- Title / Office:
- mayor (2025-), Miami
- Political Affiliation:
- Democratic Party
Eileen Higgins
Who is Eileen Higgins?
What is Eileen Higgins’s educational background?
What was Eileen Higgins’s career before politics?
What were some of Eileen Higgins’s campaign focuses?
Eileen Higgins is the mayor of Miami. She was elected to the office in 2025, becoming the city’s first female mayor, as well as the first Democrat to win the mayoral race in almost 30 years.
Early years
- Birth date: June 30, 1964
- Birthplace: Dayton, Ohio
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from University of New Mexico, 1987; MBA from Cornell University, 1989
- Best known for: Being the first woman mayor of Miami
- Family: Unmarried. Her parents, Patricia and Cornelius Higgins, attended her swearing in.
- Quotation: “If their streets are flooded, I want public works projects that stop that flooding. If they need affordable housing, I don’t ask what political party they are before we let them take over an apartment.”
Higgins was born in Dayton, Ohio, but moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, as a girl with her parents, Patricia and Cornelius Higgins. Her mother taught Irish dancing when Eileen Higgins was a child. She grew up in a family of readers, telling the Miami Book Fair in 2025, “It wasn’t uncommon to walk into my house and see everyone sitting in a different chair in the living room reading a book.” In 1987 Higgins received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of New Mexico.
From engineer to State Department
After graduating from college, Higgins worked as an engineer. In 1989 she earned a Master of Business Administration from Cornell University and became a marketing executive. In 2006 she shifted careers, serving as country director for the Peace Corps in Belize, where she oversaw a staff of 85 people. She then joined the U.S. State Department, working as a foreign service officer.
Politics
In 2018 Higgins won a seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission, after running a campaign that the Miami Herald described as putting Miami’s “prosperity gap” at its focus. After four years on the commission, she briefly mounted a run for Congress but dropped out less than two weeks later, after learning that state Sen. Annette Taddeo planned to run in the Democratic primary. “I have decided it’s best to continue my service on the Miami-Dade County Commission as we have many important issues to tackle,” Higgins said at the time. “I intend to stand behind a strong leader like Senator Taddeo rather than force an unnecessary primary.” As a commissioner, Higgins focused on issues such as affordable housing and expansion of rapid transit.
In 2025 she ran for mayor of Miami, finishing first in a large field that November, but her margin was not big enough to avoid a runoff against Republican Emilio T. González. (Miami’s incumbent mayor, Francis X. Suarez, was term-limited.) The ensuing race became a proxy battle between national Democrats and Republicans, despite the fact that the Miami mayor’s race is technically nonpartisan.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) aggressively supported Higgins’s candidacy—an unusual move for a local race. “Between now and Election Day, the DNC is all-in to elect Eileen Higgins and ensure Miami families have a champion who is fighting for them, not [U.S. Pres.] Donald Trump,” DNC chair Ken Martin said in November, ahead of the December runoff. Higgins also picked up support from high-profile Democrats including former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego.
Meanwhile, Trump backed González, as did GOP heavyweights including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Higgins campaigned on building more affordable housing units and creating more green space, among other issues. She criticized the Trump administration’s deportation policies and its rhetoric on immigrants—a significant issue in Miami, where more than 70 percent of the population is Hispanic or Latino. She told the Spanish-language newspaper El País, “[Immigrants] are not criminals; they’re part of this community.”
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Higgins wound up scoring an enormous victory over González, winning the December 2025 runoff by about 19 points. Not only did she become Miami’s first woman mayor, she is the city’s first non-Hispanic mayor since the 1990s. In her statement declaring victory, she referenced Miami’s recent corruption scandals, telling voters, “Together, we turned the page on years of chaos and corruption and opened the door to a new era for our city — one defined by ethical, accountable leadership that delivers real results for the people.”
Her victory cheered Democrats across the country, who saw it as a good sign for the party in the 2026 congressional midterm elections, especially after Democratic victories by Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey the previous month. And although it was significant for the city to elect its first Democrat in nearly 30 years, the picture is not quite that clear-cut. Miami’s mayor from 2001 to 2009, Manuel (Manny) Diaz, who ran as an independent, was a Democrat before he ran and afterward became the chair of the state party.
In her December 2025 swearing-in, Higgins was joined by her parents, whom she thanked for instilling her with the values that had guided her: “Get up every day, work hard, and do what’s right.” Speaking in English and Spanish, she said, “My job now is to deliver on your choices…a city defined not by what we say but by what we do.”