MIAMI — Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s Senate campaign has a Spanish-language web page. Sen. Bill Nelson’s doesn’t.

Scott is advertising in Spanish. Nelson isn’t.


Scott is learning Spanish and does interviews with Spanish-language media about once a week. Nelson isn’t and doesn’t.

For Democrats who recognize protecting Nelson’s seat is essential to their hopes of winning a Senate majority this fall, the veteran senator’s lackluster outreach to one of the fastest-growing voting blocs in the nation’s largest swing state is causing alarm.

The depth of Nelson’s troubles — and Scott’s advantage — came into sharp focus last month in four focus groups conducted in Central Florida’s influential Puerto Rican community, where few knew who Nelson was, despite his three Senate terms and holding elected Florida office for 41 years.

“There’s a lot higher awareness of Rick Scott. He’s got much higher name recognition. And people associate him with trying to do something for Puerto Rico,” said Marcos Vilar, director for United for Progress PAC, which had the focus groups conducted for it by the polling firm Latino Decisions.

“Bill Nelson has very little name recognition,” Vilar said. “The people who know him don’t know what he’s done. They don’t know him in the community. They don’t see him out to the community as much.”

Party insiders and Latino activists — in Washington, Miami, Orlando and Tallahassee — fret that it’s a serious problem against Scott, who is expected to spend tens of millions of dollars out of his own pocket to knock off Nelson. They say the two-term Republican governor is running a robust campaign that’s “pandering” to Hispanics but drowning out Nelson’s support of issues important to the community — from his clear support for comprehensive immigration reform to advocacy for Medicaid expansion to criticizing the Trump administration’s underwhelming response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

“At the end of the day, he can be great on all the issues but if people don’t know that that’s happening, it almost doesn’t matter,” said Mayra Macias, political director for the group Latino Victory and a former political director for the Florida Democratic Party. “There seems to be a disconnect between the outreach to the community and the policy work that he’s doing, the advocacy for our community – he’s been spot-on on our issues.”

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Nelson’s campaign issued a lengthy list of dates the senator has met with various Hispanic groups and, particularly, Puerto Ricans, and it says it has cut a not-yet-released Spanish-language version of a digital ad. The campaign also said it hired a Spanish-language press secretary, who started last week. Scott has had two for more than a month.

“We have and will continue to work closely with the Florida Democratic Party to engage and mobilize the Hispanic community — talking about critical issues Bill Nelson has been fighting for,” Nelson campaign manager Marley Wilkes said in a written statement. “From health care to education to helping our neighbors in Puerto Rico, both on the island and here in Florida, Bill Nelson is working tirelessly to help people."

But to many activists, that doesn’t feel like nearly enough. Scott has already aired three Spanish-language commercials on television and just completed a fourth: a $350,000 buy on Spanish-language Telemundo that coincides with its coverage of the World Cup — the most-watched sporting event among Spanish speakers in the United States.

The panic surrounding Scott’s possible inroads with Hispanic voters — who account for about 15 percent of the voter rolls — results from their role as part of the diverse coalition the Democratic Party relies on to win in Florida.

With the notable exception of GOP-voting older Cuban Americans, Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, but their turnout has tended to be abysmal in midterm elections — which Democrats have consistently lost here. Nelson has been the exception, in part because he has faced historically weak opponents.

Recent polls show Scott leading Nelson largely on the strength of a $12 million ad campaign that’s about to grow to nearly $17 million spent between his campaign and his allies. Nelson, by comparison, was quiet on air until the Senate Majority PAC announced a $2.2 million ad campaign last month. The ad, a Nelson bio, did not have a Spanish-language version.

But all is not lost for Nelson when it comes to Puerto Rican voters, United for Progress PAC’s Vilar said.

In the PAC’s focus groups, one fact sharply turns sentiment against Scott: the governor’s association with President Donald Trump, whose handling of Hurricane Maria has earned him widespread condemnation by Puerto Ricans. The mere mention that Scott raised money for Trump’s election — and that Trump encouraged Scott to run for Senate — was a potent message. Vilar said the only subset of Puerto Ricans it didn’t work with were registered Republicans he observed in yet another focus group, in Tampa.

“In Orlando at least, it’s a very effective argument: a vote for Scott is a vote for Trump,” Vilar said. “It’s gold. Everyone in doubt completely flipped. For people leaning for Scott, Trump is toxic.”

But the governor has made good use of earned media with high profile trips to Puerto Rico alongside the island’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, whose lieutenant governor endorsed Scott at his April 9 campaign launch in Orlando. The island’s non-voting member of Congress, Jenniffer González-Colón, later endorsed Scott.

The governor also made sure to announce three “Disaster Resource Centers” in Florida to welcome Puerto Rican evacuees and help them after the storm. In the process, Scott’s face and name were all over English and Spanish-language television, radio and newspapers. Much of it is facilitated by his campaign’s two Hispanic-media outreach staffers, one in South Florida and one in Central Florida, as well as a Hispanic political director.

“There was a sales job being done at the airport when people arrived,” Vilar said.

Not all of the Puerto Rico outreach has gone smoothly for Scott. He earned criticism on his last trip to the island two weeks ago when he was unable to say what he would have done differently concerning Hurricane Maria response.

Nelson has vocally and frequently criticized the Trump administration over Puerto Rico and Latin America policy, has repeatedly traveled to Puerto Rico, held outreach events in Central Florida, South Florida, Tampa and Washington and snagged the endorsement of Rosselló’s father, former Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Rosselló. Nelson has also appeared with the current governor of the island whenever he has visited. But the senator’s bully pulpit isn’t as big as Scott’s, nor is his outreach as robust.

In fact, it’s still taking shape. He has a newly hired Spanish-language spokeswoman — which the campaign didn’t announce until POLITICO began asking about the issue — and the campaign says its deputy director will also focus on Hispanic outreach.

Florida doesn’t have a single Hispanic community. It has Hispanic communities: Cuban, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, to name a few. Most are clustered in South Florida, where Spanish-language journalists say Scott’s campaign is far more proactive and accessible than Nelson’s.

“I haven’t really seen that much activity as far as being open to the media from Nelson. And as far as the same intensity as Governor Scott, I don’t see it from Nelson,” said Rene Pedrosa, a Miami-based reporter for América TeVé and a commentator for Caracol Radio.

Pedrosa notes that Scott on Monday held a Colombian outreach event in Coral Gables at a coffee shop right next to the Colombian consulate on the first day of absentee early voting for that nation’s presidential election. At least 87,000 Colombia natives are on Florida’s voter rolls, the second-highest number of Latin American foreign-born Florida voters behind the 325,000 Cubans, said University of Florida political science professor Daniel A. Smith who has studied Florida’s immigrant voters. Smith said the total number of voters of Cuban and Colombian descent is far higher.

Pedrosa and other Spanish-language reporters say it’s no surprise Scott was campaigning with Colombians because he has systematically targeted different Latino populations in recent months: Venezuelans at the El Arepazo restaurant in Doral, Cubans at a Cuban Independence Day event with Bay of Pigs Veterans in Miami, and an event for Nicaraguans at a local Miami-Dade business.

Asked about the differences between the Scott and Nelson campaigns, Roberto R. Tejera, a veteran political commentator and host of “The Roberto Rodriguez Tejera Show” on Actualidad Radio in Miami, joked: “Who is Bill Nelson?”

Another reporter for a national Spanish-language network couldn’t recall any recent high-profile Latino-focused Nelson events in South Florida either and said that Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio and even New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez are more active in Florida than Nelson in reaching out about Latin American issues of importance to the network’s viewers. “[Scott] also learned Spanish which is pretty amazing,” the reporter, who could not speak on the record under company policy, told POLITICO in a text message.

Scott, at the event for Colombian-American voters, said Nelson’s outreach was indicative of the Democrat’s campaign more broadly: “I haven’t seen him reach out in the last six years, either. I haven’t seen him around the state.”

Nelson’s campaign disputes that claim and pointed to more than two dozen dates when he met with Hispanic leaders and Puerto Rican officials, activists and evacuees. The list also includes two meetings with Venezuelans in Miami.

Nelson’s predicament doesn’t surprise Democrats familiar with Latino outreach in Senate campaigns and Nelson’s successful 2012 election, when he faced a weak opponent and rode President Obama’s coattails to an easy win while doing relatively little Hispanic-centric campaigning. At the time, some faulted Nelson for not doing enough and since then, they say, neither he nor the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has taken Latino outreach seriously enough. Two operatives said the DSCC has ignored repeated entreaties to fix the situation.

“You do things necessary to mobilize the community and to communicate,” said one Democrat who didn’t want to be identified for fear of political retribution. “And the fact you don’t have that in Florida set up, you don’t have that in DC set up — it’s baffling. And people are taking notice.”

The DSCC, in a written statement, said it defers to Nelson.

“We do not run these programs out of D.C. — the DSCC’s model is to work with individual Senate campaigns and state parties to design, build and execute programs, tailored to each race, to ensure that campaigns are engaging with these constituency groups and voters on the ground in their states. For instance, in the Florida Senate race the Nelson campaign has a Spanish language Press Secretary, the State Party and Nelson campaign have organizers working to engage with the Hispanic community and implement a Hispanic surrogate program, and the DSCC works to provide overall strategic guidance and support to these press and field efforts.”

But Juan Escalante, an undocumented “DREAMer” from Venezuela who grew up in Florida and is now communications director for the immigrant-rights group America’s Voice in Washington, said Latino activists and Democratic insiders worry that the party is in denial about the effectiveness of Scott’s outreach and the relatively low-key campaigning by Nelson.

“When it comes down to it, Scott seems more willing to speak to Latino audiences — going to where they are and speaking their language and showing a vested interest in what they care about,” said Escalante, criticizing Nelson for not embracing DREAMers and Latinos in the same way that former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid did.

“It’s rather unfortunate that we don’t have the senior senator of Florida embedding himself in that energy,” he said. “We may end up with a Rick Scott as a junior senator and a Marco Rubio as a senior senator. And I don’t want to see that.”

