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In 2024, Trump solidified years of Republican growth in Florida by drawing in a larger share of Hispanic voters in the state. But those gains are now being tested in districts like this as his popularity plummets nationwide.
Riding on a golf cart as he canvassed through Key Biscayne on Saturday, Rodriguez said he found Salazar’s ad “strange.”
“I was not expecting that, but it tells me that they’re nervous,” Rodriguez said. “She seems to have opened her eyes, but it’s too late. After you vote for all of this, after you vote to fund ICE, after you go ahead with Trump’s tariffs?”
Rodriguez questioned whether Salazar’s internal polling shows a race within the margin of error. He said that could be why she filmed an ad pushing back on Trump this close to the election, a hypothesis some analysts floated as well.
While Salazar’s campaign did not make her available for an interview, in a statement, Salazar dismissed speculation about what her polling shows.
“Every cycle around this time, the Democrat campaign will surface their polling analysis and come November the voters prove them wrong,” she said.
Democrats maintain the ad has been a boon. The Rodriguez campaign said it recorded a haul of about $120,000 last week, double the candidate’s take the week before. But he faces an uphill climb against the well-funded Salazar: According to Federal Election Commission numbers from July, the congresswoman is sitting on a war chest of about $2 million.
Democrats point out that it wasn’t too long ago that the area went blue. The county voted for their party in every presidential election between 1992 and 2020. A new congressional map has changed the shape of the district this year, however, and the area is now home to many of the Latino voters who helped lead Republicans to victory in 2024. The Cook Political Report still rates the race as “likely Republican.”
For his part, Trump chided Salazar for the ad on Friday, arguing that she would not have been elected had it not been for his endorsement. But the president notably spared Salazar from the louder, more aggressive reprimands he has unleashed against others in his party who have publicly criticized him.
On Sunday, Salazar told CBS that she had “a fantastic conversation” with Trump following the ad and that she reiterated the message she shared in the video. Salazar said Trump was “very receptive” to her message about the need for a new deportation strategy and broader immigration restructuring.
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement activities have had a marked effect on Salazar’s district. Venezuelan, Haitian, Cuban and Nicaraguan immigrants make up a vast swath of the immigrant workforce in the area. Tens of thousands of these immigrants, who were living across South Florida legally under humanitarian parole programs and Temporary Protective Status, lost their immigration protections after the Trump administration ended them.
Residents complained about immigrant-owned businesses shutting down and neighbors being deported following intense Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
Nationally, the Trump administration has said it has deported 600,000 people since January 2025. The administration’s critics say the effort has been overly aggressive, and its deportation strategy drew widespread scrutiny following the deaths of Americans during enforcement actions in Minnesota this year.
Back in Salazar’s district, several Republican voters said they approved of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.
“The people who voted for Trump — the 70 or so million — one of the reasons was because they wanted to get all the illegal people out of here,” said South Miami resident Richard Santos, 80, in an interview outside of the city’s iconic Versailles restaurant. Santos said that he voted for Salazar in the past but that he’s no longer supporting her because she challenged the president.
For many of the district’s Republicans, the calculus is very simple: You’re either with Trump or you aren’t. And to some of these voters, Salazar’s ad was proof that she’s trying to stay in power by having it both ways.
“She just did it because she wants to keep her seat in Congress,” said Julio Perez, 54, as he smoked a cigarette outside of Versailles alongside Santos.
Correction - A previous version of this article misstated the number of people deported by the Trump administration.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/09/23/after-publicly-criticizing-trump-rep-mara-elvira-salazar-faces-backlash/