WASHINGTON — Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., a former teacher and principal known in Congress for her colorful outfits and matching hats, said in an interview with the Miami Herald she will not seek re-election this fall.
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She is expected to make a formal announcement Friday at a ceremony, where a street in the Miami area is being named in her honor. The street is next to a school that is also named after her.
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.
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.