National Democrats are piling into a South Florida House race they barely discussed a year ago.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries will campaign in Miami on Friday for Eliott Rodriguez, the former CBS Miami anchor, days after the party elevated him to its top tier of pickup targets, as Republican Representative María Elvira Salazar fights to hold a district Trump won by 15 points in 2024.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Red to Blue program, which Rodriguez recently joined, gives candidates fundraising, staff and strategic support in the races the party sees as its best chances to flip.
Florida's 27th Congressional District became a symbol of Republican gains among Hispanic voters during the Trump era. But this fall, an immigration crackdown hit the district hard, Salazar clashed publicly with the president, and polls began showing a tight race.
"As things stand, this race is likely to come down to only a few hundred votes, so every conversation we have over the next few weeks could be the tipping point that helps Democrats win back the House," the Rodriguez campaign said in an email to Newsweek on Thursday.
Why Hakeem Jeffries Is Campaigning in Miami Before Early Voting
Jeffries and Rodriguez are scheduled to hold a joint campaign appearance and take questions from local and national reporters Friday morning in Miami-Dade County. Early voting in the county opens Monday, and mail ballots are already coming back.
"Once someone has voted, our chance to reach them is gone," the campaign said.
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The Cook Political Report has moved the race two categories since the spring, from Solid Republican to Lean Republican, though it still says Salazar's fundraising edge gives her the advantage. The DCCC lists the seat among six Florida districts it is targeting.
Rodriguez, the son of Cuban immigrants, has lived in the district since 1968. It covers parts of Miami, Coral Gables, Kendall, Key Biscayne and Pinecrest and is roughly 74 percent Hispanic. He told Newsweek earlier this month that the numbers were what pushed him in.
"The polling shows that I can beat María Elvira Salazar. So, I said, yeah, I'll do it," he said.
What Polls Show in the Salazar vs. Rodriguez Race
No independent pollster has surveyed the race, and the polls released so far were all commissioned by Democrats, but they point to a tight contest.
A Tulchin Research poll of 600 likely voters, commissioned by the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC and conducted September 8 to 13, gave Salazar a 47 percent to 46 percent lead. A Bendixen & Amandi International poll commissioned by Rodriguez's campaign and conducted August 25 to 30 found the race tied at 45 percent. The same survey found Trump with a 10-point net negative rating in the district, with 47 percent of voters saying they wanted someone new in Congress, compared with 44 percent who said Salazar deserved re-election.
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Prediction markets have also shifted. On September 1, Polymarket gave Salazar an 82 percent chance of winning, while Kalshi put her odds at 78 percent. Both had dropped her to 64 percent by late September, and Kalshi gave her a 66 percent chance as of Thursday.
Still, Florida pollsters have long warned that surveys in South Florida often miss the mark on Election Day, and the district's recent voting history favors Republicans. Trump won it 57 percent to 42 percent in 2024, after beating Joe Biden there by less than a percentage point in 2020. Senator Rick Scott carried the district by 14 points in 2024, and Republicans won every statewide race there in 2022 with at least 57 percent of the vote.
A Rodriguez victory would make him the first Democrat to win the seat since 2018.
María Elvira Salazar's Break With Trump on Immigration
Salazar, a former Telemundo anchor, flipped the seat in 2020 as Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade swung toward Trump, and she held it twice with his backing. For years she played two roles at once: a dependable vote for the president and the House Republican most associated with immigration reform.
After the 2024 election, she celebrated Trump's gains with Hispanic voters, noting that Miami-Dade had gone for him by more than 10 points. The following summer she told Newsweek that Republicans, with control of both chambers, had a "historic opportunity to fix the immigration system." That same year she voted for Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included $75 billion for ICE.
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Trump endorsed her re-election early in 2026. By then the immigration enforcement push was landing in her district. ICE's Miami field office has made more than 41,300 arrests since Trump returned to office, more than any other in the country, and Cuban and Venezuelan families have been caught up in it.
Salazar called for an immediate review after immigration agents detained Luis Galeano, an exiled Venezuelan journalist. Then she released an ad filmed outside the White House.
"Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far," she said, citing figures that half the roughly 50,000 people ICE detained in July had no criminal record. Hispanics who backed him in 2024 feel betrayed, she warned, while steering much of the blame toward his advisers.
Trump answered the next day. "I disagree with her," he said in the Oval Office, adding that he still backed her. He also said she "wouldn't have gotten elected" without him and had gotten "a little bit softer on the border."
Salazar kept pressing on CBS's Face the Nation. She described a "very good conversation" with the president. "Please preserve that fortune that you have brought to the party," she said she told him.
The truce was short. On the weekend of September 26, Trump shared a Washington Post story about the backlash against her and then reposted 13 messages from X users attacking her. One branded her a "back stabber." Another said Trump "must remove his endorsement of her," and two others called for a primary challenge. Salazar already won her August primary, so Trump cannot swap her off the ballot, though he could back a challenger in 2028.
Rodriguez Turns Salazar's Trump Feud Into a Campaign Issue
Rodriguez wrote on X that Salazar's "desperate political stunt" had left her "a MAGA orphan." Days later, in his interview with Newsweek, he put it another way: "Welcome to Hotel MAGA. You can check in, but you can never leave."
He argues she still votes with Trump nearly every time and dismisses her Dignity Act, which would give undocumented immigrants with no criminal record who pay taxes a renewable legal work status, as "the Indignity Act."
Late last month the Miami Herald editorial board endorsed Rodriguez. Salazar replied on X that the paper's endorsement "has become the kiss of death for candidates who get it." She has turned down the three debates Rodriguez's campaign proposed, two in English and one in Spanish.
She still has the bigger war chest. As of the July 29 Federal Election Commission filing, Salazar had about $2.26 million in cash on hand, against roughly $325,000 for Rodriguez. His campaign said Thursday that Republican groups are "spending heavily to save her."
What Florida's 27th District Means for the Battle for the House
Democrats need a net gain of three seats to retake the House, and forecasters expect them to clear that bar with room to spare. The Cook Political Report shifted 18 House races toward Democrats last week and now projects a Democratic gain of nine to 19 seats. By Cook's math, the party would need to win only about one in five of the races it rates as toss-ups to reach a majority. Decision Desk HQ's model gave Democrats a 75 percent chance of winning the chamber in early October, with an average of 234 seats across its simulations.
Republicans are expected to claw back some ground through the mid-decade redistricting they pushed in Florida and Texas, and Decision Desk HQ has flagged several of those redrawn seats as likely GOP pickups. National Democrats are hunting in Republican-held districts like Salazar's partly for that reason: a win there would pad a narrow majority and help offset losses elsewhere on the map.
Miami would also give Democrats something a suburban pickup in another state could not: proof that the Hispanic voters who powered Trump's 2024 gains can be won back in the place where that shift was sharpest.
The race will be decided on November 3.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Tony Phillips.