FL-26: Mucarsel-Powell is a candidate of firsts. She'll need another one to beat Gimenez.
Miami Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has built her short political career on a list of firsts. The first South American elected to Congress. The first non-Cuban to represent her district since the 1980s. And, after her 2018 election, part of the first Congress with more than 100 women members.
Jill Biden, wife of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, highlighted those accomplishments during a recent campaign event with two other first-time, Latina congresswomen, Texas Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Veronica Escobar.
“You’re all first,” Biden said. “The first Ecuadorean-American and South American member, and the first two Latinas to represent Texas. And you’ve shown such courage during your time in the House, demanding accountability, raising up the voices of the unheard, and demonstrating a kind of sisterhood we don’t see enough of.”
But unlike Escobar and Garcia, who represent safe Democratic districts in El Paso and Houston, Mucarsel-Powell will need to make another first if she wants a second term. She’ll have to defeat an opponent, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who has never lost an election in a political career that stretches back to 2004.
And that’s likely to be a fight all the way to Election Day. Polls indicate that the election to represent Florida’s left-leaning 26th Congressional District, which includes Miami’s western and southern suburbs along with the Florida Keys, is tightening, making it an outlier nationwide among districts represented by first-term lawmakers.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article245807635.html#storylink=cpy
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