Miami Mayor Francis Suarez teases presidential campaign 

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said on Sunday that he will make a “major announcement” in the coming weeks, raising speculation that he might join the race for the Republican presidential nomination. 

"My announcement is to stay tuned," the mayor said during an interview on Fox News Sunday. "Next week, like you said, I'm going to be making a big speech in the Reagan Library, and I think it's one that Americans should tune into."

Suarez is expected to speak on Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in California. Miami’s mayor had been considering a presidential campaign for several months, visiting four early key states in the presidential primaries. 

“I have traveled across the country. I’ve been to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada,” Suarez said, “I can tell you when I take the message to people, they want to hear more.”

The announcement will come weeks after the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust and the Miami-Data State Attorney’s office opened an ethics investigation over payments Suarez received for private consulting. According to a report by The Miami Herald, the mayor has received at least $170,000 from developer Rishi Kapoor. 

Suarez has repeatedly denied that there is any conflict of interest between his role as a mayor and his consulting. 

"All of a sudden, they assign three reporters and come up with all these allegations in advance of what appears to be a major announcement that you indicated next week," he said in an interview.

Suarez was elected as the first Miami-born mayor with a “mandate of 86 percent” in 2017 and then reelected with “a mandate of nearly 79 percent” in 2021, according to the Reagan Foundation. The mayor’s father, Xavier Suarez, was Miami’s first-ever Cuban-American mayor. 

Suarez is expected to join several candidates seeking the Republican nomination, including former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, among others.