Florida GOP mayor who campaigned against Trump now rolling out the red carpet for him as he runs for Congress

Miami Mayor Carlos Giminez is a Republican. But being the mayor of a diverse city in South Florida, he has long sought to cast himself as a different sort of Republican, one of the biggest ways being his opposition to President Donald Trump.

When he was running for re-election in 2016, Giminez forcefully condemned Trump in the wake of the release of the "Access Hollywood" tape depicting him boasting about assaulting women. He called on Trump to drop out of the race and said, "I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump, that’s for sure ... I’m voting for Hillary Clinton." None of this escaped Trump, who refused to let Giminez join the welcoming party for Air Force One during a visit to Florida in 2018.

But that was then. In 2020, Giminez is running for Congress against freshman Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. And now, as the Miami Heralddocumented, he is giving the president celebrity treatment.

"Welcome to Miami @realDonaldTrump. Thank you for all you’ve done for our economy & to fight socialism. I look forward to standing w/ you against the radical left who are determined to turn the U.S. into Venezuela," wrote Giminez in a recent tweet. Giminez then met Trump at the airport, and told reporters fondly about a time the two of them went golfing.

Giminez may not have needed to expend much effort getting into Trump's good graces, because even during the presidential run, his son served as a lobbyist for Trump to the Miami-Dade government. "The younger Gimenez lobbied at the municipal level for the Trump Doral and with Trump’s Miss Universe pageant, but said he did no work for Trump at the county," reported the Herald.

Mucarsel-Powell was one of the Democratic lawmakers elected in the 2018 blue wave. She unseated Rep. Carlos Curbelo, widely considered to have been one of the most moderate members of the Republican caucus.