Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) is finding herself in a more competitive race just a week after she broke with President Donald Trump over his immigration policy.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan race-rater, shifted the Miami-area seat toward Democrats on Tuesday afternoon.
The rating was moved from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” even as Trump won the district by more than 14 points in 2024. Salazar outran Trump, winning her election by more than 20 points.
Salazar, who represents a large Hispanic community in Miami and its suburbs in South Florida, released an ad filmed in front of the White House last week, saying some of the president’s immigration enforcement efforts have “gone too far.” She has also been an outspoken critic of mass deportations and has championed a controversial immigration reform bill, the Dignity Act.
“Salazar made national news last week for pushing back on the Trump administration’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement, and a big swing against Republicans in heavily Cuban-American South Florida can’t be ruled out, especially as Salazar faces a credible challenger in former newscaster Eliott Rodriguez,” the Center for Politics wrote.
Salazar is running for a fourth term in Florida’s 27th Congressional District and is facing the former TV anchor Rodriguez, a well-known face in the district after his 25 years as an anchor at CBS Miami.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball also moved another should-be GOP stronghold, Texas’s 9th, toward Democrats.
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Texas’s 9th District, which moved from “safe Republican” to “likely Republican,” is located in the Houston area and was created during the 2025 redistricting special session in Texas to be one of the automatic pickup seats for Republicans. The plan cracked multiple safely Democratic seats around Houston, drawing two Democratic incumbents to face each other, and altered the Texas 9th lines to incorporate rural terrain to the northeast of the city.
“One other change in Texas comes in TX-9, a majority-Latino Trump +20 district that is one of the five seats Republicans targeted in their gerrymander,” the Center for Politics said of the state’s shift.