‘Get off Zoom calls and start interacting.’ Hispanic Dems say they’re ignored in FL-20
Rolando Barrero is the type of person a congressional candidate ought to know.
Barrero, an art gallery owner and president of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus in Palm Beach County, hosts voter registration events and organizes rallies with committed party stalwarts who could help knock on doors and move the needle in a competitive election.
But since longtime U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings died in April, triggering a special primary election scheduled for November 2, Barrero, who lives in Hastings’ district, said he’s heard from just one of the 11 Democrats running.
“There’s absolutely no outreach to Hispanic voters,” Barrero said. “Only one of them made an attempt on a Zoom call to address the Hispanic community.”
Florida’s 20th Congressional District, which includes portions of Palm Beach and Broward Counties, is a majority-Black and heavily Democratic seat, meaning whoever wins the Democratic primary is essentially a member of Congress in-waiting until the general election in January 2022. But while Black voters make up about 53% of the district’s population, Hispanic voters comprise 27%, the second-largest population group in the seat, according to 2019 Census figures.
Yet, despite a saturated field and a Hispanic population percentage that mirrors Florida’s statewide average, Democrats and political strategists who are following the race say none of the 11 candidates running for the Democratic nomination appear to be making a concerted effort to campaign for Hispanic votes or releasing campaign materials in Spanish.
“All of our candidates should look at what other candidates have done for the Hispanic community,” Barrero said. “Rick Scott took Spanish lessons so he could communicate. You’re asking for a job and you’re going to be interviewed. It behooves you to speak the language.”
Barrero said state Rep. Omari Hardy was the only candidate who addressed Palm Beach’s Democratic Hispanic Caucus on a Zoom call, noting that the gesture was appreciated but is something that every candidate in the race should have done months ago.
“Our vote is very important and we don’t give it out so easily for people who perceive us as a Hispanic voting bloc,” said Barrero, who is voting for Hardy but whose group is not endorsing during the primary.
Former state Rep. Cindy Polo, a Democrat who from 2018 to 2020 represented a slice of the Broward County portion of the congressional district, said the decision to largely ignore Hispanic voters from the candidates isn’t an intentional snub. She said it is a consequence of a large field where there are no Hispanic candidates and no one, except self-funder Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, has significant resources to spend.
“I sort of understand why there hasn’t been the push,” Polo said. “From what I see, they’re focused on the areas they represent.”
The Democratic primary field contains five politicians who left their current seats to run for Congress: state Sen. Perry Thurston, state Rep. Bobby DuBose, Hardy, Broward County Commissioner Dale V.C. Holness and Broward County Commissioner Barbara Sharief.
Also running: former state representative and 2019 West Palm Beach mayoral candidate Priscilla Taylor; Cherfilus-McCormick, a healthcare executive from Hollywood who is spending $2.2 million of her own money on the campaign after running against Hastings in 2020; Elvin Dowling, a public speaker and author from Broward County; Phil Jackson, a retired Navy officer from Palm Beach County; Emmanuel Morel, a former congressional candidate and retired federal labor investigator from Palm Beach County; and Dr. Imran Uddin Siddiqui, an internist from Broward County.
Go get the Black vote
Mike Hernández, a Democratic strategist and Telemundo political analyst, said the consultants he knows who are working for candidates in the race are intensely focused on driving up turnout among their candidate’s base. That means appealing to mostly Black voters who previously voted for a candidate when they ran for lower office.
“It’s basically go get the African-American vote because they’re the ones that are going to vote in that primary,” Hernández said. “I think there’s a Latino-type strategy which — if they turn out — could be a difference maker. A few hundred votes could determine if you’re the nominee or just one of the ... Democrats who lost.”
But Hernández said none of the campaigns have raised enough money to develop a “multi-pronged” Hispanic strategy, meaning an all-encompassing Hispanic strategy won’t work because one group of Hispanic voters is not dominant in the district. Instead, Hernandez said a successful strategy would need to target Cuban, Colombian, Puerto Rican and Caribbean voters differently, which is hard to do with limited resources and time.
“It’s too late in the game to show up and tell Hispanics to vote for you,” Hernández said.
Where do Democrats running in Florida’s bluest congressional district stand on issues?
Evelyn Pérez-Verdía, a Broward-based Democratic consultant, said Democrats who want to win future elections in Broward and Palm Beach Counties need to look at efforts in Miami-Dade County to micro-engage different Hispanic communities, and that isn’t happening in this year’s special congressional election.
“I think you need to wake up and smell the cafe con leche and realize this is not Broward and Palm Beach from 15 years ago,” Pérez-Verdía said. “It’s important for [Democrats] if they want to win that they need to look at all the voters and make a serious connection with them.”
Changing Demographics
From 2015 to 2019, the Black population percentage in Hastings’ district, which was one of three districts in Florida created in 1992 to give Black voters a voice, remained largely unchanged at 53%. The Hispanic percentage in those four years crept up by 3%, from 24% to 27%.
“In the next 10 years this area is going to continue to change,” said Dalia Quinones-Zayas, president of the Broward Democratic Hispanic Caucus. “The last 30 days is a little tough to ramp that up, not that they can’t.”
Quinones-Zayas, whose group is not endorsing in the race, said she’s heard from most of the campaigns at this point and many of the candidates running participated in a caucus-sponsored forum where they answered “questions that were of particular concern to our population demographic.”
But she said the messaging hasn’t reached voters outside hyper-political circles and she hasn’t seen any Spanish communication from any of the candidates.
“We have been very vocal, we’ve been saying for years that we’re growing,” Quinones-Zayas said. “I think that just overall in Broward County there’s been this [strategy that] we need to go to the Hispanic community right before election time. I don’t know if this seat is going to be like it was before that somebody sits in it for 20 years, I just think that with the changing demographics, either party [needs] to [be] much more inclusive and more targeting of the Hispanic community.”
Polo said the seat’s deep blue status also makes Hispanic outreach less of a priority because the general election, where Hispanic voters without a party affiliation would be part of the equation, won’t be competitive. And she said a lack of Hispanic elected officials in Broward and Palm Beach Counties adds to the inattention during campaign season.
“I have a lot of respect for a lot of candidates on the ballot, I just think that this has been more of just being strategic with the limited resources and money they have as opposed to not caring,” said Polo, who is supporting DuBose in the primary. “However, I will say the lack of representation is part of a bigger problem. If you don’t have Hispanic commissioners, Hispanic [officeholders] in smaller towns, you’re always going to be an afterthought because you don’t have a PR rep.”
Barrero said one additional factor that’s kept candidates mostly speaking to their respective bases is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. He said fewer candidates are willing to put in the face-to-face work that can build relationships with Hispanic voters and those outside a candidate’s inner circle.
“I think COVID gave [the candidates] a false sense of security that they could do this on Zooms,” Barrero said. “If they would get off Zoom calls and start interacting more with the Hispanic community, I think they would have a chance of having some name recognition.”
This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 6:00 AM.