Democrats knew Miami’s election night results could happen. When will they wake up? | Opinion

The results of the Tuesday presidential election in Miami-Dade weren’t unexpected — a Donald Trump victory and a GOP sweep of local seats had been increasingly predicted in Florida’s most populous and diverse county. But it was still a landmark change. The county was, until Republicans carried it in 2022, a blue bastion. Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade by nearly 30 percentage points in 2016; Joe Biden by only seven in 2020.

Not only did Trump carry Florida and Miami-Dade comfortably, he also helped Republicans down the ballot win important local races for sheriff and supervisor of elections.

The deterioration of Democratic support and Trump’s rise in South Florida over the years has been largely attributed to Hispanic voters, many of them immigrants themselves, or their children and grandchildren — even though Trump has accused immigrants of invading the U.S. and poisoning the blood of the country.

Many Miami-Dade residents fled undemocratic regimes in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere. Despite that, the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol didn’t lessen their support for Trump. Neither did Trump openly discussing using the federal government to retaliate against political opponents, his contemplation of using members of the press as human shields or his allies who want to fire federal workers and replace them with loyalists.

Those same voters, regardless of their legal status, also seem to think that Trump’s anti-immigrant stance will not be directed at them. Other issues may weigh more heavily, starting with the perceived threat of socialism in the Democratic Party — although under a Democratic president, the country’s economic growth and the health of the stock market show no evidence of that.

Or they may be more attracted to Trump’s assurances to the nation that he will magically solve inflation, which has already been trending down.

Trump’s promise of mass deportations could wreak havoc in South Florida’s economy, which is reliant on the service, tourism and agricultural industries that employ undocumented workers willing to do jobs that Americans won’t because they are too physically intense or don’t pay well. As the Herald reported, Trump’s plan could deport around 1 million people living in Florida.

With Trump’s hold on Miami-Dade, Florida’s one-party control by the GOP intensifies. The results are likely to be a slew of hyper-partisan policies that lack the bipartisan negotiations that often generate good laws that serve all people, not just those loyal to a political party.

And that goes for spending, too. We have had a prelude to that in the past few years under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP’s super-majority in the Legislature with the state spending taxpayer dollars on political vendettas and pet projects.

For example, the DeSantis administration has spent millions and used state resources to campaign against the proposed constitutional amendments to protect abortion rights and legalize recreational marijuana for adults.

Rather than lament the electoral choices of their fellow Miamians or excoriate them, the local opposition to Trump — the Democratic Party and Never Trumpers — should wake up.

It’s been known for years that the GOP’s investment in courting Hispanic voters was paying off, but Democrats failed to invest in Florida. The Democratic bench of candidates has become increasingly thin and that was embarrassingly evident in the candidates the party put up in some local races for the Florida House, Congress and some of the countywide constitutional offices. Meanwhile, the GOP has done a good job identifying people with strong ties to their communities to run for those seats.

Take the example of Colombian-Americans, who represent around 300,000 of Florida’s registered voters, according to Eduardo Gamarra, a political scientist at Florida International University who studies Hispanic voters. A decade ago, they were solidly Democratic, but based on a study conducted before this year’s election, almost 50% said they would vote for Trump.

Overall, 51% of Latinos said they were casting votes for the former president in Miami-Dade, Gamarra told the Editorial Board in anticipation of Election Day.

In 2016, Gamarra said he conducted focus groups with Venezuelans who said Trump was a “blond” Hugo Chavez. Once Trump was in office and Venezuela’s decline quickened under Chavez’s successor, dictator Nicolas Maduro, Venezuelans warmed up to Trump’s tough stance on the country’s authoritarian regime.

Meanwhile, the perception is that Democrats — by searching for diplomatic and multilateral solutions — are too soft on left-wing regimes in Latin America. Venezuela’s growing economic and political crisis also pushed many working-class people to migrate to the U.S. via the southern border, causing a clash with upper-class Venezuelans who were already here and view those arriving now with suspicion, Gamarra said.

While the lack of a political alternative to Trumpism in Miami-Dade and Florida, chances are that, for the foreseeable future, we will be a MAGA county.

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