home to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who previously represented Florida as a U.S. senator.Salazar was first elected to the seat in 2020, when she defeated former Health Secretary and former University of Miami President Donna Shalala in a major upset. The victory foreshadowed the Miami area’s rightward shift in the years that followed.