WASHINGTON — Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., a former teacher and principal known in Congress for her colorful outfits and matching hats, said Friday she will not seek re-election this fall.
“This has been a journey, but it’s time. It’s time. And I know all of you are wondering, ‘What is the congresswoman going to do?’ Well, the congresswoman is going to not seek another term,” Wilson said at a ceremony where a street in the Miami area was named in her honor. The street is next to a school that is also named after her.
“Even leather wears out,” she said, adding that she would not retire but instead travel the country to promote her 5000 Role Models program aimed at helping boys and young men of color.
She had first announced her plans in an interview with the Miami Herald that published on Friday.
Wilson is the 60th House lawmaker this cycle to announce they are either retiring from Congress or running for higher office.
At 83, Wilson had been part of a cadre of senior lawmakers in their 80s and 90s who had said they were running for another term in 2026 — defying voters who are clamoring for generational change among the nation’s leaders.
But Wilson recently underwent eye surgery and had missed a month’s worth of votes this spring as she recovered. In the GOP’s redistricting push this month, her Miami congressional district lost its coastal areas but remained deep blue, meaning she almost certainly would have been re-elected to a ninth term.
She told the Miami Herald that she strategically waited to announce her retirement until after the new maps were established so that her district would not be targeted.
“I figured if I announced that I was retiring, what would the Legislature and the governor do? … Would District 24 be an easy target because Frederica is no longer there? I’m a strong candidate,” she told the newspaper. “With me not here, would that weaken the survival of District 24?”
The filing deadline to run in the Aug. 18 primary to replace her is just a few weeks away, on June 12.
A young activist during the Civil Rights Movement, Wilson heard the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. give a “rousing speech” when she was a student at Fisk University, and she went on to pursue a career in education. She began as a public school teacher and later became a principal in Miami Gardens; the school, years later, was renamed Dr. Frederica S. Wilson/Skyway Elementary School in her honor.
“A street isn’t enough. A street just isn’t enough,” Miami-Dade County Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III, the former mayor of Miami Gardens, said at Friday’s dedication ceremony. “There were young boys who actually crossed this street, went into that building, when they went in, they didn’t have promise. When they came out, because something she imagined into existence, they actually had a future.
“When you talk about naming the street, naming the school, naming the library, what we’re saying is we’re not just naming it for a person, we’re naming it for their deeds,” he said.
From there, she was elected to the Miami-Dade County School Board, the Florida state House and Senate in Tallahassee and finally to the U.S. House in 2010. A member of both the Congressional Black and Progressive caucuses, Wilson was a staunch ally of President Barack Obama and dedicated her time in Congress to try to improve the lives of young Black men and women.
In 2020, she teamed with then-Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on legislation to create an independent government commission to study the social status of Black men and boys. President Donald Trump signed the legislation into law.
But she clashed repeatedly with Trump over the years, including in a 2017 disagreement about his conversation with the pregnant widow of an American soldier killed in Niger. Wilson said she was riding in the car with the widow when Trump called to offer his condolences. Wilson slammed Trump after, she said, he told the woman her husband “knew what he signed up for.”
Trump fired back on social media, accusing the “wacky” congresswoman of lying and “secretly” listening in on his conversation. Wilson said she skipped votes the following week after she received threats for criticizing Trump.
During her time in Washington, Wilson was one of the more recognizable members of Congress. She could easily be spotted on the House floor sporting one of her brightly colored suits and matching beaded cowboy hats.
At Friday’s ceremony, where Miami officials lined up to praise Wilson, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava talked about how Wilson has been an inspiration for women of all ages.
“What you do is not just for the young men, and you talk about that, it’s for the young women, but it’s not for the young ones. Some of us that need that little lift, that little inspiration. You give it to us, and you are not sparing. You make sure that you reach out and touch people and give them that extra little push, that little, ‘You can do it, girl,” the mayor said.
Levine Cava said this was not the end of the road for Wilson’s service: “We might give you a little break, but we’re going to be calling on you, because what you have done for these young people.”
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