On Tuesday, Key West, Fla., elected Samuel Kaufman as the city’s first Jewish mayor in its nearly-200-year history.
A lawyer currently serving as a city commissioner, Kaufman told JNS that he is proud to continue the long tradition of Jewish contributions to the island community.
“To carry that forward and to contribute in a positive way to the entire city as a Jewish person, given our values and given what it means to me to be a Jewish person, it’s an incredible honor and responsibility,” Kaufman said. “It gives me incredible pride to be that first Jewish mayor.”
The Key West mayoralty is officially non-partisan. Kaufman, a Democrat, won about 58% of the vote to defeat incumbent Mayor Dee Dee Henriquez, a Republican, who won 42% of the vote.
Kaufman, who was born in New York City but has spent the past 30 years of his professional life in Key West, said that he benefited from Republican crossover votes after three officials in the incumbent administration were charged with felonies for evidence tampering in 2025.
“We had a really huge corruption scandal,” Kaufman told JNS. “Our city attorney, our city building official and our city code enforcement director were all taken out in handcuffs.”
Key West is the largest city in the Florida Keys, with a permanent population of about 25,000 people, of whom about 1,000 are Jewish, according to Kaufman.
The city estimates that about 3 million tourists visit Key West each year, and managing that tourism flow was one of the key issues for locals in the mayoral campaign.
“We don’t want five cruise ships a day,” Kaufman said. “We can’t accommodate that. We don’t have the infrastructure for that.”
“We like one cruise ship a day, on my side of the political scale,” he told JNS. “Others may want three or four ships a day.”
Kaufman described Key West as a “liberal blue” in the middle of the more conservative Monroe County, but one whose connections with the Jewish community, including a significant number of Israelis, means that it hasn’t experienced as much of the anti-Israel sentiment present in some progressive bastions.
“You won’t see Palestinian flags ever in the city,” Kaufman told JNS. “The same week as Oct. 7, I sponsored a resolution, and it was unanimously approved by our city commission, condemning the terrorist attack and supporting the State of Israel.”
“As a result of that we’re probably the only city in the state and in the country that raised the Israeli flag on our City Hall, next to our state flag, next to the American flag,” he said. “It stayed there for four months.”
Kaufman described himself as a “somewhat observant” Jew, who prays at the local Chabad. After his victory, he looks forward to celebrating the High Holidays, he told JNS.
“It’s going to be a bigger party than ever,” he said. “People should feel excited about going to such a special place like Key West.”
“We’re an inclusive place that will even elect a Jewish mayor,” Kaufman said.
