Maria Elvira Salazar

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR

Maria Elvira Salazar is a five-time Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist. She has established her reputation as a leading expert on Latin American affairs and the U.S. Hispanic community by covering major breaking-news events in the past 35 years. Maria Elvira Salazar is the Republican candidate for Florida’s 27th Congressional District, a district that is considered extremely Democratic-leaning, based on how it has voted in recent presidential and state legislative elections. It voted for Obama in 2012 and Clinton won by nearly 20 points in 2016. The New York Times considered FL-27 “the best Democratic pick-up opportunity in the country”, but Maria Elvira led a very tight race and made a sure-win seat for Democrats as competitive as any analyst could have imagined. Prior to her campaign for Congress, Maria Elvira was the sole anchor of the MEGATV nightly newscast and she previously hosted her own daily prime-time political news show called “Maria Elvira Live.” She has interviewed a broad and colorful array of newsmakers and world leaders, including U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, Jose María Aznar of Spain, Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, Vicente Fox and Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico and Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan. She was the first and only U.S. Spanish-language television journalist to obtain a one-on-one interview with Fidel Castro during his 50 years in power. Maria Elvira is one of the nation’s most recognized Latin American political affairs journalists for the U.S. Hispanic community. Salazar was born in Miami to Cuban parents who fled in 1960, upon the arrival of the Cuban communist revolution. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from the University of Miami and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She lives in Coral Gables, Florida, with her two daughters.