Miami: Democrats may have finally found an economic message that resonates across their disparate coalition, from its most liberal members to its most buttoned-up centrists, breaking through in recent years of factional tension around the party’s future.
On Tuesday, Eileen Higgins won the mayoral race there with a technocratic, steady-governing pitch that included stabilizing a city strained by soaring costs. A detail-oriented mechanical engineer who nerds out on city planning, Higgins was a voice of reason among her peers for her pragmatism and composure in the face of sometimes dramatic disagreement.
Last month, in New York City, for instance, the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani rode to victory with a platform that combined universal child care with free buses and a sweeping rent freeze — anchoring his sharp retail-politics talents around his message.
The agendas and styles couldn’t be more different — but the animating theme was the same: affordability. And their wins, along with others in New Jersey and Virginia, illustrate the way that the price of ordinary life has turned into a rare matter capable of uniting the party’s left and center. But the theme also papered over deep divisions within the party. Democrats are winning on “affordability,” but they’re setting it up very differently.
To party officials, the throughline is clear—and increasingly central to how Democrats want to frame the midterms.
“This is going to be a help to the Democratic Party, and to continue our argument that middle-class and working-class people in this country are fed up with struggling every single day and trying to make ends meet, being able to pay their bills,” Democratic National Committee finance chair Chris Korge said in an interview with POLITICO.
It’s a flip of the script because Donald Trump acknowledged where Americans were hurting in his presidential campaign and promised to lower the cost of groceries, electricity, and gas, as well as to cut taxes. Now , Democrats are also recognizing the pain points of those voters, but with very different ideas for addressing them. Their proposals could give various hopefuls multiple lanes to take on the issue in 2026, even as the party continues to grapple with vast ideological divides.
In Miami, which had already grown far more expensive in recent years, as wealthy residents of blue states moved in to escape previous changes in the federal tax law and Covid lockdowns, jacking up the price for everyone else by outbidding them for land bids, Higgins’s number one promise was to build more housing quickly.
Asked about the key to her success in an interview Thursday on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” she didn’t skip a beat: “affordability.” Higgins said she was hearing the same anxiety everywhere — in small businesses struggling with tariff-induced price hikes, in hair salons where the cost of extensions has jumped by $20.
“Everybody is talking about it,” she said. “You can go to a hair salon and the price of extensions is 20 extra dollars. Do they take a haircut on their profits, or do they pass along an extra $20 to their Little Havana customers? Neither of them has that kind of money.” So affordability is all over the place.”
Her campaign adviser, Christian Ulvert, said in a post-mortem that Higgins had proposed an image of “competent governance” and a “steady, technocratic approach,” often contrasting that vision with what he described as the chaos and instability of the city’s government under Ms. Suarez. Higgins herself had been making that case on the trail, telling POLITICO in an interview that she had a list of to-do items in a spreadsheet.
Another centrist Democrat, Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, also leaned into an economic message to secure a win over GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in November. The residents of her state in the D.C. suburbs were particularly battered by Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce and an extended shutdown, during which many had no choice but to report to work despite not receiving paychecks.
The state also has a large number of data centers that store and process online information but consume vast amounts of energy, thereby increasing power bills. “In my affordable Virginia plan, we would be increasing energy production, including wind and solar,” she wrote in a recent Medium post. Spanberger added that data centers should “pay their fair share” of electricity costs.
Though on a smaller scale, what Higgins and Spanberger were doing was reminiscent of the New York City mayoral race, where Mamdani launched an improbable, and shockingly successful, campaign by staying comically focused on a few pocketbook issues.
Mamdani offered universal child care, free buses, more affordable housing, and a suite of new city-owned discount grocery stores. He also supports freezing rent for about 2 million residents living in apartments regulated by a municipal board. Mamdani himself has scant power to make his dreams a reality, but he and his army of volunteers have won over the likes of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who holds near-total control over the state budget and has pledged to work with the incoming mayor.
Bill Gates on vaccine conspiracy theories, AI and global health | The Conversation squad 2020 02 May 2020 Bill Gates is optimistic about the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
Across the Hudson, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill similarly leaned heavily on a pledge to lower costs in her November blowout win over Republican Jack Ciattarelli. Among her more signature policy promises was a pledge to declare a state of emergency on the first day in office to halt skyrocketing utility rates.
Sherrill and her allies also went on offense about the economy during the campaign, dialing up an attack that painted her opponent as “high tax Jack” in the final weeks. Though surveys showed a close contest, she won by 14 points. Polling toward the end of the race also found that Sherrill had an advantage on some issues Democrats have long had problems with, including the cost of living, taxes, and energy costs.
Sherrill also took pains to connect economic hardship in the district to Donald Trump — the effect of his administration’s tariffs on New Jersey, among them — and to blame him for not fulfilling campaign promises. This strategy helped her win over voters who voted for the president last year.
Trump, in the past few weeks, has voiced frustration that Democrats aren’t messaging — and declared in an interview with POLITICO, “I give me an A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” grade for the economy. He visited battleground Pennsylvania earlier this week for a speech designed to tamp down anxiety about the economy, though he went off-script at times.
As for Higgins, she rarely uttered a peep about Trump, who endorsed her GOP rival, unless reporters brought it up. Even on immigration, she frequently cited Florida laws that require cities to assist the federal government in implementing its policies. Asked in November by POLITICO whether she considered her opponent, Emilio González, “MAGA,” she paused before citing González’s own comments on the issue, in which he extolled MAGA policies as common sense.
And the most pressing issue she had raised about the Trump presidential library planned for downtown wasn’t ideological at all, but rather a lost chance to boost the city’s bottom line.
“We gave away very valuable land to a billionaire for nothing,” she said in a debate on CBS Miami. “We could have sold that land, created cash out of that land, and paid for all the things they’ve cut,” she continued, mentioning such items as funds for food aid and affordable housing projects, resiliency initiatives, and mass transit. “How is it that our state can be giving away money that we need to make our community better?”
