Is Mayor Francis Suarez too ‘woke’ for the GOP?

Miami mayor Francis Suarez is running for president, and his opponents already have plenty of attack ad images. The Cuban-American Republican with leading man style might have checked the boxes for an early 2010s GOP. Now it’s 2023 — and it seems no one told Suave Suarez that posing with a Pride flag-emblazoned mayoral sash is way out of style.

Suarez’s Twitter feed is littered with rainbow flag paraphernalia. In June 2021, Suarez posted a video pledging Miami’s support of Pride Month.

The year prior, Suarez signed an “LGBTQ ordinance” to recognize “the decades of contributions by the LGBTQ Miami residents to the economy and diversity of the city!” The ordinance classified LGBTQ-run businesses as minority-owned, giving them access to special benefits, such as small business enterprise training programs.

Back in 2019, Suarez attended a luncheon to celebrate Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resiliency (although Suarez apparently spells it “rememberence”). In a photo posted to Instagram, Suarez posed happily next to several trans women with comically large breasts. Granted, that might score him points with some conservatives.

Cockburn’s favorite image, though, is the one of Mayor Suarez meeting with the 2018 winner of Miss Trans Israel. An article about the event, published in South Florida Gay News, mysteriously redirects users to the site’s homepage. Lucky for us, the photo still shows up in a Google search:

That’s one tall lady!

These images are going to be tough for Suarez to overcome in today’s Republican Party, which is coalescing against celebrating Pride Month because they feel the LGBTQ+ movement has gone way too far. Conservatives are especially vexed by the inclusion of men in women’s spaces on their sports teams, plus so-called “gender affirming care” for minors. Is Suarez ready to stand athwart his own party on this new front of the culture war?