Press Escape to close the menu.
In races across the country, Democrats focused on promises to make life more affordable — even as they offered contrasting approaches.
Eileen Higgins celebrates at a watch party after winning the Miami mayoral runoff election, Dec. 9, 2025. | Lynne Sladky/AP
MIAMI — For the first time in years, Democrats may have found an economic message that works across their fractured coalition — from the party’s loudest activists to its most buttoned-up centrists.
Eileen Higgins won Miami’s mayoral race on Tuesday with a technocratic, steady-governing pitch to stabilize a city straining under soaring costs. A detail-oriented mechanical engineer who nerds out on city planning, Higgins stood out among her peers for her pragmatism and calm demeanor even during dramatic debates. A few weeks earlier in New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won on a platform built around universal child care, free buses and a sweeping rent freeze, effectively harnessing his sharp retail-politics skills to get his message across.
