Carlos A. Giménez

He was redistricted from FL's 26th congressional district.

Carlos Antonio Giménez (born January 17, 1954) is a Cuban-born American politician and retired firefighter serving as the U.S. representative for FL's 28th congressional district.

Giménez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1954 to ranchers from the Oriente province.

In 1960, his family immigrated to the U.S. in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, settling in what became Miami's Little Havana.

Giménez attended Columbus High School near Miami and earned a bachelor's degree in public administration from Barry University.

Giménez joined the City of Miami Fire Department as a firefighter in 1975.

He was appointed fire chief in 1991, the City of Miami's first Cuban-American fire chief, serving until 2000.

Giménez is a former member of the International City Managers Association, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, the National Fire Protection Association, the Florida Fire Chiefs, and the Fire Officers Association of Miami-Dade.

He also served on the Federal Emergency Management Agency Urban Search and Rescue Advisory Committee and as the chair of the Legal Issues Subcommittee.

In 1993, he completed the Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

From May 2000 to January 2003, Giménez served as city manager of Miami proper, appointed by then mayor Joe Carollo, to replace incumbent Donald Warshaw.

He served as a Miami-Dade County Commissioner from 2003 to 2011, and was the fire chief of the City of Miami Fire Department.

In 2004, he was elected as a Miami-Dade County Commissioner for the county's 7th district, beating former mayor of Miami Xavier Suarez.

His district included Miami proper, the Village of Key Biscayne, Coral Gables, South Miami, Kendall, and Pinecrest.

A Republican, he served as mayor of Miami-Dade County from 2011 to 2020.

Giménez was elected mayor of the metropolitan government of Miami-Dade County, Florida on June 28, 2011, in the 2011 Miami-Dade County mayoral special election.

Incumbent mayor Carlos Alvarez had been recalled in one of the largest recall elections of a municipal official in U.S. history.

No candidate got over 50% of the popular vote in the first round, so a runoff election was held.

Giménez won the runoff with 51% of the vote to Julio Robaina's 49%.

During his 2011 campaign, Giménez promised that if elected, he would cut his own salary.

After he was elected, he kept this promise, cutting his own salary and benefits by 50%.

Giménez was reelected in the 2012 Miami-Dade County mayoral election with 54% of the vote against multiple candidates, and in 2016 with 56% of the vote against school board member Raquel Regalado.

Giménez supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

In 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting "sanctuary" jurisdictions that limited or refused to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, ordering a review of their access to federal funding.

Miami-Dade received a letter from the administration that the county had been flagged as a sanctuary jurisdiction.

Giménez then ordered the director of his corrections department to begin honoring all requests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Miami Dade County Board of Commissioners formally codified his order by a 9 to 3 vote.

The Department of Justice later confirmed the county was no longer flagged as a sanctuary jurisdiction.

In December 2018, the Florida Third District Court of Appeal dismissed a lawsuit filed in state court challenging the county's detention policy.

In 2020, he ran as a supporter of President Donald Trump and was endorsed by him.

He was redistricted to the 28th district in 2022.

Giménez serves as one of the Republican assistant whips under Steve Scalise.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, Giménez limited the number of ballot drop locations.

His office sent mail-in ballots to voters later than required by state law.

Before the 2020 election, the Miami Heat sought to make AmericanAirlines Arena the early voting site for downtown Miami.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the NBA had sought to "channel demands for social justice into a voting drive by turning arenas into polling places."

The city was close to signing an agreement with the Heat that included a ban on political advertising in the arena while voting was underway.

Giménez intervened and the city ultimately selected the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, a previous longtime polling location, as Miami's early voting location, citing its proximity to a Metromover station as well as access to ground-level parking.

The Frost Museum site was smaller than the arena and elections staff had not mentioned it on a draft list of 33 early voting sites that the staff worked on to prepare safe voting during a pandemic.

In January 2020, Giménez announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2020 U.S. House election for Florida's 26th congressional district.