Former Jan. 6 committee lawyer launches Democratic bid for Congress in a Florida district Trump won

NBC News

3 days ago

A former lawyer for the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot announced Tuesday that he is running for Congress in Florida as a Democrat, challenging Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar.
Robin Peguero, 39, said in an interview ahead of his announcement that he is running because Salazar has not 'stood up' to President Donald Trump on issues like his deportation program and sweeping tax and spending cuts law.
'It's been six months into this administration, and Congresswoman Salazar has not stood up to the president in any meaningful way,' Peguero said.
Peguero was a homicide prosecutor in Miami from 2014 until September 2021, when he took a job on the Jan. 6 committee as an investigative counsel. He continued in that position until the committee dissolved in 2021, after which he became chief of staff for Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., until January 2024. He has taught law in Miami since.
Salazar has represented Florida's 27th Congressional District, which encompasses most of Miami and its southern suburbs, since 2021. The predominantly Hispanic district has shifted toward Republicans in recent years, as Trump won the district by 15 percentage points in 2024 after he carried it by less than half a percentage point in 2020.
Peguero said his top priority is affordability, which he said includes issues like health care, grocery costs and gas prices.
'It is the number one role of government, is again, to make sure that everybody has the opportunity for the American dream,' he said.
Peguero said he leaned on his experience as a prosecutor in Miami when he became investigative counsel for the Jan 6. committee.
'That was me wanting to take what I had learned as a prosecutor and present evidence of what was an awful mark in our country's history, the first non-peaceful transfer of power in our history, to uncover evidence to present to the American people so that they might decide what to do with it and how we might avoid it from ever happening again,' Peguero said.
Some 30-plus miles outside of Salazar's district lies 'Alligator Alcatraz,' the new immigration detention center in the Everglades that Peguero said is a 'PR gimmick.' He said he supports deporting violent criminals, but criticized the Trump administration for deporting 'good, hard-working' people who have been in the U.S. for a long time.
'They didn't vote for mass deportations without due process. They voted for border security and for the deportation of violent criminals and a government that's smart enough to be able to tell the difference between who ought to be deported and who should not,' Peguero said.
'People are absolutely having regrets over their votes in the past, and the truth is we just got to move forward,' he said.
Salazar's seat is one of 35 that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has announced as targets, as House Democrats aim to flip the chamber next year, though the expansive list includes some districts that are heavily Republican at this point.
Peguero joins former Key Biscayne mayor and 2024 candidate Mike Davey, entrepreneur Richard Lamondin and accountant Alexander Fornino in the Democratic field.