Salazar retains Florida seat after recount confirms 1,000 vote lead over Rodriguez
The Miami district representative won re-election despite a public feud with the president over immigration enforcement.
By Simon Bennett ·
María Elvira Salazar has secured a second term in Congress for Florida’s 27th District.
NBC News projects the victory following a recount completed one week after Election Day. The final tally shows Salazar defeating Democratic challenger Eliott Rodriguez by approximately 1,000 votes.
The campaign was defined by a sharp disagreement between the Republican incumbent and President Donald Trump regarding immigration. Salazar drew national attention in September when she released a television ad criticizing the administration’s deportation tactics. She argued that many Hispanics felt betrayed by the crackdown and that the policy had gone too far, particularly in targeting individuals without criminal records.
Trump, who carried the heavily Hispanic district by 15 points in the 2024 presidential election, reacted by amplifying social media posts that labeled Salazar a backstabber. He called for her replacement as the GOP nominee. Rodriguez, a former local news anchor, seized on the rift to attack Salazar’s standing within the party. He described her as so politically toxic that even Trump was distancing himself from his problem child.
Despite the public friction, Trump never officially rescinded his initial endorsement of Salazar. The district remains a key political area for the president. Miami-Dade County, which Salazar’s district spans, saw Trump become the first Republican presidential candidate to win the region in 36 years during the 2024 cycle. The area is also set to host Trump’s presidential library.
Miami serves as a central point for federal deportation efforts, with more than 130,000 pending removal cases, the highest number of any county in the nation. Salazar’s district includes multiple working-class Hispanic enclaves as well as some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country. The seat is also home to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who previously served as a U.S. senator.
Salazar first won the seat in 2020 in an upset over former Health Secretary and University of Miami President Donna Shalala. That initial victory signaled the rightward shift in the Miami area that has continued through the subsequent election cycles. The next step in the process is the formal certification of the recount results.
