Former CBS Miami Anchor Runs Against Salazar

Former news anchor Eliott Rodríguez announced his candidacy for Florida’s 27th congressional district, currently held by Cuban-American Republican hardliner María Elvira Salazar.

Rodríguez, who retired last year from CBS Miami, where he worked for 25 years, will need to win the Democratic primary to face Salazar, also a former reporter, who has been in office since 2021.

Salazar and her fellow Republican congressmen from South Florida — Carlos Giménez and Mario Díaz-Balart — have been leading proponents of harsher sanctions on the island.

Referring to Trump’s oil blockade of Cuba, Salazar recently recognized that the sanctions are causing “pain” to mothers and children, but said it was a price worth paying.

“It’s devastating to think about a mother’s hunger, a child who needs immediate help. No one is indifferent to that pain. But that is precisely the brutal dilemma we face as exiles: to alleviate short-term suffering or to free Cuba forever.”