MIAMI — Donald Trump wants to help Republicans by putting himself front and center in next year’s midterm elections.

He tried it in the race for Miami mayor and it didn’t work.

The candidate Trump endorsed in the race, Republican Emilio González, lost by nearly 20 points to Democrat Eileen Higgins Tuesday in a city Kamala Harris barely won last year, and became the city’s first Democratic mayor in three decades.

“For the president to weigh in on a local race like this and to lose is embarrassing,” anti-Trump Republican political consultant Mike Madrid said.

The surge of support in Miami for a Democratic candidate could be a harbinger of what’s to come next year when voters decide which party will control Congress — and Trump’s involvement didn’t stem the tide of Republican losses that began in New Jersey and Virginia last month.

After those losses, Trump’s midterm strategy is to get more involved. He plans to endorse Republicans in races that presidents don’t normally weigh in on, according to his chief of staff Susie Wiles.

“Typically in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting in the White House. You localize the election and you keep the federal officials out of it. We’re actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot,” Wiles said in an interview released Monday by an online show called The Mom View.

Wiles, a longtime Florida Republican political consultant and lobbyist, pointed to last month’s Republican losses elsewhere in the country as evidence of “what happens when he’s not on the ballot and not active.”

“He’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again,” she added. “He doesn’t help everybody, but for those he does, he’s a difference maker.”

On Tuesday night, however, Trump put himself on the Miami ballot and it didn’t make a clear difference: Higgins garnered 59% of the vote Tuesday to González’ 41%.

For Democrats, Tuesday’s results are exactly the type of win against a Trump-endorsed candidate they hope to replicate during the regular election cycle next year.

“Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins’ win is a testament to what Democrats can accomplish when we organize and compete everywhere, including in Miami,” DNC chair Ken Martin said Tuesday night.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee pointed to it as a warning sign to Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, who has recently been openly critical of Trump and called his latest immigration crackdown “un-American.”

“Tonight’s victory proves yet again that Democrats are on offense in some of the most competitive political terrain in the country as we continue to expand the battlefield,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Madison Andrus echoed.

Longtime Florida Democratic consultant Steve Schale said Higgins’ win is clearly not an indicator “Florida is back in play” for Democrats, but he said the significance of Democrats winning a mayoral seat in Miami but that the win can’t be written off as simply an off-year result.

“Her winning is a bigger deal than what happened in New York City,” he said, pointing to Zohran Mamdani’s win over Trump-endorsed Andrew Cuomo.

He also took a long-term view, harkening back to Florida mayoral wins two decades ago that proved to be an early sign of Florida becoming more competitive ahead of Barack Obama winning Florida in 2008.

“Florida looked really uncompetitive after the 2004 presidential election. We had a governor’s race decided by a dozen points. We had a presidential race that wasn’t close,” Schale said. “The first sign that showed that Florida was potentially reverting back to the mean of being a little bit more competitive was a number of mayor’s races in 2005.”

For Democrats, building back a beleaguered party against a Republican party that holds every statewide office and holds a supermajority in the state Legislature is a massive lift that one December election is unlikely to change. But Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried hopes the win will start to convince national investors not to write Florida off as permanently red.

“How can the rest of the nation not wake up and see that we are making progress?” Fried told the Herald ahead of Election Day.

Republicans minimize the loss

Some Florida Republicans insisted that Higgins’ win wasn’t a referendum on Trump and that instead, Trump’s presence in the race wasn’t emphasized enough. Trump’s endorsements were limited to social media posts, not a visit or robocalls, and came after Higgins placed well ahead of González and 12 other candidates during the Nov. 4 general election.

“I actually think [Wiles] has the right formula. Where it failed this time for Miami was that we didn’t push Trump enough,” Miami Republican Executive Committeewoman Angie Wong told the Herald Tuesday night. “I think the messaging was lost in Miami that we had a Trump-endorsed candidate.”

González downplayed the partisan framing of the race — a contest that had both campaigns sending mailers highlighting Trump’s endorsement of González. One Florida Democratic Party mailer told voters to “send a clear message: Trump’s endorsement will be rejected in Miami.”

“I wanted this to be a municipal race,” he said at his Election Night party in downtown Miami about 30 minutes before the results came in. “I wanted this to be about Miami.”

The Republican – who called Higgins a “soft socialist” on the campaign trail– insisted he was also courting Democrats throughout the campaign, and wouldn’t have minded some high-profile Democratic support, too. He was up against a 8,800 Democratic voter registration advantage in the race.

“Hell, I’ll take Biden’s endorsement,” he said of the former president, the one candidate to beat Trump in an election. “When you get endorsed by a president, that means a lot.”

González said he thought the president’s backing galvanized Republicans during the runoff and boosted his party’s motivation to vote. While Democrats cast about 1,200 fewer ballots in the runoff than they did in the first-round election last month, Republicans cast about 1,200 more than they did in November. “More Republicans turned up,” González said.

Both candidates emphasized local issues throughout their campaign, with a focus on rejecting corruption and bringing integrity and honesty to city hall.

Leading up to election day, Republicans lowered expectations for a win. Despite Trump’s endorsement in the race, Florida GOP chair Evan Power called Miami a “Kamala district.”

“We’re fighting there because we’re fighting everywhere,” he said Monday.

Democrats have typically won the city in major elections and lead in voter registration, even though they haven’t held the mayoral seat since the late 1990s. Manny Diaz, mayor from 2001 to 2009, went on years later to be chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, but renounced his affiliation with the party prior to his first election.

Miami Dade GOP Chairman Kevin Cooper cautioned people from making too much of the results.

“The unfortunate result of one campaign,” he said, “is not the unfortunate result of an agenda or of a party.”

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—Miami Herald staff writers Doug Hanks and Tess Riski contributed to this report.

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