Miami-Dade – Florida – U.S. in Play: 7 Brutal Truths for the GOP

Miami-Dade – Florida – U.S. in play: 7 brutal truths for the GOP before the 2026 midterm. The left doesn’t sleep. We do.

Opinion column : Miami-Dade – April 2026

There is a very particular silence in Miami-Dade these days. It is the silence of a party that won a historic election and went to sleep convinced that the job was done. It is the silence of Saturdays, of every day, of no canvassing brigades, of Republican clubs that gather to cut cake and pose for a photo, of leaders who mistake a presidential victory for an eternal legacy.

That silence, if we don’t break it, will be broken by the Democrats in November. And it’s going to hurt on three fronts at the same time: in the county, in the state and in Washington.

Brutal truth #1: the 2024 victory was a starting point, not a finish line.

Yes, Miami-Dade was painted red. Yes, Trump won the county for the first time in 36 years with 55.19% of the vote. Yes, there are 464,370 registered Republicans versus 440,790 Democrats. All of that is true, and those of us who worked on that victory have a right to be proud.

But there is a huge difference between celebrating a victory and managing it. The former lasts one night. The second requires hitting the streets every weekend for the next two years.

While we celebrate, UNITE HERE Local 355 – the 7,000-member hotel union based in Miami Gardens – is already knocking on doors. Unite305, the civic movement that states on its website that it seeks to “prevent fascism and build Democratic political power in Miami-Dade,” is already knocking on doors. The county Democratic Party launched its midterm operation with the slogan “Restore Our Country,” with events every weekend and Hispanic, black and youth caucuses running in parallel.

And we’ve already been beaten once: Eileen Higgins, a Democrat, won the Miami mayoralty by 18 points in November 2025, with a mere 21% turnout. Her people went to vote. Ours stayed home believing that Miami-Dade was already won for good.

That was no accident. It was a warning.

Brutal truth #2: the chairman condal has to stop fighting with his own people.

Open letter to Miami-Dade Republican Party Chairman Kevin J. Cooper and the board of directors he leads.

Mr. Chairman, the Republicans who endorsed you 83 to 15 in December 2024 did not elect you to manage infighting. They elected you to defend the county. And yet, what has occupied the party’s oxygen in recent months has not been an aggressive field plan, has not been a public calendar of canvassing brigades in Kendall, Hialeah, Homestead and Doral. It has been an internal scandal – the WhatsApp chat of your Secretary Abel Carvajal, – and a series of questions that the rank and file would like you to answer head on.

How many plenary meetings have you convened of the Republican Executive Committee so far in 2026?

Post the minutes. How many canvassing brigades have you personally led this quarter? Post photos and metrics.

What was the internal process by which the Carvajal case was handled, and who were then positioned in the board positions?

Post the votes.

Who is filling the vacant slots and under what criteria? Publish the names.

If the answers are as clear as the party deserves, this paragraph is unnecessary and you are fine. If the answers are uncomfortable, then the rank and file is right to be concerned. Transparency is the only answer to suspicion, and in a party that has just won the county after 36 years, we can afford neither.

All parties have internal fights. That is normal. What is not normal is that these fights consume more public energy than the field operation against the adversary, nor that the composition of the board is decided behind closed doors while the volunteers on foot find out by WhatsApp.

The enemy of the Miami-Dade GOP is not the Republican that no one likes. The enemy is the Democratic volunteer who is knocking on your neighbor’s door at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning while you are writing releases.

Brutal truth #3: merits are not asked for in Tallahassee, they are earned on the sidewalk on Miami-Dade streets.

There is a pattern in politics called “the national spotlight trap”: the local leader who starts behaving as if his main job is to get recognition outside his county. A photo op with the president. A retweet from the senator. A speech in Tallahassee. A mention in Florida Politics or The Floridian.

All of that has its value, but it’s no substitute for shoe-soling. No tweet, no matter how well-intentioned, registers a voter in Cutler Bay. No invitation to the Lincoln Day Dinner fills a gymnasium with volunteers at 8 a.m. Saturday. No accolades from Washington knock on a door in Sweetwater.

The merits that matter in Miami-Dade are built here, not collected there. They are earned with published weekly canvassing numbers, with quarterly registration goals, with trained bilingual brigades, with a presence in each of the county’s 34 municipalities. They are earned by publishing a public field scoreboard. If that scoreboard does not exist, or if the opponent’s scoreboard is beating us, everything else is theater.

Brutal Truth #4: Florida is not immune – Tallahassee is also becoming distracted.

Let’s zoom in. Miami-Dade is not an island: it is the largest piece of the state board. And the state board has problems, too.

Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power has been at the helm since January 2024, when he replaced Christian Ziegler amid the scandal that rocked the party. He was re-elected in January 2025 with a landslide vote of 183-19. Under his leadership, Florida celebrated the largest Republican presidential victory since 1988 and expanded the state’s registration advantage to more than a million voters over Democrats. All of that is real and recognized.

But in January 2026, when Republican Rep. Neal Dunn announced he would not seek re-election in the FL-2 congressional district, Chairman Power stated that he was considering running for Congress himself. He ended up filing to run in the August 2026 Republican primary.

That’s his right. What is unclear is how he simultaneously leads the state party heading into the most important midterm in a decade while campaigning in his own district. A chairman can’t be in two places at once. And Florida can’t afford a half-hearted chairman.

The alarms are on:

• Emily Gregory, a Democrat, beat a Trump-endorsed candidate in the district that includes Mar-a-Lago a few weeks ago. Turnout: 29%. Won on message discipline on housing and insurance.
• Brian Nathan, a Democrat and Navy veteran, won the GOP a state Senate seat in West Tampa, despite being outspent by Republicans by more than 7,300 registered voters and Nathan was outspent 10 to 1.
• Democrats have flipped 30 Republican legislative seats nationally since 2024, a trend that respects no state boundaries.
• Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, is actively retooling her machine with an “affordability” pitch that is working because insurance, housing and health care prices continue to rise.
• A new April 2026 poll suggests that Florida could be politically competitive in November, and that voters – when asked directly – lean slightly Democratic in intent for Congress.

Power says it’s “noise.” With respect: calling two consecutive defeats by Trump-endorsed candidates noise, in the state that was supposedly already won, is exactly the attitude that is going to cost us all of Florida. The state chairman has to be on the sidewalk just like the county chairman. And he has to decide whether to run the party or campaign for his district. Both, half done, does not equal one done right.

Brutal truth #5: the national midterm is being played out in districts like ours.

Let’s zoom in one more time. Miami-Dade is not just Miami-Dade. Miami-Dade decides seats in the federal House, and those seats decide who controls the U.S. Congress.

The national arithmetic is relentless. The Senate is 53-47 in favor of the Republicans. In the House, the majority is even narrower. Democrats only need to flip a handful of districts to flip Congress and block President Trump’s entire agenda in his last two years.

In August 2025, Michael Whatley resigned as RNC chairman to run for the Senate in North Carolina against former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, one of the most expensive and hotly contested races of the cycle. He won the primary in March 2026. Joe Gruters, a Florida state senator and close Trump ally, took the reins at the RNC. Gruters is capable, knows Florida like few others, and has the confidence of the White House. But the RNC is coming off major staff cuts in 2024, and the national field operation is more decentralized than ever.

That means one thing: the responsibility for the ground game in each county lies with the counties. No one is going to send cavalry from Washington to save Miami-Dade.

Meanwhile, on the other side:

• UNITE HERE’s Workers Vote PAC raised over $22 million in 2020 alone for independent spending. In 2024 it mobilized more than 2,000 canvassers in ten states and knocked on more than 4.3 million doors with 500,000 direct conversations.
• Democratic victories in Virginia and New Jersey in 2025 were decisive, with the national picture favoring Democrats in off-year elections.
• Vulnerable Republican Senators in 2026 include Susan Collins (ME), incumbent Ashley Moody (FL) vs. Alexander Vindman, and Jon Husted (OH). If two fall, the Senate majority falls.
• In the Florida gubernatorial race, David Jolly, a former Republican turned Democrat less than a year ago, is leading in the Democratic primary and is mounting a serious run against Byron Donalds, the Republican front-runner.

What does any of this have to do with a Republican living in Westchester or Palmetto Bay? Everything. Because every door you knock on in Miami-Dade counts double: it counts for city council, it counts for county commission, it counts for the state House, and it counts for the federal congressional district that could be the hinge between a Republican majority or a minority in Washington in January 2027.

Brutal truth #6: this fight is not going to be easy and it is not going to be fair.

It should be said in plain English: the Republicans still believe that this is a win-win situation.

The left comes with significant structural advantages: a national union (UNITE HERE) with a proven track record in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia; a super PAC that raises tens of millions; a base of immigrant, Hispanic and black women workers who live in the same neighborhoods where they knock on doors; and a message discipline that repeats every weekend, never tiring, never giving up.

All of this is legal. It’s protected by the First Amendment and by the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. The only thing you can do is compete, and to compete you have to be on the street.

The left doesn’t need to win us everything. It’s enough to bite off two or three state House districts, a county commission, one more municipal mayoralty like Miami’s, and two federal Senate seats. With that they say that the red wave is deflated. With that they raise funds for 2028. With that they recover the ground it took us a generation to win.

Brutal truth #7: the rescue plan has 7 points and starts now

It is not a wish list. It is a minimum floor, on three levels.

County level (Miami-Dade):

1. Public field plan before May 1. Chairman Cooper publishes weekly canvassing goals, monthly new voter registration goals, and priority territories by precinct. If there are no public metrics, there is no strategy; there is improvisation.
2. Mandatory street hours for each elected. Every elected Republican – senators, state representatives, commissioners, city mayors – commits to a fixed quota of canvassing hours per month. Whoever does not join, explains himself or herself to the rank and file.
3. Permanent registration brigade on changing demographics. Doral, southwest, Homestead and north county area. Where the Democrat is getting in ahead of us.
4. The internal chapter is closed. The WhatsApp scandals, the leaks between factions, the memes against moderate Republicans they call “RINOs” – it all dies down. Every day fighting on the inside is a day lost on the outside.

Statewide (Florida):

5. Chairman Power decides: either run Tallahassee or campaign in FL-2. Both at the same time, half-assed, doesn’t work. And Florida needs a full-time chairman with a containment plan in districts where we’ve already been bitten (Palm Beach, Tampa) and with urgent resources to protect Senator Moody.

At the federal level (RNC and Congress):

6. The RNC under Gruters puts together a coordinated field operation in the pivot counties, with Miami-Dade leading the way. No more relying on the counties to save themselves: the House loses by razor-thin margins in specific districts, and one of those districts passes through here.
7. Rank-and-file Republicans take on what the apparatus does not. Don’t wait for the party to call you. Call the party. Show up on Saturday. Bring a neighbor. Register three voters. Do whatever it takes. Because the apparatus, at all levels, is distracted.

A light in the darkness: the old guard that is awake

This column began with a silence, but it cannot close without acknowledging those who have already broken that silence on their own, without waiting for the party to summon them.

In Miami-Dade there is a citizens’ initiative – Republicans at heart, mostly from the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan old guard – that meets every Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., in Tropical Park on Bird Road, to support President Donald J. Trump and defend the MAGA agenda, Make America Great Again. They were not called by the chairman. They were not called by Tallahassee. They were not convened by Washington. They convened themselves, because they understand what many in party offices have yet to process: that saving America is not a campaign slogan, it’s a Saturday job.

They are the same ones who made possible Trump’s 55.19% in November 2024. They are the same ones who know what it costs to lose a country, because they already lost one. They arrive with flags of the United States, of free Cuba, of free Venezuela, of Israel. With megaphones. With handmade signs. With children and grandchildren. With no budget, no paid coordinators, no consultants. Only with conviction and four hours of their Saturday.

That is the true base of the party. Those are the people to multiply. If the Miami-Dade GOP wants to understand how to build a real ground game, it doesn’t have to travel to Washington or hire an agency. He has to go to Tropical Park on a Saturday, stand next to those citizens, and ask:

“how can I help you become more each week?”

Because this type of organization -organic, voluntary, citizen, driven by principles and not by payroll- is the only thing that beats the union muscle of the left in politics. It does not win with budget. It does not win with marketing. It wins because it comes from the heart.

To the Republicans at heart who are already in Tropical Park every Saturday: you’ve woken up. Thank you. Now we need to wake up the rest of you.

To ordinary Republicans: the party belongs to you, not to the press releases.

To you, those of you who read this with anger and fear that our hard-won gains may slip away, one last word.

The Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Jews and Hispanic workers who gave this county to the GOP didn’t do it for a T-shirt or a photo op. They did it because they recognized the enemy when they saw it and because they organized to stop it. That memory is not inherited: it is renewed. Every cycle. Every door. Every Saturday at Tropical Park.

The midterms do not forgive those who fell asleep thinking they had already won. The left does not sleep, and that is their most powerful weapon in Miami, in Tallahassee and in Washington. But on the other side there are also people who don’t sleep anymore: they are on Bird Road every Saturday, waving flags that they know well the price of losing. Join them. Let’s wake up at once, on all three fronts, before they set the alarm clock.

This column reflects the author’s views on political strategy in Miami-Dade, Florida and at the federal level in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections.

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