How a provocative ad on Trump and immigration stirred a Florida House race
By PATRICIA MAZZEI
To hear Rep. María Elvira Salazar explain it, few should have been surprised to see her in a television ad standing in front of the White House, telling President Donald Trump that his immigration crackdown had “gone too far” and that some Hispanics who had voted for him now felt “betrayed.”
The three-term Republican member of Congress from Florida had been saying much of the same for months. Since releasing the ad last month, Salazar has insisted that she didn’t break with the president. She was simply warning him, she said, that trouble was on the horizon.
But Salazar’s ad struck a nerve, both angering Trump and his allies and perhaps emboldening other Republican candidates around the country hoping to distance themselves from the government’s crackdown on immigrants.
The ad underscored just how much Trump’s support has plummeted among Hispanic voters beyond places like South Texas. South Florida’s conservative Cuban Americans have long made the region Republican friendly, and Miami-Dade County swung to the political right in recent national elections.
But the Trump administration has deported a record number of Cubans. Older Cuban men who had lived in the United States for decades have been deported to Mexico, where they have struggled to get by. Some Cubans have been deported to Africa.
Senators in West Virginia and Kansas have recently criticized the deportations of immigrants without a criminal record and Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
Salazar made a career on Miami’s Spanish-language television, leaning into splashy political controversies and knowing how to get attention. Her former TV viewers call her simply “María Elvira.” Surely, those who know her say that she knew her ad would be provocative.
Maybe not this provocative.
With her 30-second spot, she managed to anger the MAGA base, spur Trump to promote criticism of her on Truth Social and perhaps move donors to give money to her Democratic opponent.
But she also steered the conversation away from the cost of living in Miami, which by some measures is now more expensive than New York and Los Angeles. National polls show voters believe Republicans are more responsible for the rising cost than Democrats are.
Salazar won reelection to Florida’s 27th Congressional District by about 20 percentage points in 2024, and Trump carried the district with around 57% of the vote. Few had considered it competitive this year. Yet Salazar’s ad has made the race the talk of the town.
Though she declined interview requests from The New York Times and most other national outlets, she has sat for local television, radio and podcast interviews, most of them friendly and most of them in Spanish.
“Politics is harder than television,” she told a pair of Cuban American comedians and self-described Republicans on their video podcast this past week, after praising their studio lighting.
The ad also boosted interest in Eliott Rodriguez, her Democratic rival, who is a fellow Cuban American former broadcast journalist. “We raised a lot of money — thanks to my opponent!” Rodriguez said while campaigning recently amid salsa music and sun showers in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood.
In March, the ICE field office in Miami, which covers Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, was leading the nation in immigration arrests. Foot traffic is down so dramatically in the city of Doral, which is outside Salazar’s district and heavily Venezuelan, that a neighborhood canceled Oktoberfest after people said they feared that a public gathering might draw law enforcement.
Some Miami Republicans have sounded alarms for months about unpopular immigration policies costing the party in the midterms. Some privately urged Salazar to take a more forceful public position. Her district is more than 70% Hispanic.
“We did not vote to demonize hardworking immigrants with no criminal record, nor did we authorize the militarization of our government,” said state Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Cuban American Republican whose district largely overlaps with Salazar’s and who praised her ad.
Rodriguez said Salazar and Republicans were “nervous” that their voters would cast ballots for Democrats or stay home in November. “People are terrorized,” he said, citing people he knows with pending immigration cases who are scared to leave their homes.
Former Rep. Donna E. Shalala, a Democrat who lost to Salazar in 2020, described a perfect storm building against Republicans in the district.
Price hikes to the Affordable Care Act last year disproportionately affected South Florida, which has the nation’s highest coverage rate. The Trump administration’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for many Haitians and Venezuelans has left hospitals, nursing homes and other businesses short-handed.
“I think that actually was the breaking point for a large number of people who voted for Trump,” Shalala said, adding that the cumulation of problems means Salazar is “in trouble.”
Much will depend on which Miami-Dade County voters cast ballots. Democrats and independent voters failed to turn out in large numbers in 2022 and 2024, though the city of Miami did elect a Democratic mayor last year for the first time in nearly three decades. Much of the city is in Salazar’s district.
Joe M. Sánchez, a former Miami city commissioner, lost a nonpartisan race for a Miami-Dade County Commission seat in August. He said he was “shocked” by how many friends and strangers told him to his face that they would not support him because he was a Republican. A self-described moderate, he plans to leave the Republicans and register without party affiliation.
Sánchez, who lives in Salazar’s district, recounted going to a cafeteria-style restaurant where the owner told him business was down 30% “because everyone that eats here is an immigrant.”
“To me, it was a rude awakening,” Sánchez said. “A lot of people were very, very upset.”
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