Maria Elvira Salazar is calling her Democratic opponent an election denier as her Miami congressional seat heads toward a recount, and the congresswoman who rode Trump’s endorsement into office wants voters to forget how she got there.
Salazar leads former TV anchor Eliott Rodriguez by roughly 1,100 votes in Florida’s 27th Congressional District, a margin of less than half a percentage point. Under Florida law, any race decided by 0.5% or less of the votes cast triggers an automatic recount, which means the ballots get counted again before anyone is officially declared the winner. Two years ago, Salazar won this same district by more than 20 points.
Her statement, posted in English and Spanish, came out swinging. “My opponent is behaving like an election denier, attempting to turn this process into a political circus because he does not like the election outcome,” she wrote. She called her lead “insurmountable” and said she welcomes the recount, as long as Rodriguez lets the Canvassing Board, the local panel that reviews and certifies ballots, do its job.
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Here’s what set her off. Rodriguez demanded that Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Alina Garcia recuse herself from the recount. On election night, Garcia told reporters that “María Elvira is the winner, with or without a recount.” Rodriguez argues that an official who calls a race before the count is finished cannot oversee that count neutrally, and he also raised potential family conflicts. Garcia’s office says she is not stepping aside.
Maria Elvira Salazar calling anyone an election denier is rich. Trump, whose endorsement she sought and received in 2020 and in every race since, spent years falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen. When Republicans in Congress tried to overturn those results in January 2021, Salazar had not yet been sworn in, and she never said where she stood on the effort. Questioning whether a supervisor who prejudged the outcome should run the recount is not the same thing as trying to throw out an election.
Then there’s the record. For most of her time in Congress, Salazar was one of Trump’s dependable allies in Miami. She gave Trump credit for “doing the right thing” on immigration and once called his approach a “new dawn,” comparing him to Ronald Reagan. Rodriguez says she voted to give billions of dollars to ICE and praised Alligator Alcatraz, the detention center Florida built in the Everglades to hold immigrants.
District 27 is about three quarters Hispanic. As Trump’s mass deportation agenda hit Miami, Salazar’s tone changed. She called the administration’s pause on immigration processing for Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans “un-American” and “collective punishment.” In September, seven weeks before Election Day, she stood in front of the White House and recorded an ad speaking straight to Trump, telling him some of his immigration enforcement efforts had gone too far and warning him to be careful what his advisers were telling him. She made a point of saying she was not asking for amnesty.
Trump did not take it quietly. He shared posts on Truth Social calling her a “back stabber” and told reporters he is very strong on the borders and she isn’t. He still said he supports her.
Rodriguez accused her of crying “alligator tears” because Trump’s immigration policy had become poison in her race. Miami-Dade Democrats chair Laura Kelley put it more bluntly: “Trump didn’t mislead Salazar. Salazar misled Miami-Dade.”
The results suggest voters were paying attention. On election night, Maria Elvira Salazar admitted as much, telling supporters her party needs to “course-correct on the economy and on immigration” and saying Hispanic voters punished Republicans for deporting working Latinos with no criminal records. Rodriguez says she helped fund that very policy.
Salazar’s supporters see it differently. She has pushed her own immigration bill, the Dignity Act, which would let some longtime undocumented immigrants stay and work legally, and she broke with Trump in public when most Republicans in Congress would not. Trump says she won her seat because of his endorsement. She is now betting it can survive without his full support.
The first unofficial results in the race are due before noon on Friday, November 7, and any recount would not begin before Saturday.
