Miami Mayor Francis Suarez easily won a second term Tuesday, taking nearly 80% of the vote in an election that drew just over 14% of the city’s registered voters.
Commissioner Jeffrey Watson lost his race, with attorney Christine King winning just over 65% of the votes for the District 5 seat. Two-term former mayor Joe Carollo also handily won a second term in the District 3 seat with nearly 65% of the vote.
During his election night party at The Wharf, along the Miami River, Suarez said one of his first orders of business will be climate change. He will head to Glasgow this week for the United Nations International Climate Conference.
“It's not just an agenda for Miami, it's an agenda for this country, and cities have a very vital role to play,” he said. “Eighty-five percent of the population of America is in cities and 91 percent of the GDP. So cities have a crucial role in making sure that we decarbonize our environment.”
Last year, Suarez signed Miami onto the C40 pledge, an international network of mayors vowing to halve their cities’ emissions over the next decade and be carbon neutral by 2050.
Suarez, who is pushing to make Miami a tech hub, said the city also needs to look at creative funding to fight climate change.
“We have $200 million worth of resources that no city in America has. And we're going to leverage that, hopefully with federal dollars and state dollars to get the maximum amount out of it,” he said.
Suarez said he will be representing the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Glasgow. He takes over as president of the organization next year.
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