One Miami District Is Testing How Far Trump Has Fallen With Latino Voters

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), left, and Eliott Rodriguez, her Democratic opponentMother Jones; Lenin Nolly/NurPhoto/AP; Marta Lavandier/AP Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. Since 2021, US Rep. María Elvira Salazar has represented the 27th congressional district in Miami-Dade County, where more than 70 percent of residents are Hispanic. As a Republican candidate, she ran with Trump’s seal of approval, nabbing his endorsement that year and in subsequent elections. But last week, Salazar jeopardized her good standing with Trump and shocked the GOP with her first official campaign ad. In it, she called out the president for his anti-immigrant agenda. “Some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said, noting that half of the people arrested by ICE in July had no criminal records. “The same Hispanics that helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” she added. “I’m not talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land. And only you can do that.” Within hours, the 30-second ad had circulated through political circles. Many Democrats, including her opponent, retired South Florida TV news anchor Eliott Rodriguez, saw the move as an election ploy. In a Facebook post, Rodriguez criticized her for her support of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which gave billions in funding to ICE, and for her defense of conditions at the now-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz, a state-run immigrant detention center in the Everglades. “María Elvira Salazar did this,” Rodriguez said. “Make no mistake about it. She owns all of these deportations.” Meanwhile, the ad drew the ire of some Republicans and the Department of Homeland Security. “Whether Congresswoman Salazar likes it or not, the men and women of ICE are enforcing the laws passed by Congress,” the agency said in a statement. Last weekend, Trump told a reporter that he disagreed with her, but described Salazar as a “nice person.” He then noted, “I got her elected. Without me she wouldn’t have gotten elected.” A Cuban American, Salazar was a veteran TV journalist before joining Congress. She handily won her district in 2024 with a 20-point lead. But political experts I spoke to say November’s race will likely be a tighter one. Last week, a Miami-based pollster working for the Rodriguez campaign found that the two former television journalists are tied, with both candidates getting 45 percent support of voters. A few earlier polls also downgraded the race from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican.” “She may survive,” said Orlando J. Pérez, political science professor at the University of North Texas at Dallas and a Cuban American who grew up in this district. “If she wins, it’s not going to be by 20 points. It’s going to be narrow.” The district is among those with the highest percentage of Latino voters in the US, and many experts view this race as a test of how far Trump’s popularity has cratered with the Latino community, which gave him significant support in 2024. In fact, Pérez told me, this district “is a microcosm of how far Latinos, and in this case Cuban Americans, which are a core bedrock group for the Republicans and Trump, have shifted.” This district “is a microcosm of how far Latinos, and in this case Cuban Americans, which are a core bedrock group for the Republicans and Trump, have shifted.” Even before this public break, he added, Salazar has been a voice inside the Republican Party asking for a more moderate immigration enforcement approach. She sponsored a bipartisan proposal called the Dignity Act, which provided a pathway to legal status for Dreamers and undocumented immigrants who came to the US before 2020. She’s also been outspoken against the end of TPS protections for Haitians and Venezuelans. But the fact that she has taken a bolder stance, especially against Trump himself, “is a real sign that that community is really angry,” Pérez said. Salazar’s campaign has not responded to my request for an interview. On CBS Face The Nation on Sunday, Salazar said she spoke with the president after the ad aired and told him to maintain the “pot of gold that you brought to the GOP in 2024” through the Latino vote. “No other president was able to convince the Hispanics to vote 55 points for a GOP president. Please preserve that fortune that you have brought to the party,” she recalled telling him. “We need to continue winning elections because we have this very big threat called the socialists on the Democratic side.” Eduardo Gamarra, political science professor and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University, said Salazar is “trapped between trying to defend her position as somebody who is very supportive of the president, and at the same time trying to demonstrate that she is a dedicated defender of immigrants in her district. Those two things have been diametrically opposed objectives.” Also working against Salazar is that her opponent, Eliott Rodriguez, is, as Pérez told me, “familiar to people” in South Florida. The son of Cuban immigrants, he was born and raised in New York City. His family moved to Miami when he was 12. He worked for nearly 50 years as a journalist, spending the latter half of his career at CBS News Miami, where he spent many years as a news anchor before retiring last year. Rodriguez can also run on the affordability crisis unencumbered by the political baggage of being in the governing party while gas and everyday costs for families have risen in the last year. “Eliott can run on affordability; he can run as the real defender of immigrants,” Gamarra said. “And he can also differentiate himself from Trump without any penalty.” During an interview in May, Rodriguez told me running for political office was not part of his plan following retirement. But recently, one of his daughters left Miami for North Carolina because she and her husband, both professionals with six-figure salaries, couldn’t afford to live there. He sees other young families being priced out of their hometown, now one of the most expensive cities in the United States. “People were gracious enough to allow me into their homes to bring the news, and I worked hard to earn their trust,” he said. “And now I’m trying to earn their votes, because I am horrified by what’s happening in this country, and I’m also horrified that our representative in Congress has done nothing about it, and she’s just a rubber stamp for Donald Trump and MAGA.” Gamarra said his team is about to begin work on a Florida poll focused on Latino voters, with results expected in mid-October. He pointed to a recent Colorado poll in which 66 percent of Latino voters said the country was on the wrong track and 68 percent disapproved of Trump. “The Colorado poll provides very strong evidence that Republican gains among Latinos are vulnerable,” he said. “But we’re not seeing yet a national reversal or a guarantee that dissatisfaction will become a Democratic turnout.”