Francis Suarez
Appearances
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And obviously no one would ever bargain to cut their salaries or never bargain to cut their- Nothing would have happened. Nothing would have happened. We would have been bankrupt. And then a court would have taken us over. We would have looked like a joke. And instead we cut costs and we survived and we thrived, right? Going forward. And by the way, my employees now love me.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
They were not happy the first couple of years when we did it. But now they, I don't even have to go to a union interview when I run for office. They just support me right away. You want to be governor? I don't think it's quite that simple. I want to dunk. I wouldn't be able to dunk two. Look, I think that I'm a Republican, for those of you who don't know.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And, you know, the president's already weighed in the Republican primary. I respect the president's perspective. I have a good relationship with Congressman Donald. So I think politics is very circumstantial. We've talked about that a lot in the past. So, you know, things sometimes conspire in your favor. Sometimes things don't, right? And I do think it is circumstantial.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
We have the highest median wage growth in America. I lowered taxes to the lowest level in history, and we've seen 140% growth in nine years. So the economy is robust. We were ranked the happiest city in America, the healthiest city in America. Frankly, if you're happy, you're healthy and you're working, you're probably not homeless.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
So I think you have to weigh the circumstances. You know, I ran for president because I had a thesis. The thesis was urban voters, Hispanics, and young voters, if they went Republican, would favor the Republican candidate or the Republican candidate would win. And they did. It just wasn't me. Right. It was a different candidate.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
But, you know, the president did a great job on podcasts, right, going on all these podcasts that, you know, the vice president didn't do. And he got young voters and he got urban voters. Look, the Republicans never going to win Philadelphia. Right. Trump lost Philadelphia to Biden by 85 percent, but he lost Philadelphia to Kamala by 75 percent.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And that delta, the 75, 85, that 10 percent delta gave him Pennsylvanian. Yeah, that's the election. Which was such a crucial state, right? Like arguably the winning state. So, you know, Republicans are never going to necessarily win urban votes or the urban population centers throughout America.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
But you're also seeing, and I think it's important to note, you're seeing Democratic mayors lose across America. London Breed lost in San Francisco. Yeah. Tashara Jones lost in St. Louis. The mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, lost.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
I was a president of the U.S.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Cities? Take your time. Don't jump to an answer. Okay, I'll say this. I'll tell you a mayor that I like. How about that? Okay. Justin Bibb. Justin Bibb is mayor of Cleveland. We got a couple Cleveland people here? Apparently. There we go. Justin is a good friend. I have a lot of friends that are mayors. I'm a mayor, you know, I love all my mayors because I was president of that institution.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
But I think Justin is a young, dynamic guy who's smart, not super partisan, cares tremendously about his city. And we talk a lot about it because obviously Miami and Cleveland are a little different, right? On the margins, yeah. That's fair. And we joke about it. He says, you know, I wish I had the kind of problems you have, to go back to sort of the Ken Griffin quote.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
You know, they don't struggle with affordable housing. They got plenty of affordable housing because people don't necessarily want to live there. Sorry, Jay. I love you, bro. But it's true. It's kind of true. So he's dealing with economic development.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
We were ranked the happiest city in America, the healthiest city in America. The formula for success is simple. Keep taxes low, keep people safe, lean into innovation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And then, of course, we've done innovative things in the homeless space. We've worked with charitable organizations that help people reunify families if they live in other parts of the country. And also we rent homes so that we can get around the building process and give all the same wraparound services. But we sort of hack through that process.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
He wants to be the Miami of Ohio in terms of getting investment, getting the tech community there, getting special people to move into his community and believe in his vision. I think the company building is hard. As you guys know, you guys have built some incredible companies. Ecosystem building is even harder, right? It's a thousand X harder than building a big company.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Not really. I get to practice and I have a private sector life. I have an 11-year-old and a seven-year-old. So, I mean, if the president called me and said, you know, I want you to be the U.S. ambassador to, you know, a country that I have a passion to help.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
you know, in terms of the United States, in terms of their relationship and world peace and things of that nature, which I think are high ROIs for the time investment and the financial sacrifice that you have to make, I would strongly consider it. But other than that, I mean, I live a very blessed life. You know, I'm the mayor of the best city on the planet. You know, yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And I have incredible, incredible, incredible bosses. These are my bosses. I have the best bosses in the world. And they're constantly encouraging me. They're constantly cheering me on. And I live and breathe for them. I wake up early in the morning. I go to bed late. And I carry their problems, their hopes, and their dreams in my soul.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
We'll let your winners ride.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And instead, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, S-Q-E-N-O.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
A very high percentage. I would say 80% plus. That's sort of anecdotal. And I've been out to the streets. I'll be out there before my homeless ball now on May 31st. I'm actually going to spend a night out on the street. And when you talk to them, when you engage in them, a vast majority of them are, unfortunately.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Fentanyl.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
A big part of the problem, heroin or opioids. He's asking for a friend, by the way. Yeah. I'm asking if you have a hookup. Clearly, clearly.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Well, to your point, I mean, meth and the opioids are incredibly addictive and they're very hard to beat, right? I mean, even people who are wealthy and get addicted to these drugs have a very hard time. The recidivism rate is very high. And so, you know, You just had Antonio on here a minute ago, and he was talking about immigration and the border.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And one of the big problems with the border is the tens of thousands of people that die annually because of fentanyl that gets imported through China and through our border. And so there's a tie-in between federal policy and local policy. But for us, again, in 1980, during the cocaine era, a different drug, we had 220 homicides.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
So you had drugs hurting people, but you had the business of drugs very much hurting people, right? Last, so we started recording homicides in 1946 in Miami. 1946, we had 32 homicides. From 1946 to today, the lowest, number we ever had was 24. Last year we had 27. Wow. Okay, we had 220 in 1980. This year we're trending below the 24.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
So this may be the safest year in the history, recorded history of Miami.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
The formula for success is simple. Keep taxes low, keep people safe, lean into innovation, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
My counterargument would be government is not a good purveyor of those services. It's not an efficient purveyor of those services. So just to double click, I lowered taxes to the lowest level in history. And I took the city in 2009 as a councilman out of bankruptcy. So I got it in bankruptcy. This is sort of the doge before doge. We decided not to raise taxes. We cut costs.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
We didn't let anyone go, but we had tiered salary cuts, pension reform, and we balanced our budget, and we had 10 years of prosperity. And that prosperity led to a tripling of the size of our government. So we went from a $500 million government to a billion and a half dollar government while lowering taxes. So we grew 200%.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
So the resources that we had to dedicate to these actually went up, even though taxes went down. And then when you have a place where there's prosperity and where people are investing and where people are employed, there's not as many social problems. So they're not out there killing people. They're not out there hurting people. So in the 1980s, we had
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
You know, we're one of the murder capital of America, and we're not one of the safest big cities in America. And then I think, you know, the how can I help moment that you guys are all familiar with was this juxtaposition with what American cities were doing, right? Famously, New York competes for and wins the Amazon HQ2 prize. Right. And then rejects it. Rejects it, yeah.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And also famously in California, you had a, I guess it was a legislator that said F Elon Musk. Yeah, Elena Gonzalez. Exactly. And he replied, message received, and he left.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Where she ended up?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
But the issue is, what I tell people is, look, it's bad enough to kick out a trillion dollar company from your city, or the richest person arguably in the world from your city. But think about the signal. The signal to me is much, much greater. The signal is, if you want to bring another headquarters, or if you want to be another company. We just got FC Barcelona.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Two days ago, we announced that FC Barcelona moved their headquarters from New York to Miami. Every single day, we announced $900 million of loans in two projects in the last two days in two buildings, our stadium, our inter-Miami stadium. We have the FIFA World Cup headquarters for 2026 in the world. So I mean, this formula for success would seem simple.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Other cities are getting it wrong completely backwards, right? Their taxes are high. It's not safe. And they're not leaning into, they're rejecting innovation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
So Ken Griffin recently was interviewed in a fireside chat like this and said, I'd rather have the problems of success than the problems of failure. And so there's no doubt that there are problems that stem from success, right? And housing prices, we had a tremendous amount of inflation in the last administration.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And you sort of couple that with hyper demand here in Miami and you get hyperinflation, right? So housing costs have certainly gone up significantly and we do everything we can to leverage public dollars and public assets like land to try to build projects at a 15 to one or 20 to one leverage rate. So for a hundred million dollars invested, we'll get $2 billion worth of projects.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
There's a 5 million housing shortage across the country, and Miami has its fair share just like any other major city. Traffic, I know none of you guys have experienced any bad traffic this last few days, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
I'm not going to tell you how far along we are with a boring company on trying to find underground boring systems or with some of the EV toll companies that we're working with. But I do think that transportation generally has to sort of turn the page from last generation's archaic solutions to the next generation.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
How did you get that done so quick? And everybody says it's the greatest thing ever. That's a private sector project that was done by a company. We had a piece of it, which was we did a piece with TriRail to bring it into the station. And when we did that piece, we made it free for inner city residents to be able to use. So it was something that I was very proud of. It was part of my legacy.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
So in homeless specifically, we are at an 11-year low. We did our census. We do two census a year. We do one in January, one in the summer. And our January census had us at an 11-year low at 546 homeless, unsheltered homeless in the entire city of Miami. We have a couple thousand sheltered. And I actually raise money on an annual basis as a mayor's ball.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
So a private company built it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
No, they bought the right of way. So it was totally private. So look, we have micro mobility options that are private, like scooters and things like that.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Exactly. Shocking, by the way.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Wow, what an idea.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
We're not stuck. I think it's cultural at some level. You have to inculcate a culture where you empower your employees to innovate and to de-conflict. I think when people come to me with a problem, I say, look, first issue is if there's something that's blocking it that doesn't make any sense, why don't we just change it? We're legislators. That's what we do. We legislate so we can fix it.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Maybe it happened. Maybe it made sense 20 years ago. Maybe it made sense 50 years ago. It doesn't make sense today. Let's just change it. I think regulation is the other side of the coin from innovation. So regulation is telling you oftentimes what you can't do or how to do something. Innovation is- To protect loss. It's sort of a first principle thinking. We want to do this, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
We want to make this work. And I think I always, not always, but I regularly fall on the side of innovation. And I think you as a public official, frankly, who's elected by the people, really are the one that has to push the bureaucrats, the bureaucrat class. The bureaucrat class, they get very accustomed to saying no. They're risk averse. They're not incentivized oftentimes.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
There's no incentive structure that says, hey, if you innovate, you're going to get X or Y or Z. And then I think the third piece of it is artificial intelligence. I really feel that there's a breakthrough that's going to come. And it's not just in transportation. We're talking about EV tolls and underground boring and all that. But I think in...
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
zoning codes and all that, it's gonna be computer to computer, right? So the codes are all straightforward, right? We have the same code for 15 years, right? Probably 97 or 8% of all known decisions have already been made under this code, right? So all you have to do is be replicated going forward, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Unless the code changes and then you just change the coding and you make the decisions all over again. So it's not that complicated. You should be able to submit something. The computer should be able to spit it out immediately. If it needs changes, it should tell you what the changes are. a computer could look at that, make the changes and spit it back in, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
I did my mayor's ball last year, and this year I'll be doing it on May 31st to end homeless. We want to be the first major American city to have zero homeless, and we think we can get there. We call it Functional Zero. Thank you. And frankly, the strategy is not that complicated. Obviously, there's a macroeconomic strategy. We have the lowest unemployment in America.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
And if you were to do that, you know, it takes to get a permit on a home in most places in America or on a building in most places in America, you know, six months, nine months, a year, a year and a half. I mean, it's insane. It should be done instantly. And it could literally be done instantly with a technology that we already have available to us today.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
$100 billion business, by the way, in case anybody wants it. It's a great idea.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
I kind of like the first one better than the second one because the second one, I mean, this sort of one for one, I mean, There's got to be a reason to do one or the other, right? I like the first one better. Actually, what we normally do in government is the opposite. What we do is we do what we call pilots, right? So you'll do something that goes away very quickly, right?
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
In other words, you implement a piece of legislation and say, oh, we're going to do it for a year. Let's test it out, right? And it's a pilot. And then it goes away. I like what you're saying in terms of, you know, a big part of regulatory culture can probably be phased out over a 15, 20-year period as being anachronistic, right? It just doesn't work anymore.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Right. And then you have the ability to re-implement it if you think it makes sense. But I think what happens is you go back down to zero. You were asking, and Tony, and I was listening to the conversation, because we did it, like I said, we had to cut our budget by 20% in one year. And part of the problem is Budgeting is like layering, right? It all layers on top of each other.
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez: The Recipe for Creating America's Happiest City | All-In Live from Miami
Same as regulation, it layers on top of each other. So if you were to be able to strip it down in a mechanical way, right, in an instantaneous way, as opposed to having to fight the structures. In our case, we were very lucky. There was a state statutory vehicle that allowed us to implement the cuts. Otherwise, we'd have to bargain for them in a union process.
Pablo Torre Finds Out
How Sam Bankman-Fried Sportswashed an $8 Billion Crypto Fraud, Starring Tom Brady and Steph Curry
It's just wonderful to be here in the Bahamas, which is like the Hamptons of Miami. And only Sam and FTX can do something like this and convene this kind of incredible collection of talented people in the crypto space. And I had to be here.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Relentless Pursuit of the Real Estate Hustle
It did. I got about 2.7 million impressions. It was a tweet from Deleon, from the Founders Fund, who said, hey guys, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami? And I tweeted out, they call it the tweet heard around the world. Four simple words. How can I help?
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich
Yeah, go ahead. I think it can be what I call the capital of capital, a place where if you want to build a business, if you want to innovate, there is no better place. We've streamlined the process by reducing unnecessary processing of additional special permits and creating additional opportunities for projects.
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
#BecauseMiami: The Power of the Cuban Sandwich
Permit applications are now able to access and download their certificate of occupancy through the internet. We've enabled Miamians to request after hours of fire inspections online. Local businesses are now able to download their certificates of use and business tax receipts. Fancy way of saying we've made it easier.