After falling short during the 2025 City of Miami mayoral race, Emilio González did not walk away from politics; he walked more directly into it.
His campaign, which earned the endorsement of President Donald J. Trump along with support from all three of Florida’s leading Republican gubernatorial contenders, Congressman Byron Donalds, Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, and former House Speaker Paul Renner, appears to have offered him a clear view of what is now shaping elections in Miami and Miami-Dade. Not ideology. Not messaging. But mechanics and motivation.
Two gaps in the final election results stood out. A widening gap in vote-by-mail participation between Republicans and Democrats, and a growing enthusiasm gap that determines who actually shows up when it matters.
González doesn’t appear to view either gap as permanent or inevitable. He views them as solvable.
What concerns him is that if they are not addressed now, they will not just affect one race or one city. They will affect the 2026 midterms across Florida.
“The midterms in 2026 are too important to get wrong,” González said. “We have a governor’s race, a U.S. Senate race, our congressional delegation, our legislative majorities, and a lot of important downballot races on the line. Miami and Miami-Dade play a key role in all of that. If we do not deal with the turnout and vote-by-mail gaps here, it will not just cost us a local election. It costs us leverage statewide and nationally.”
González has begun working closely with local Republican leadership, donors, activists, and operatives with a simple objective. Not to reinvent anything, and not to criticize what came before, but to close the gap that has emerged.
“Decades ago, Miami Republicans were in a class all by themselves when it came to vote by mail,” he said. “We were disciplined. We were organized. We understood that you do not wait until Election Day to win elections. We have ceded that ground over time, and it is costing us. If we do not take it seriously again, it will cost us more than just one race.”
González also believes unity will matter just as much as infrastructure. During the City of Miami race, it was widely speculated that Republicans were fractionalized after a bruising first round that functioned like a de facto primary. He does not dwell on that, but he does draw a lesson from it.
“If we are going to succeed in 2026, we have to be unified,” González said. “We are not always going to agree on everything, and that is fine. But once the race is set, once the stakes are clear, we have to be rowing in the same direction. We cannot afford to bring yesterday’s fights into tomorrow’s elections.”
For González, what is at stake in getting 2026 right goes well beyond Florida.
“Protecting the President’s agenda is paramount,” he said. “We have seen what strong leadership can accomplish. The recent success in eliminating a brutal narco-dictator in Venezuela has made our hemisphere safer. That kind of clarity and resolve matters.”
At the same time, González ties national security and foreign policy back to Florida’s own success.
“Florida’s growth did not happen by accident,” he said. “It came from good policy. Education reform. Cutting red tape. Keeping taxes low. Investing in Florida’s rural communities. Watching government waste carefully, not just at the state level but at the local level too. Those choices created opportunity, brought people here, and made Florida strong. If we want that to continue, we have to protect it politically.”
That perspective is what took González to Tallahassee recently, where he met with Speaker Danny Pérez, Senate President Ben Albritton, Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, and Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins. The conversations were not about personal ambition. They were about alignment.
How Miami fits into Florida’s broader political map. How turnout operations interact with statewide priorities. How to make sure local efforts are reinforcing, not working separately from, what the party is trying to accomplish in 2026.
“There is a narrative out there right now that momentum favors Democrats,” González said. “Maybe that is the chatter. But narratives change when people show up. Momentum is not a force of nature. It is built. And if we want to protect what Florida has achieved, we have to earn it again.”
“We have to be here in 2026,” he added. “We have to turn out. We have to make sure the mechanisms are there for people to vote easily, legally, and confidently. That is how you protect an agenda. That is how you protect a direction.”
González is not framing this as a campaign or a comeback. He is framing it as responsibility.
He is not running at something. He is working on something.
And in Florida politics, that distinction matters.
One question that is now be asked in certain Republican political circles is, “Should González be strongly considered to be Lt. Governor of Florida?”
“Colonel Emilio Gonzalez would be an outstanding choice for Lieutenant Governor. I had the privilege of working alongside him during the Miami mayoral race, where I saw firsthand his deep commitment to public service and principled leadership… Emilio brings discipline, integrity, and a proven ability to lead complex institutions while always putting security, accountability, and the public first,” stated Miguel Granda, President of the Miami Young Republicans.
