Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine announced his entrance into the Democrat gubernatorial primary today in Florida. But with a long record of embarrassing gaffes, erratic behavior, and far-left political positions, Levine has clearly demonstrated that he lacks the temperament and common sense to lead the Sunshine State. Levine has made headlines in the past for “off-the-cuff remarks and juvenile posts” on social media, with the Miami Herald calling him “thin-skinned and stubbornly resistant to criticism.” And in March, Levine caused an uproar for a vicious tirade he went on against Airbnb, which drew a stern rebuke from the Sun Sentinel’s editorial board.
Levine has also shown himself to be prone to embarrassing public gaffes, notably during the Zika outbreak in 2016 when he went on television and emphatically claimed there was “no outbreak of Zika on Miami Beach.” But hours later, Governor Rick Scott confirmed that there were in fact five cases of Zika in Miami Beach. Incredibly, Levine blamed “lack of communication from Tallahassee” for his failure to learn the facts about a public crisis in his own city before discussing it on television. But this wasn’t the only item that slipped through the cracks for Levine. During his tenure as mayor, a $3.6 million theft from a city bank account went completely undetected for six months, further demonstrating Levine’s alarming inattention to his city’s problems.
Levine has also made it clear that he holds alarmingly out-of-touch, far-left views that are too extreme for Florida. The Miami Herald reported that he “has never shied away from displaying his liberal politics.” Levine also claims to “love the idea” of a Bernie Sanders-type “revolution,” even though he doesn’t believe it is a winning message in Florida. Throughout his time in public office, Philip Levine has demonstrated that he is a thin-skinned political neophyte with far-left political views that is prone to embarrassing gaffes. Florida deserves better.
Elsewhere in the Democratic primary field: