MIAMI — Florida politicians have long harnessed opposition to Nicolás Maduro to energize Venezuelan American voters. Now, Republicans are eager to turn his capture under President Donald Trump into a midterm mobilization moment.
Florida is uniquely primed for that strategy. The state is home to more than 300,000 people of Venezuelan descent, along with other Latin American communities shaped by flight from authoritarian regimes, making Venezuela a familiar and politically potent issue.
Republicans wasted little time rallying behind Trump’s actions, arguing that the president delivered on a promise he made to voters in 2024 and signaling they see Venezuela as a rare foreign policy issue with real domestic political upside in Florida.
“This is popular here,” GOP Rep. Carlos Giménez said of his South Florida district. “People are very happy that Maduro is no longer there.”
While Giménez also conceded the election was far off and no one knows yet how the transition to the next president will go, he concluded: “But right now — yeah, the president has garnered a lot of good will with the actions that he took.”
Most Americans oppose U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, CBS News polling shows, and instead want the White House focused on lowering the cost of living. But this contrasts with scenes in South and Central Florida, where large swaths of Venezuelan residents live and where Maduro’s removal was greeted with singing and dancing in the streets.
News about the arrest and forthcoming trial came as a reprieve for Sunshine State Republicans, who’ve been confronting backlash as their constituents face worries about Trump’s mass deportation orders, imprisonments at the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center and the end to Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan migrants who were authorized to work in the U.S.
Though Republicans hold 20 of 28 House seats in Florida, they’ve seen their margins slip in special elections and took a hit in December when they lost the Miami mayor’s race — with the winner citing fears about hard-line immigration policies as a major deciding factor.
It was an issue top elected officials continued speaking about Monday at on-camera public events, underscoring just how much the ramifications in Venezuela will affect their constituents. Florida’s Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody held a joint press conference in Doral to celebrate Maduro’s ouster and said it was time to focus on the transition. And at an unrelated press conference upstate, Gov. Ron DeSantis kicked off his remarks by raising the significance of the capture to Florida.
"He deserves to be brought to justice,” DeSantis said of Maduro. “And my sincere hope is that the people of Venezuela are going to be able to liberate themselves from the yoke of the Chavez-Maduro reign, because it has been one of the most destructive reigns of any in the western hemisphere’s history.”
Republicans’ past rhetoric about Venezuela was similar. In the 2024 cycle, they often accused former President Joe Biden of showing weakness against the socialist country, given that Maduro reneged on his promise to the administration to hold “free and fair elections” in the summer of 2024. Instead, Maduro remained in office despite analyses by independent observers and other countries that opposition candidate Edmundo González was the rightful winner.
Republicans compounded their criticisms of Democrats by accusing them of being sympathetic to socialist causes and warning the U.S. risked becoming like Venezuela if Democrats were to be elected. The labels stuck and effectively helped shift Latino voters who had roots in places like Venezuela and Cuba toward Republicans. In 2024, Trump won Doral — the epicenter of the Venezuelan diaspora — by 23 points.
South Florida Republican House members said they expected changes in Venezuela to also lead to the downfall of Cuba's regime, which had been receiving economic support from Venezuela. Giménez and GOP Reps. Mario Díaz Balart and María Elvira Salazar, all of whom are of Cuban descent, said during a weekend press conference that they felt strongly tied to Venezuelans. Roughly 1.6 million people of Cuban descent live in Florida, a massive electoral share that could impact 2026.
Republicans have also said they’re heartened by the involvement of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself the son of Cuban parents from Miami who represented Florida in the Senate for 14 years and was also state House speaker when he was in the Legislature.
While Florida Democrats roundly celebrated Maduro’s removal from office, they still criticized Trump for skirting Congress and for his administration only vaguely outlining what’s next for the socialist country. And Democrats such as state party Chair Nikki Fried accused Trump of being motivated by oil and looking to enrich billionaires.
Florida Democrats also worked to frame the conversation for the midterms, especially in Florida’s Venezuelan-heavy 27th District. The seat, held by Salazar, is one of four in Florida that House Democrats’ campaign arm has targeted to flip in the midterms, though the incumbent won her 2024 reelection by nearly 21 points. Critics of Trump’s actions note much is likely to change in the coming months as Maduro goes to trial, as Venezuela works to rebuild and as U.S. involvement becomes more clear.
Former homicide prosecutor and congressional investigator Robin Peguero, one of the Democratic candidates running in Florida’s 27th District, warned “there are many ways this could still go wrong” and faulted Salazar for not pushing Trump to seek Congress’ go-ahead. Richard Lamondin, a local entrepreneur also vying for the Democratic nomination, said he thought Maduro’s ouster would “absolutely matter” in the forthcoming election. Voters not only have to contend with anxiety about what’s next in Venezuela, he argued, but their fears are compounded by trying to stave off problems with affordability and health care coverage.
He and other prominent Democrats also have likened what occurred to U.S. intervention in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, which became unpopular with the American electorate. But Republicans, including Salazar, have instead held up other U.S. interventions in Grenada and Panama as examples of where Venezuela is more likely headed under Trump’s administration.
What happened in Venezuela “was nothing short of remarkable,” said one Republican source familiar with South Florida GOP lawmakers’ thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly. The person said comparisons to Iraq were ill-placed.
“There’s a lot of ignorant rhetoric out there, truthfully, about what’s going on in Venezuela,” the person said.
Developments in Venezuela could likewise play heavily in Florida’s 9th and 23rd Districts, seats held by Democratic Reps. Darren Soto and Jared Moskowitz, respectively, that the GOP has targeted to flip and which also have large Venezuelan populations. Soto and Moskowitz both criticized the White House for failing to involve Congress.
But the National Republican Congressional Committee, the political arm for House Republicans, hit back by accusing Democrats of doing little to stop Maduro when they held control of the White House and Congress. “Floridians see who is fighting for order and safety, and that’s why in November, they’ll kick out of touch Democrats Soto and Moskowitz to the curb,” said Maureen O’Toole, NRCC spokesperson.
Though Republicans roundly recognize Democrats in Florida are celebrating Maduro’s ouster, they conclude any related objections are merely political.
“They will never admit that he's done something right,” Giménez said. “They can't — especially the ones that are down here — they can't say they were against this, because they know how popular it is. But they still got to put their dig in.”
Isa Domínguez contributed to this report.
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