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Florida's Hispanic Voters Exert Considerable Power

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 11, 2008

One thing that is clear in the post-election aftermath is that Florida’s Hispanic voters, by being independent-minded and unpredictable, have become one of the most powerful voting blocs in America.

They voted for President-elect Barack Obama in overwhelming numbers. Indeed, for the first time in Florida, more Hispanics voted Democratic than Republican in a presidential election.

Some pundits have tried to pigeon-hole Hispanics as interested only in immigration and relations with Cuba, but this election made clear that Hispanics are not single-issue voters. They care as much as anyone about the economy, health care, education and sending their sons and daughters off to war.

Yet Hispanics also expressed their conservative social values by helping pass a ban on gay marriage.

In other words, Hispanics cannot be easily pegged.

Both parties can be faulted for taking Hispanics for granted. In Florida, Republicans have counted on the conservative leanings of Cuban-born Hispanics and failed to recognize that those with roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Central America were looking for politicians who would represent their interests, too. Democrats, until this election cycle, never put much effort into drawing the Hispanic vote.

But in the years after a bitter and hateful debate over immigration reform and a souring economy, Obama captured a 12-point advantage over Republican Sen. John McCain among Florida Hispanics.

Obama won by attracting a slew of new voters. This year, more than a half-million Hispanics registered as Democrats compared to about 445,000 who registered as Republican. Just two years ago, Republicans led Democrats in Hispanic registration.

Obama received 70 percent of the non-Cuban Hispanic vote and 35 percent of the Cuban-born vote, according to voter polls conducted by Bendixen & Associates, a Miami firm.

But Obama should not take his win among Hispanics for granted. Remember, long before his campaign adopted the rallying cry, “Yes We Can!” Hispanics had been saying “¡Si, Se Puede!” for a generation as their call for empowerment.

The Republican Party has only itself to blame for alienating Hispanics, allowing an angry wing of the party to use the immigration debate to lash out at Latinos. Party leaders should have done more to change the debate’s tenor. Instead, they allowed moderate voices to be relentlessly shouted down.

Don’t forget how ugly some of those early Republican debates became when the issue of immigration came up. In so relentlessly criticizing the illegal immigrants who dig ditches, pick vegetables and wash dishes, Republicans diminished the value of millions of Hispanics who are citizens, work hard and dream of sending their children to college.

Those are the people who spoke on Election Day – in a voice that demands that Hispanics no longer be marginalized, trivialized or vilified by those who will ultimately need their vote.

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