Wednesday, July 22, 2020

On Politics: Miami Mayor Wants to Florida to Mask Up, Too

Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, a Republican, wants President Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis to enfo
Author Headshot

By Lisa Lerer

Politics Newsletter Writer

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.

When Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami contracted the coronavirus in March, schools offered in-person classes, churches held worship services and restaurants were packed with diners. A very prominent patient No. 2 in Miami-Dade County, Mr. Suarez entered isolation just hours before declaring a state of emergency in his home city.

More than four months and 90,000 cases later, Mr. Suarez now finds himself overseeing a city in crisis, as Florida emerges as a new epicenter of the pandemic. In recent days, the state has smashed records for new cases, hospitalizations and death totals from the virus. Dozens of hospitals report that they are out of I.C.U. beds and Mr. Suarez has become a frequent guest on national newscasts, pleading for more state and national leadership.

This week, Mr. Suarez shuttered summer camps and announced beefed up enforcement of his mask-wearing ordinance. A registered Republican, he’s critical of Gov. Ron DeSantis and refuses to say whether he’ll support President Trump in the presidential election in November.

We spoke with Mr. Suarez about what he wants to hear from Mr. Trump, why he thinks the state of Florida should act more like Miami and how his relatively asymptomatic case of coronavirus affected his view of the crisis. (As usual, our conversation has been edited and condensed.)

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Hi, thanks for joining us. Things haven’t been going great in Florida. The death toll from the virus in the state is breaking records, I.C.U.s are at capacity. Are you going to need another stay-at-home order?

In Miami, we’ve implemented a variety of remediation measures over the last 10 days that are starting to bear fruit. The one that’s getting the most attention is the mask-in-public rule that I implemented a few weeks ago. We have, this week, dedicated 39 officers specifically to enforce it. We’re doing a strict enforcement campaign. We closed down our summer camps [on Tuesday]. So we’re trying to see how far this gets us, because — let’s face it — the decisions that are before us are very, very difficult decisions.

One of them is potentially a stay-at-home order, which would cause an untold amount of devastation, particularly to low-wage workers in our community who don’t have the ability to be out of a job. Unemployment now is 11 percent; it was 3 percent when we shut down the first time.

We have, on the one hand, a possibility of putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and, on the other hand, you obviously have a virus that you want to contain. Those are the two difficult extremes.

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As you mentioned, you started issuing citations for people not wearing masks. Why do you think some people refuse to wear masks?

Some of them believe that it’s an infringement on their freedom. I don’t agree with that argument. We are a country of laws, and we implement laws for public safety all the time: our seatbelt laws, our stop sign laws, our red light laws. In the absence of those laws, you have lawlessness. You have disorder. You really can’t have a functional city.

It obviously doesn’t help that our federal and state leaders have not called for any mask-in-public rule. I’ve asked our governor to implement one. He responded that a lot of the urban cities have it already, and that’s true. But I think that there’s a population within our urban cities that listen to him and the president.

You’ve seen the president’s rhetoric changing a little bit over the last week or so. But I think it needs to go further, frankly. There’s a lot of people that will take the path of least resistance not to do something if a leader that they look up to isn’t doing, or isn’t advocating for it.

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As much as you may want to wall off your city, the reality is that viruses spread. And in Florida, Disney is open. The Republican National Convention will happen next month. Is the governor doing enough to slow transmission?

Not only is Walt Disney open and the convention center, but we have an international airport. Our international airport has — on a regular year — 50 million passengers. And even at 10 percent capacity — five million passengers — is double the population of Dade County.

People will often focus on Miami-Dade County as the place with the most cases. But comparatively speaking, we’re doing far better because of our restrictive measures than the state over all. The state’s peak was 1,300 cases. Their recent peak is 15,000 cases. That’s over a 10-to-one ratio. The county had 532 cases. Our peak now at 3,500 cases — that’s less than a seven-to-one ratio. So I think it behooves the state to implement some of the measures that we’ve implemented in Dade County across the board.

Why do you think Governor DeSantis is so resistant to taking those steps?

What he has told me is that all the urban cities have [measures in place]. He’s also told me that he doesn’t want to give a false sense of security because, in his perspective, distancing is more important than wearing a mask. He’s afraid that if people wear masks, they won’t distance. Obviously, there’s a lot of people who speculate that it’s political. I don’t get into that speculation just because, for me, this is not about politics. And I know that sounds a little bit Pollyanna-ish in an election year. But for me, this is about a public health crisis. And I can’t even fathom that it could be political because of what’s at stake.

You might be one of the few with that view.

Look, if it is political, and I’m not denying that it may be political, because, I mean, I did an interview this week where a moderator gave me a hard time. I was complaining about the C.D.C. and they thought I was somehow not critical of the president. And that’s not the way I look at it. It’s like — if someone’s critical of my solid waste department, they’re being critical of me. You know what I mean?

With the president, you never know because he changes his stance. So now he happens to be wearing a mask. Who knows next week what he may do.

What do you want to hear from Mr. Trump?

What I want to hear from him is a masks-in-public rule. What I want to hear from his C.D.C. is guidance on what should cities do that have, like ours, experienced a second wave. What are the metrics for closing? We’ve only gotten guidance for opening, never gotten guidance for closing. Instead of fighting with the C.D.C., he should be asking his C.D.C. to provide us that clear guidance. That’s the kind of leadership that we need.

Just like voters, you’re watching his response. You’re a Republican; does he have your vote?

As mayor of a big urban city, I am definitely watching how he responds to Covid. That is incredibly important to me. I have issues with his opponent, as well. Some of the stances that he’s taken, as well, but I — this is definitely something that I have to analyze, without a doubt.

Are you going to go to the convention in Jacksonville?

I’ve never been to a political convention in my life, believe it or not. So it’s not something that I think too much about, to be honest with you. I’ve actually thought about maybe taking some time off, like a vacation with my family, and I don’t even feel comfortable taking a vacation right now because of the situation in Miami. So if I can’t get away with my family, I don’t know. I haven’t traveled since this all happened, either.

I’d say it’s not likely right now.

Looking toward the fall, the governor is pushing to open schools. The teachers’ union doesn’t agree. They’re suing. Beyond being a father of young kids, you have a personal connection to this issue because your mom is an elementary-school teacher. Where do you come down on school reopening?

I’m very concerned. We had three kids infected in two different summer camps and one counselor infected, so we ended up having to shut down our summer camps.

We’re bending the curve some now, but it’s nowhere near enough to open up that sector of the economy. It is hard for me to imagine that an opening like that is not going to be a potential super-spreader — that worries me.

Obviously, I’m worried for the children, but I’m also worried for the teachers. And I’m worried just for the general community, because what we see is, most of the way this is spreading in our community is one person comes home exposed, and then they expose everybody else in the household.

I believe you had one of the first detected cases in Dade County?

Yeah, I think I was No. 2.

How did that experience inform how you approach your policymaking?

When everybody was struggling to get tested and trying to figure out what this disease meant, I was already on the other side of that equation. I think it put a lot of people at ease, in the beginning, to know that I was OK, that I was doing well, and that it gave them hope that if they got it they would also do well.

The other part of it is it allowed me to understand how a fairly asymptomatic person can be walking around the city getting other people infected. I got off very lucky because they caught it very quickly, so I was able to quarantine from my wife and my two kids. What we’re seeing now is the opposite. We’re seeing people not being able to isolate fast enough for a variety of reasons, and we’re seeing the entire household get infected.

It gave me a perspective that this is something that’s real, that you can get it very easily and through minimal contact, if any. Maybe I shook the person’s hand who had it. Maybe they spoke in my presence. That’s about it. So it is highly, highly contagious.

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We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

… Seriously

An idea ahead of its time. Well, at least on Shark Tank.

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