The recent purchase of a Florida mansion by Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner has raised speculation that outgoing US President Donald Trump’s daughter plans to run for the Senate or try to become the state governor in the future.
Ivanka Trump and Kushner have recently bought a $31 million waterfront estate on Indian Creek Island, a wealthy Miami locale known as the “Billionaire’s Bunker,” the New York Post’s Page Six first reported earlier this month.
The 1.8-acre estate previously belonged to singer Julio Iglesias. The island is known for its high security, with a 13-member police force for 29 homes.
But that might be only part of what drew Trump there, according to a report by CNN earlier this month.
“Ivanka definitely has political ambitions, no question about it,” the report quoted a source who has been working with the Trump family as saying. “She wants to run for something, but that still needs to be figured out.”
Analysts have estimated that Trump could be planning to run for the US Senate on a Florida ticket, or try to run for governor — although the latter option would take time since one must be a Florida resident for seven years to run for that position.
“Marco Rubio is up for reelection in 2022 and is expected to run again. But I wouldn’t think Rubio would deter her if she wanted to run. The last time Marco Rubio ran against a Trump in Florida, in the 2016 presidential primary, Rubio was crushed by 19 percentage points,” Adam C. Smith, a consultant with Mercury Public Affairs, told CNN.
“Normally, you’d expect a credible candidate for US Senate to spend years building a political and financial network, but those normal rules would not apply to Ivanka. I think she’d be the immediate frontrunner if she ran for US Senate against Rubio, given her father’s popularity in the Sunshine State,” Smith said.
Another source close to Trump cited by CNN said that reading too much into the purchase should be avoided, since the couple had been looking to buy a new Florida home for a while, before Donald Trump lost the November 3 election.
The Indian Creek Island home is a little more than an hour’s drive from Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s home and golf club. Kushner’s brother Joshua and his wife, Karlie Kloss, also recently purchased a home in Miami.
Trump and Kushner currently live in Washington, DC, and own an apartment in their old home of New York City. But since Donald Trump’s election loss last month, they’ve made real estate moves elsewhere. In late November, the couple expanded their home on the grounds of the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The couple also recently withdrew their children from the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in Washington, DC, after parents complained that they were violating COVID-19 protocols. They moved the children to the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in Maryland.
