EXCLUSIVE – Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, Florida, says if he moves ahead and launches a 2024 White House run, the path to victory in the burgeoning GOP presidential nomination race over bigger names with larger campaign war chests – such as fellow Floridians former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis – is by “inspiring people.”
“You have to compete with other things, by inspiring people. You have to compete by explaining to people you have a track record of success, a vision for the future. That you can inspire people with a positive view of what their future can look like in ways other candidates can’t,” Suarez said in a national exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
The former president launched his third straight White House run in November, and currently is the clear polling front-runner in the GOP nomination race. DeSantis, who remains on the 2024 sidelines but is expected to launch a presidential campaign after the conclusion next month of Florida’s legislative session, is second in the public opinion surveys, with everyone else in the emerging field of actual and potential contenders in the single digits.
“I think if you’re good enough at communicating those ideas and those ideals, and you’ve listened enough to create and draft an agenda that’s going to work for people, then I think you can be successful potentially,” Suarez said.
AFTER STOP IN IOWA, MIAMI’S SUAREZ HEADED TO NEW HAMPSHIRE
The 45-year-old two-term Hispanic mayor is the son of former Miami mayor and former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Xavier Suarez. The younger Suarez was interviewed during a full-day swing through New Hampshire, the state that holds the second contest and first primary in the GOP nominating calendar. He reiterated to Fox News that he’s “seriously considering the possibility of running for president.”
Speaking to an audience at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics – a must stop for nearly a quarter-century for actual and potential White House contenders – Suarez joked, “I’ve spent some time in Iowa and South Carolina, and now I’m here in New Hampshire. It’s a nice coincidence.”
WHO’S IN AND WHO’S ON THE SIDELINES — YOUR GUIDE TO THE 2024 GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION RACE
Iowa’s caucuses kick off the Republican presidential calendar, and South Carolina holds the third contest.
Suarez noted that in the early voting states – where there’s long been an emphasis on candidate-to-voter small scale retail style politics – “you can do a lot of personal contact. You can get to know people. They can get to know you as a human being. And you can listen to them and absorb their concerns and sort of push that back.”
“I think it’s important to connect with the people, listen to the people, to give them an opportunity to understand what you’re about, why you’ve succeeded and why someone who’s a mayor and someone my age could be qualified to run a country as complex and as large as the United States of America,” Suarez told Fox News.
Suarez, in his speech, acknowledged that nobody has risen directly from a mayor’s office to the White House. But he touted that his experience turning around Miami’s fiscal problems shows he’s up for the job.
The mayor told the crowd that one reason he has yet to decide on a White House run is that “you have to offer something that’s so different and so refreshing that people say, ‘Yeah, we see those front-runners, we know what we have there, but this is just so radically different, so radically refreshing, and so radically good for the future of our country that we feel compelled to go in a different direction.’”
“That’s what I have to convince you of, and that’s what I have convince myself of,” he emphasized.
FOX NEWS TO HOST FIRST 2024 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
Asked by Fox News about his timeline, Suarez said he’d most likely need to get into the race ahead of the first Republican presidential primary debate, which will be hosted by Fox News in August.
Noting his current low standing in 2024 Republican presidential primary polls, Suarez said: “Having someone who’s an asterisk on a poll, basically zero, you need every opportunity you have to communicate to as large an audience as possible.”
“I would think that would certainly be a threshold moment for me to be able to articulate what my vision would be for this country and how I think I am uniquely positioned to bring prosperity to maximum number of Americans for the maximum amount of time,” the mayor said as he pointed to the August debate, which will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, site of next year’s Republican National Convention.
Suarez said in his speech that the eventual 2024 Republican standard-bearer should be a person with an “executive record of success” and a “positive vision for the future. I think we’re getting a lot of negativity, a lot of divisiveness in our politics, and it’s not healthy… that is our kryptonite, if you will, and it’s corrosive to our future.”
He emphasized that it’s crucial that the Republican nominee in 2024 “should be someone who can connect with Hispanics.” A candidate “who can communicate and connect with Hispanics helps Republicans win elections for a generation, not just for one presidency,” Suarez said.