MIAMI — Miami Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins is scheduled to hold a news conference on Wednesday morning following her 18-point victory in Tuesday’s runoff election.

Higgins, 61, will become Miami’s first woman mayor. While officially a non-partisan election, the former county commissioner also became the first Democrat to hold the office in decades and the first non-Hispanic candidate elected mayor since Stephen P. Clark in 1993.

“I am so honored that our incredibly diverse community selected me to take on this path in the coming years,” she said on Tuesday, promising to ensure the city “continues to deliver on the promise of the Magic City.”

She promised to build more affordable housing in the city and denounced “disrespectful” national rhetoric about immigrants.

“We are an immigrant city,” she said. “We have always been an immigrant city.”

During the campaign, Higgins spoke frequently in the Hispanic-majority city about President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying she has heard of many people in Miami who were worried about family members being detained. She campaigned as a proud Democrat despite the race being officially nonpartisan and beat Trump-backed candidate Emilio Gonzalez, a former city manager, who said he called Higgins to congratulate her.

The unusually heavy partisan involvement in the race drew national attention as Democrats sought to portray the election as a referendum on Trump, whose approval ratings are flagging.

Higgins, who speaks Spanish, represented a district that leans conservative and includes the Little Havana neighborhood. When she first entered politics in 2018, she chose to present herself to voters as “La Gringa,” a term Spanish speakers use for white Americans, because many people did not know how to pronounce her name.

“It just helps people understand who I am, and you know what? I am a ‘gringa,’ so, what am I going to do, deny it?” she told the Associated Press.

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