# María Elvira Salazar **María Elvira Salazar** (born 1961) is a Republican who has represented **Florida's 27th Congressional District**, covering downtown Miami, Little Havana, Coral Gables and southern Miami-Dade suburbs, since January 2021. Before Congress she spent more than three decades as a Spanish-language television journalist. In the House she is the leading Republican voice for giving legal status to long-settled undocumented immigrants, and in September 2026 she used a campaign video to tell [[Donald Trump]] that parts of his enforcement campaign had gone too far. On November 3, 2026, she faces Democrat [[Eliott Rodriguez]], another Cuban American former TV journalist; the race is covered at [[FL-27-2026]]. ## From the newsroom Salazar was born in Miami's Little Havana to Cuban exile parents. She graduated from the University of Miami and later earned a master's in public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School. Starting in her early twenties, she worked for Spanish-language outlets including Univision, Telemundo, CNN en Español and Mega TV, winning five Emmy Awards. She landed a one-on-one interview with [[Fidel Castro]] and also interviewed Chile's former dictator [[Augusto Pinochet]]. ## Into politics Salazar lost her first race, in 2018, to Democrat Donna Shalala, the former Clinton cabinet secretary and University of Miami president. She beat Shalala in a 2020 rematch and has held the seat since, winning re-election in 2022 with about 57 percent and in 2024 with about 60 percent. In Congress she sits on the [[House Foreign Affairs Committee]] and has made pressure on the governments of [[Cuba]], [[Venezuela]] and Nicaragua a focus of her work. ## The Dignity Act Her signature bill is the Dignity Act, which she reintroduced in July 2025 with Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas. It would let undocumented immigrants who arrived before 2021 apply for a renewable legal status to live and work in the United States, paid for by restitution payments and fees rather than taxpayers. It would also give young people brought to the country as children a path to permanent residency, require employers to use E-Verify, and end the release of migrants awaiting court dates. Salazar insists the bill is not amnesty and offers no path to citizenship. That framing satisfies neither side fully: some conservatives still call it amnesty, while Rodriguez and other Democrats criticize it for stopping short of citizenship. An earlier version never got a House floor vote. ## The September 2026 break with Trump On September 17, 2026, Salazar released a campaign video addressed directly to the president. "Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far," she said. "The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today." Trump answered the next day in the Oval Office. He said Salazar "got a little bit soft on the border," but added, "She's a nice person," and "I got her elected." He did not withdraw the endorsement he had given her earlier in the year. Salazar later said on CBS's *Face the Nation* that Trump had been "very receptive" when they spoke. The truce did not last. On September 26, Trump reshared more than a dozen posts by other users attacking her on Truth Social, including one calling her a "back stabber" and another saying "we need a NEW Republican to Replace Salazar." The episode matters beyond Miami. Salazar's argument, in her own ad, is that the Hispanic voters who helped elect Trump now feel betrayed by his deportation campaign. Her result in a heavily Hispanic district that Trump carried by about 14 points in 2024 will be read as a test of that argument. ## The 2026 race Salazar won the August 18 Republican primary with about 81 percent. Rodriguez won the Democratic nomination the same day. All three major forecasters rate the race Lean Republican, and as of mid-October she had more than twice Rodriguez's cash on hand. Ratings, money and outside spending are tracked at [[FL-27-2026]]. ## Connections - [[FL-27-2026]] · [[Eliott Rodriguez]] - [[Donald Trump]] · [[Immigration]] · [[ICE]] · [[DACA]] - [[Cuba]] · [[Venezuela]] · [[Fidel Castro]] · [[Augusto Pinochet]] - [[House Foreign Affairs Committee]] - [[2026 House Races Hub]] · [[2026 Midterms Hub]]