Jamaican Wayne Messam faces challenger as he seeks third term as mayor of Miramar

The mayor of Miramar, Jamaican Wayne Messam, who is up for re-election, will have an opponent as he seeks a third term.

Primary election day is tomorrow.

Rudy Theophin, who works in the financial services with OneBox Funding, is on the ballot to oppose Messam. This will be Theophin's first try for elected office.

He is taking on Messam, a former 2020 presidential candidate who has been leading the southwest Broward County of Florida city since 2015.

But Theophin said he sees several areas of city government that need addressing.

“I'm a big fan of the David and Goliath story,” he said, noting he believes his priorities — more infrastructures for the city's historical district and more dialogue between city police and the community — will resonate with voters.

Messam, the city's first black mayor, said he still has projects that he would like to see to completion in what he calls one of the country's most progressive cities.

A first-generation American, Mayor Messam was born to Jamaican immigrants, with his father working the sugar cane fields as a migrant contract worker.

Messam was a member of Florida State University's 1993 national championship football team. And when he is not running the city's affairs, he is busy working as a general contractor, running Messam Construction.

According to the Sun Sentinel, which endorsed Mayor Messam when he was up for re-election in 2019, more large corporations have their operations in Miramar than any other South Florida city. Among them are Royal Caribbean Cruises, Comcast, and Spirit Airlines, which call the city of with a population of 135,000 home.

Messam, who has lived in the city for 18 years, has a story that national political biographies are made of.

While he made the ballot for the 2020 Democratic presidential primary ticket, his campaign was suspended nine months after he announced it, as he failed to qualify for any of the Democratic debates.

For his last city election he won a resounding 86 per cent of the vote for his second term, soundly beating Josue LaRose, whose political career was the target of the satirical Colbert Report in 2012.

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