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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again everyone. As the democratic convention is about to end and the Republican convention is about to begin, we're joined now by Mayor Francis Suarez from the hot City of Miami. It's politically hot in the 2020 election, and it's a Coronavirus hot zone and obviously those things intersect.

Mayor Suarez is a registered Republican, but Miami elects its mayor in a nonpartisan election and from what I understand, Mayor Suarez says he voted for neither Clinton nor Trump in 2016. Mr. Mayor, I appreciate you coming on with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Mayor Francis Suarez: Thank you so much, Brian. It's an honor to be with you.

Brian: I should mention that people may not know, you had the Coronavirus yourself, so you've got that personal experience to go on right now as well with whatever else you're doing. For the sake of people around the country, who don't know you and don't know how Miami elects its mayor, would you first introduce yourself politically a little bit, how much a Republican, how much an independent and what it means in the context of Florida's sometimes very divisive politics?

Mayor Suarez: Yes, sure. I was elected in 2017 in November as you said in a nonpartisan election. I was blessed to be elected by 86% of the residents of the City of Miami, and it is a nonpartisan seat. The thing that we do as a government oftentimes, police our streets, respond to fire rescue calls, fill potholes and pick up garbage, are not often partisan issues.

Obviously, any political office, it's very difficult to not be in some sort of a partisan lens, and things like sea level rise, climate change, the environment or things that in addition to, obviously, the pandemic, are things that have a tendency to get political as we try to solve a lot of these problems that are in many cases macro problems. My philosophy is to solve problems, is to be a problem solver.

That oftentimes requires, number one, to be able to create consensus with people who are not from your party or who maybe don't share every single value on every single issue that you may have. I think the other thing is to focus on problems as something that can be solved, not as something that is owned by a particular ideology or party. Oftentimes people think that because somebody is labeled or has labeled themselves a Republican or a Democrat, they must think this way about all these issues.

I just think life is a little more complex than that. People are a little more complex than that. We're not quite that-- life is not about a dichotomy. People have a variety of different perspectives on a variety of different things as to why, based on life experiences. I think one thing that happens also with a two party system is, there's this perspective or perception that you can't change your mind on something as you go through life and experience things differently, and decide something works versus something that doesn't work.

Brian: Let me ask you a little bit about different blocks of Florida voters this year, and how you as an independent see them. I read that you're actually the first mayor of Miami ever actually born in Miami, which seems crazy in 2020. Some people may remember your father Xavier Suarez was mayor in the 1980s, but he was born in Cuba. What would you say about your generation of Cuban American voters in Florida, less reliably Republican than generations past?

Mayor Suarez: I would say that's true. I think what people don't understand about Miami-Dade County, and the City of Miami is the largest city of Miami-Dade County. It gets sometimes confusing because Dade County a few years ago added on Miami, which created a bit more confusion. I'm the first father-son mayor in the history of our city. He was the first Cuban born mayor in the history of our city and I'm the first as you said, Miami born mayor.

That does give us a tremendous amount of perspective. I think what you see in Miami is, you're finally seeing people who are homegrown, having opportunities to grow businesses, to start businesses, and to lead in our city. Our city and our County is interesting because the County is predominantly in a presidential election Democrat, and so is a city, frankly but in off-year elections, it can through turnout be slightly Republican. There is very, very large and concentrated Cuban Republican group. Although as you also mentioned, that is something that generationally is changing as Cuban-Americans that are born here in the United States, look at politics through a little bit of a different lens. It's not such a Cuba centric lens, they look at it through more of a domestic policy lens.

Brian: Yes, so briefly, because I want to get onto the Corona virus and mail and voting in Florida. When Obama opens more relations with Cuba and Trump closes them up again, do you think anybody in that political battle wins, speaking in terms of 2020 Florida votes?

Mayor Suarez: That's a good question. I think it's a slight win for Trump, frankly. If you look at it as a strictly political decision, I think Obama tried to see it as a legacy public policy decision that in the Iran deal, a legacy foreign policy decision. I don't think he looked at it through the lens of a political campaign. If you look at Trump's decision, not just on Cuba buton Venezuela, they, I'm sure from his perspective are good policy, but they're probably also good politics of vis-a-vis Miami, and having a strong very enthusiastic core of supporters that would support those policies.

Brian: All right, so you still think that's a bit of a win for the Republicans? [crosstalk]

Mayor Suarez: I do. Slightly, yes.

Brian: If you are in Miami, listeners, we invite your calls, or if you're anywhere else we invite your calls for Miami Mayor, Francis Suarez, mostly on the politics of Coronavirus in Florida in the 2020 election on mail-in voting, or anything else you want to ask. We'll have time for just a few phone calls in the time slot that we have available, but if anybody wants to call in from Miami or about Florida politics in 2020, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

President Trump, as you know Mr. Mayor, is discouraging voting by mail in most places where I guess he feels it's not in his interest, but he's encouraging it in Florida where I presume he thinks it is. He touts Florida as having a very good vote by mail system. Do you agree with him at least on that? And maybe you could describe it for Americans elsewhere like Florida is getting it right, maybe it can help every state get it right.

Mayor Suarez: Well, I don't know what the difference is between Florida's mailing system and anybody else's. I can tell you that anyone who wants to get a ballot by mail, as opposed to what used to be called an absentee ballot, where you either were not going to be there on election day, or you had some physical ailment or you had some other-- you had to justify voting by what they call absentee.

Now there's just the ability to vote by what they call mail-in vote, which you just ask for a certain number of days before the election, you receive it in the mail, you vote and you put it in the mailbox. The good thing about Florida system, and I don't know all the different- [crosstalk]

Brian: That's not any different than what they're going to do in New York or a lot of other States.

Mayor Suarez: Right. I presume it's not. In Miami-Dade County, and I don't know what the technology that's available throughout the country, but one of the good things about Miami-Dade County is that you can actually, what they call track your ballot. You can track when it arrives at your house, and they have this tracking system, and you can also track when it is received by Miami-Dade County.

I think that's important because everyone who I'm sure fills out about it, puts their stamp on it and puts it in the mail, wants to make sure that their ballot actually arrives and is actually counted. That's something that may or may not be, but I can tell you this, we just had a mayoral primary on August 18th, two days ago. I can tell you that generally speaking, Democrats did better on election day than they did in absentee and early voting.

In part, I think, because of what Trump was saying, even though he sort of course corrected on Florida, the numbers, and I think there's a Coronavirus impact on this too, the numbers shifted dramatically. Democrats voted in much, much greater proportion in early voting and in absentee, particularly in absentee or mail-in voting. Then you saw a little bit of a Republican skew on election day, so his rhetoric literally shifted.

This is a county mayoral race with hundreds of thousands of votes. It actually shifted the entire way that the voting history is in Miami. So, that's significant.

Brian: Did your father win that race?

Mayor Suarez:: He did not, unfortunately. He did a great job, unfortunately he did not win the race.

Brian: You almost got to be in the unique position of you being the mayor of Miami City and your father being the mayor of Miami-Dade County. To the point you were making with older people so susceptible to the worst effects of the virus. A thousand deaths a day in the US this summer from the virus, way more than all of Europe combined, and with Trump continuing to downplay it and call it an American success story, and say the death toll is what it is.

Do you see this affecting another constituency in Florida, older, mostly white voters who've retired to the state from the North who have voted Republican in the past?

Mayor Suarez: Yes, I, and wouldn't just single out older voters, I would say even Republican voters. I think a lot of Republican voters are very worried about coronavirus and have been very worried about coronavirus. My wife is one of them, she's Republican, but she's extremely coronavirus worried. She pays very close attention to how the elected officials react and deal with the coronavirus.

If she feels that someone is downplaying the coronavirus or is not giving it the seriousness that it deserves, that's not a good thing for her as a voter. If you see the president, he now is doing his daily briefings again and he stopped doing that for a long, long time. I think he has recognized or probably been advised that if he doesn't give coronavirus the attention that it deserves, it could really cost him in November.

Brian: Obviously Miami and Florida in general are coronavirus hotspots right now and your Republican governor, Ron DeSantis gets lots of national attention. I don't know if you see the national media. I'm sure he gets constant attention in your local media but lots of national attention for aggressively reopening, even in the face of that and saying, he's not going back into lockdown, but you as mayor make some of your own calls for the city.

Why do you think that Florida has seen a surge this summer and frankly, how do you think that plays to Biden's advantage or to Trump's advantage for November?

Mayor Suarez: We definitely were much more conservative than the state. We were literally the last city in the state to open and I was criticized for that by some, obviously, with this kind of an issue, you get criticized for either position and so, you have to really be comfortable with the decision that you're making.

From our perspective, we just feel that because of the density of the city, it was very important for us to be as careful and cautious as humanly possible, understanding that there is impact on both sides. There's certainly impact, if you do not remain closed it could cost lives. If you maintain yourself closed, it could also create a loss of jobs and other kinds of difficult situations for your residents. Oftentimes we don't put both decisions in that perspective.

In terms of the presidential race, I think if Florida and the country, frankly, for that matter remains in this continual danger of coronavirus and if it's not contained and if the economy continues to flounder, that's something that could absolutely affect his performance in Florida. People don't notice about Florida because they see that Florida has a Republican governor, two Republican US senators and a Republican house and a Republican Senate.

There's this natural thought that Florida is Republican, but the truth of the matter is that the Republican governor's race was decided by 30,000 votes, which is an infinitesimally small number of votes when you consider that 4 million people voted. You've got the US Senate race was decided by 14,000 votes, and then you had an Ag commissioner who was a Democrat who won by 4,000 votes. He had three statewide elected officials and there was a 34,000-vote differential between the Republican and the Democrats.

It could have easily been a democratic governor, a democratic us Senator and a democratic Ag commissioner, which would have completely changed the narrative of Florida. I think that's why Florida is the largest state that's up for grabs in the presidency. It's probably the crown jewel, both candidates.

Brian: With those narrow margins that you just described, let's see, it took until I think December 11th in 2000 to count the votes between Bush and Gore, with all the mail-in ballots. [crosstalk] How long do you think it's going to take this year?

Mayor Suarez: Well, let's see when the election is, because that's not committed to having it on election day, and that's obviously a joke.

Brian: I understand.

Mayor Suarez: I hope and pray that there's obviously a swift and that things go smoothly on election day. Since the 2,000 debacle, certainly, I think all the counties in Florida have stepped up their game. There have been some issues with some other counties, but certainly, Miami-Dade has stepped up its game. Technology has allowed us to be much better than we were back then. Back then everything was those little charts and analyzing hanging charts.

Now, everything is basically electronic and is sent up at the same time. We get election results in Miami-Dade by pretty large certainty by about 9:00 PM, when the polls close at 7:00 PM. My hope obviously is that we don't have to do anything like that in the future.

Brian: Going back to so much paper with the mail-in. Let me take one phone call for you before we run out of time.

Mayor Suarez: Sure.

Brian: Here's Ael calling from Miami Beach. Ael, you're on WNYC with the Mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez. Hi.

Ael: Hi, how you doing?

Brian: Good.

Ael: I've got one quick question. Really, it seems to me, I hear totally what the mayor saying, that people from Florida are sort of open to all things. My dad is a strong liberal and I went the other way. I just wanted to know, things in the beginning they started out, people with the original models about COVID-19 seemed like they were going to be really bad. Then it all turned out not to be as bad as we thought and that could be because of preventative measures.

Just the question is, is there a way-- going forward things don't look like they're going to be that bad even without the preventive measures. I would think and people are waiting, anxious, it's really disrupting my life and a lot of people's lives in untold way. I just wanted to know, is there a way we could just try to get things back to normal as fast as possible?

Brian: Ael, thank you very much. Well, can I just put him in political context? He identified himself as a conservative, and then said, things are not turning out to be that bad. I don't know if that's the scientific analysis, or at this point, the country is dividing up politically, but it doesn't sound to me like a scientifically accurate analysis. What do you say as Mayor of Miami?

Mayor Suarez: I'll give you what I would consider to be a little more of a scientifically accurate analysis. We closed at about 500 new cases per day. That was our high watermark. When we opened that shot up very, very quickly to a high watermark of about 3,500 new cases per day. That was about a 700% increase. We implement and then instead of re-implementing a stay-at-home order, which we could have done, but would have been probably more devastating on the economy.

Once we had already opened up, we did scale back some things and implement certain remediation measures that we had not before. The county closed indoor dining. They implemented a 10:00 PM curfew to avoid what was happening with some restaurants that were starting to act like nightclubs with major congregations. The beaches have been closed periodically. Probably the most important thing that we did was we implemented a masking public rule and we fine people for not wearing it.

We closed businesses that didn't comply with the rules. We're very, very strict on enforcement. Those four mitigation factors are what I feel are responsible for bringing us from 3,500, which was that peak, and by the way 20% positive, we're now down to about 10% positivity level 11%, and somewhere in the 1,200 to 1,000 cases per day range. We've dropped significantly, but we're still twice as high as we were when we implemented the stay-at-home order.

We're obviously seeing a tremendous amount of progress. We're very hesitant right now to make too many changes, because we're not quite out of the woods yet.

Brian: That's some of the science. We've got one minute left. As an independent-minded, registered Republican who voted for neither Clinton nor Trump in 2016 you say, is this Democratic Convention swaying you at all with the Colin Powells or the John Kasichs,or anything else they're doing?

Mayor Suarez: For me, I think, first of all, it's tough when you're in an elected office, which is a nonpartisan office. This is such a polarizing election, where you have essentially 30% of either side, if not more, that really dislikes the other side and feels like if you support one person or the other, you're a bad person to the other side. It's hard to be a mayor and get 80% or 90% of the support of your city when you're picking sides.

That's something that I'm conscientious because I serve my whole city. My role right now is nonpartisan, not a partisan role. I've never run for partisan office. I may in the future but right now, I serve as a nonpartisan actor. I want to be as embracing of that and of my residents without offending them. That's the lens that I look at it through.I think what the Democrats have to do and what the Republicans are doing is they're painting them as socialist.

That's something that in Miami is not, even with Democratic Hispanics, it's something that could be a lightning rod. If Democrats don't do a good job of saying that they're not that, and that they're really a party of trying be more equitable, then I think they could have some problems in Florida.

Brian: The mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it and good luck down there.

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