Wayne Messam, the mayor of Miramar, said in a video released Thursday morning that he’s running for president.
“The promise of America belongs to all of us. That’s why I’m going to be running for president. To be your champion,” Messam said in the video.
He formally kicks off the campaign on Saturday, with a rally at Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens.
He joins a crowded field of Democrats seeking their party’s presidential nomination, with more candidates virtually guaranteed.
The video highlights something Messam said in a recent interview would be a central theme of a presidential campaign: helping people achieve the American dream, something illustrated by his own story — and something he said has become hard to achieve for many.
“I’m passionate about the American Dream because it’s not a fictitious thing for me it’s real for me,” Messam said in the video. His campaign slogan is “Wayne for America.”
A major impediment to achieving the American dream, Messam said in the video, is the struggle faced by people who graduate from college with mountains of student loan debt. That is expected to be a major focus of his candidacy.
“Every day people are graduating from universities with crippling debt stifling their opportunity for financial mobility; that is what’s broken with this country,” he said in the video.
The lushly filmed video is largely biographical, and aimed at introducing himself to people who don’t know much about him.
The two-minute video, narrated by Messam, talks about his life as the son of Jamaican immigrants, whose father was a sugar cane cutter in western Palm Beach County, who was championship college football player, owner of a construction business, and mayor of Florida’s 13th largest city.
The video shows images of Messam running, of sugar cane fields, and of Messam on the gridiron. He was starting wide receiver and member of Florida State University’s 1993 national championship football team under the legendary coach Bobby Bowden.