Michael Grunwald is a senior staff writer for Politico Magazine. Marc Caputo is POLITICO's Florida political reporter.



Rick Scott has spent years courting Hispanics as if his political career depended on it. He took Spanish lessons while serving as Florida’s Republican governor and reached out to Democratic-leaning Puerto Ricans by visiting their island after Hurricane Maria—not once, but eight times. He chose a Cuban-American lieutenant governor and showed up in Cuban strongholds like Hialeah so often that locals joked that el gobernador must be one of them. He displayed his solidarity with Venezuelan exiles at El Arepazo restaurant in Doral—not once, but at six separate events. “The first time we went to El Arepazo, I had never met the owner,” says Scott’s Hispanic communications director, Jaime Florez. “We went back so many times, I swear to God, he’s now one of my best friends.”

It turned out that Scott’s political career did depend on his diligent courtship of Latino voters, because on Election Day, they extended it. Despite the national Democratic wave, Scott unseated Senator Bill Nelson by 10,033 votes, and a key factor was Scott’s energetic pursuit of Hispanic voters neglected by his Democratic opponent. The Hispanic vote was also critical for Scott’s Republican successor as governor, Ron DeSantis, who also chose a Cuban-American running mate, Jeanette Nuñez, and also squeaked out a narrow victory, in his case over Democrat Andrew Gillum. Democrats clearly have a Hispanic problem in America’s largest swing state, a problem that could help President Donald Trump win a second term in 2020.


Nationally, overwhelming margins among Latino voters helped drive Democratic victories in states like California, Nevada and Arizona. But in Florida, older Cuban-Americans who mostly support Republicans voted in droves, while turnout for younger Cubans, Puerto Ricans and other non-Cuban Hispanics who skew Democratic lagged—and did not skew as Democratic as expected. Exit polls found Democrats won only 54 percent of the Hispanic vote, down from 62 percent in 2016 and 58 percent in 2014. Florida Democrats did replace two Cuban-American Republicans in majority-Hispanic congressional districts while electing several new Latino state legislators and local officials. But the top-of-the-ticket losses were brutal wake-up calls for Democrats who hope to flip Florida in 2020 and are counting on the state’s fastest-growing demographic to help them flip it.

Before the midterms, the spin from Democrats was that Trump was their best Hispanic organizer. He was supposedly mobilizing opposition to Republican allies like Scott and DeSantis by demonizing immigrants, bungling the response to Hurricane Maria and tailoring his message exclusively to his right-wing base. But while Trump fired up Hispanics in the Southwest, especially Mexican-Americans who objected to his push for a border wall, Florida Hispanics represent a much broader cross section of Latin America. A majority of them do object to Trump, but marginally improved turnout by non-Cuban Hispanics was overshadowed by much higher turnout from Trump’s base of older Cuban exiles as well as whites, while the blue wave of Puerto Rican hurricane evacuees that some Democrats thought could change the politics of Florida forever never materialized.

“This election was mostly a massive repudiation of Donald Trump, but something went extraordinarily wrong in Florida,” says Simon Rosenberg, the founder of the New Democrat Network and a party strategist on Latino politics. “Democrats should have done much better with Hispanics there, and instead we did much worse. We need to have a big conversation about why.”

That conversation has already begun. Some Democrats are leery of an overcorrection; after all, Nelson and Gillum both lost by less than half a percentage point despite their underperformance with Hispanics, and it’s possible that Trump’s unpopular name and policies on the ballot could help reverse that underperformance in 2020. Still, in all-important Miami-Dade County, where Democrats are a majority of the electorate but Republicans control the city and county mayor's offices, Democrats have already held soul-searching meetings to discuss why their Hispanic margins sagged in 2018, and how they can make voting as much a cultural habit for younger Cubans and non-Cuban Hispanics as it is for the aging Cuban exiles who helped carry Scott and DeSantis to victory. Miami-Dade’s overall turnout lagged about 6 points behind the state average, and was even worse in its Venezuelan and Colombian precincts, while turnout in its most Cuban and most Republican precincts was well ahead of the state average.

“We see turnout dipping outside the Cuban bloc,” says Ricky Junquera, vice chair of the Miami-Dade Democrats. “And we need to fix it.”

Woody Allen said that 80 percent of life is showing up, and operatives from both parties agreed that Florida Democrats have been remarkably slow to learn that lesson when it comes to Hispanic outreach. Instead of organizing year-round, they’ve assumed demography would be destiny. Instead of selling progressive policies aggressively on Spanish-language media, they’ve assumed their positions on issues like immigration and health care would speak for themselves. And while Democrats are starting to put in more face time in Hispanic communities, Republicans are still doing a better job of nuts-and-bolts politicking with a demographic that is now one-sixth of the state’s electorate. Roberto Rodriguez Tejera, a Miami talk-radio host, says it’s often hard to find bilingual Democratic politicians and surrogates who will come on the air. Annette Taddeo, a Democratic state senator from the Miami area, says many of her fellow Democrats think they can introduce themselves to Hispanics a few months before Election Day with stump speeches and TV ads.

“I’m sick and tired of being the only Democrat who shows up at Nicaraguan events, Venezuelan events,” Taddeo says. “You can’t just show up in campaign mode; you’ve got to be present all the time.” In August, Taddeo attended the inauguration of the new president of her native Colombia—and was not surprised to run into Rick Scott. It wasn’t a major news event in the mainstream U.S. media, but just about every Colombian voter in Florida heard that their governor had paid his respects.

“Rick Scott is a master of this,” she says. “He gets that it’s not just about policies and issues. It’s about being there.”



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In late 2011, as Nelson was preparing for his previous Senate reelection campaign, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned him to pay more attention to Hispanics back home. A top Reid aide from Miami, Jose Parra, recalls telling Nelson about a slew of Hispanic journalists in Florida who had complained they were being ignored. “Look, I’ve got a lot of media markets to deal with,” Nelson told Parra. “And frankly, I don’t think I’m going to get the Cuban vote.”

Parra was stunned. Florida is the ultimate 50-50 swing state, and he assumed any seasoned politician would know the key to winning here is managing margins. Yes, Parra told Nelson, most Cubans are Republicans, but if you work hard you might get 40 percent of them, like Bill Clinton did, and that could be the difference between winning and losing. What was even more surprising was Nelson’s apparent belief that “Hispanics” meant “Cubans,” when only about a third of the state’s Hispanics are of Cuban origin. “You’ve also got Puerto Ricans, Ecuadorans, Colombians—those votes add up!” Parra says.

Nelson took Reid’s advice in 2012 and won comfortably. Then again, his opponent that year was not nearly as formidable as Scott, a two-term governor who spent more than $50 million of his own money to take Nelson out. In 2012, Nelson also benefited from the work done to mobilize Hispanics by President Barack Obama, whose successful reelection campaign in Florida is considered a model for how Democrats can maximize their Hispanic vote.

“We cracked the code. And we figured, obviously, Democrats will keep following this playbook, right?” says Miami pollster Fernand Amandi, who helped Obama target the Hispanic vote in 2012. “Wrong. They abandoned it.”

The first element of the playbook was to start early. A year before the election, Obama’s internal polls had him tied with potential Republican opponents among Florida Hispanics, who repeatedly told Amandi’s focus groups they didn’t think Obama had accomplished anything. So the Obama campaign began airing a series of ads on Spanish-language television featuring the Cuban talk show host Cristina Saralegui, a kind of Hispanic Oprah Winfrey, explaining Obama’s work on issues like the economy, education, foreign policy and, especially, health care, an issue on which Hispanics tend to lean progressive. The campaign specifically targeted Puerto Ricans in the central Florida area with reminders that Obama had appointed the first Puerto Rican to the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, while playing defense with Cubans in South Florida through an ad featuring former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz vouching for Obama’s distaste for the Castro government.

Ultimately, Obama received more than 60 percent of the Hispanic vote in Florida, including nearly half the Cuban vote. And overall, Hispanic turnout was way up in Florida in 2012, for the first time equaling the Hispanic share of registered voters. Over the past six years, the Hispanic share of the Florida electorate has continued to increase, a potential gold mine for Democrats. But in 2018, non-Cuban Hispanics were less likely to vote than whites or blacks, and their margins for Gillum and Nelson were significantly lower than their margins for Obama.

“Both of the Democratic nominees sucked in terms of campaigning and communicating with Hispanics,” says David Custin, a Miami-based Republican operative who is the top consultant to Florida’s new House speaker, Jose Oliva. “Compare that to what Obama did. He put in the time and the money.”

Gillum’s most glaring problem with Hispanic outreach was his late start. His underfunded campaign in the late-summer Democratic primary focused mainly on white liberals and African-Americans, and his upset victory left him virtually no time to hire staff to launch a Hispanic strategy for the fall. Christian Ulvert, his director for Spanish-language media, joined the campaign just two weeks before absentee ballots were mailed out. “We had no infrastructure,” Ulvert says. “And honestly, Democrats have been playing catch-up on Hispanic outreach for two decades, because Republicans have invested in it. You can’t close that gap overnight.”

DeSantis and especially Nuñez also worked hard to mobilize Cubans and peel off some Venezuelans and Nicaraguans by portraying Gillum as a socialist reminiscent of leftist autocrats in their countries of origin. Gillum was slow to respond to the attacks, and as his campaign focused primarily on firing up his left-leaning base, including a rally with Bernie Sanders shortly before the election, the left-baiting does seem to have hurt him. At Miami-Dade Fire Station 69 in the city of Doral, known as “Doralzuela” for its heavy concentration of Venezuelan exiles, Gillum trounced DeSantis by 32 points. But in 2016, Hillary Clinton trounced Trump in that precinct by 52 points, even though Trump owns a resort in Doral.

“The whole ‘communism and socialism’ message unfortunately really scared the Venezuelan community,” says Helena Poleo, a former Miami journalist and analyst of Venezuelan affairs. At the same time, Poleo believes Democrats contribute to their failures by taking Hispanic voters for granted until the homestretches of campaigns. “This is a mistake they make over and over again. It boggles my mind,” she says.

Nuñez and Senator Marco Rubio were all over Spanish-language radio and TV, while Gillum lacked similarly resonant Spanish-speaking surrogates. “The Democrats need a Marco Rubio of their own,” says Tejera, the Miami radio host. And Nuñez crisscrossed the state talking to Hispanic pastors in Deltona, Puerto Rican activists in Orlando, and the Conga Caliente festival in the Tampa Bay area, engaging the kind of voters who don’t watch Fox News or MSNBC and don’t necessarily speak English.

“That direct contact was key,” Nuñez says. “It allows voters to feel like they’re part of the process. They’re not just receiving hundreds of mailers that they throw in the garbage anyway.”

Nelson had very little direct contact with those voters, because by just about all accounts, he ran a uniquely lazy campaign that made laughably ineffectual attempts to engage with Hispanics. Back in June, a POLITICO story quoted Florida Latinos warning that the three-term senator was virtually unknown in their communities after 40 years in elected office, and had no Spanish-language website or ads to fix that. By contrast, Scott campaigned relentlessly to reduce Nelson’s margins among non-Cuban Hispanics, especially the Puerto Ricans who were pouring into central Florida even before Hurricane Maria. He bought ads during the World Cup this summer highlighting his commitment to Puerto Rico, before Nelson even went on the air on Spanish-language media.

Most Boricuas disagree with Scott’s opposition to Obamacare, and especially his support for Trump, but his efforts to communicate concern for their community clearly paid off. At the Robert Guevara Community Center in a predominantly Puerto Rican section of Kissimmee, Scott lost by 44 points, which sounds terrible except that DeSantis lost that precinct by 53 points—and in 2016, Trump lost it by 60 points. Meanwhile, turnout in that precinct was 12 points lower than the statewide rate, so a lot of potential Democratic voters apparently decided to stay home. “In heavily Puerto Rican precincts, the real issue was abysmal turnout,” says Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political science professor.

Again, though, whose fault is that? Parra, the Democratic strategist who used to work for Harry Reid, says his party “always expects demography to float our boat,” instead of making a real effort to engage Hispanics on issues they care about. Parra often thinks about a Senate Democratic retreat in Annapolis to discuss its governing agenda in January 2013, after Nelson’s belated outreach to Hispanics helped return him to office. The party’s top priority was going to be immigration reform, a vital issue for Hispanics—not quite as vital in Florida, because Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and at the time most Cuban migrants also got automatic citizenship, but still important, in part because support for immigration is often seen as a proxy for respect for brown people. What Parra remembers is that just before Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey started their presentation about immigration reform, Nelson walked out of the room.

“He didn’t get the message of 2012, and that’s why he lost in 2018,” Parra says. “He’s been missing in action again for the last six years.”



***

The good news for Republicans in 2018 was that they improved on their performance from 2016 in all kinds of Hispanic communities. At the Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, named for the white Democratic icon whose family built that heavily Cuban and Republican city, Trump won the precinct by 30 points. But DeSantis and Scott each won it by 40. At Felix Varela High School west of Miami in the heavily Colombian neighborhood of The Hammocks, Scott lost by 25 points and DeSantis lost by 26 points, but Trump had lost by 34 points.

The potentially bad news for Republicans in 2020 is that Trump will be back on the ballot, and it’s not clear how much of their improvement in 2018 was a result of his absence. In the presidential election, Democrats will be able to attack him directly for portraying immigrants as criminals, putting brown children in cages, trying to repeal Obamacare, and pursuing other policies that poll terribly among Hispanics. Giancarlo Sopo, a Democratic consultant in Miami, estimates that Cubans had a 15-point turnout advantage over non-Cuban Hispanics in 2018, and suggests that Trump’s pugnacious rhetoric might have persuaded even more whites, who are still 63 percent of Florida’s registered voters, to back Republicans. But Sopo says Trump is so toxic among non-Cuban Hispanics that supporting him “gets you labeled as a Tió Tomás, an Uncle Tom,” which could change the calculus in two years.

Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Cuban-American Republican who was reelected in 2016 even though Trump lost his Miami-area district by 16 points, blames the president for his defeat in 2018 to Ecuadoran-American Democrat Debbie Murcasel-Powell. Curbelo says he had a healthy lead a month before the election, even though he had taken unpopular votes for Trump’s tax cuts and repeal of Obamacare, but the lead vanished as Trump spent the last three weeks denouncing birthright citizenship and declaring war on a caravan of Central Americans fleeing their home countries.

“All this tough-on-immigration talk works in red states and districts, but obviously not districts like mine,” Curbelo says. Similarly, the neighboring district that had been represented by Cuban-American Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was considered a toss-up until the final weeks, when white Democrat Donna Shalala pulled away from Cuban-American Republican Maria Elvira Salazar by tying her to Trump. And Curbelo pointed out that Hispanic turnout is likely to be even higher in 2020, because non-Cuban Hispanics tend to be better about voting in presidential elections.

“That means more Democratic-leaning voters, and the president isn’t doing himself any favors with Hispanic swing voters,” Curbelo says. “If nothing changes from here to then, 2020 is going to be difficult.”

Republicans hope that Trump’s efforts to roll back Obama’s opening to Cuba and play hardball with other Latin American leftists will help widen his margins with Cubans and reduce his losses with Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Colombians. They’re especially hoping the Democrats nominate Sanders or another left-leaning candidate they can plausibly attack as a socialist, a word with painful associations for many Florida Hispanics. “There’s an absolute emotional response to socialism as an issue,” says former GOP state Representative Juan Zapata, a Colombian-American.

Democrats point out that on health care, taxes and other domestic issues, non-Cuban Hispanics and even many Cubans tend to be quite progressive; the Cuban stronghold of Hialeah has the nation’s highest percentage of Obamacare recipients. They also believe Trump’s harsh immigration rhetoric is disqualifying him with many Hispanics, revealing a worldview that doesn’t include families that don’t look like his in the American Dream. And even though there wasn’t much of a Puerto Rican backlash visible in the 2018 returns, some Republicans worry that it could come in 2020, when ads targeting Boricuas show an uncaring president tossing paper towels to hurricane victims as if he were shooting baskets.

“Videos don’t go away, bro,” says Custin, the Miami Republican operative. “You’re never going to get rid of the video of him throwing stuff at people.”

Even on foreign affairs, some Democrats believe the GOP hard-line policies against Cuba and other repressive Latin American regimes have diminishing returns with younger Hispanics. Former Democratic Congressman Joe Garcia, who once enforced the hard line as director of the Cuban American National Foundation but later supported Obama’s efforts to open up travel to the island, says his old approach has limited appeal beyond a cadre of reliable Republican voters.

“Believe me, I used to be all about the old right-wingers, but they’re not the future,” Garcia says. “There’s an opening for some nuance there.”

But Florida operatives say the more important challenge for Democrats than making policy adjustments is to do a better job of just showing up in Hispanic communities and sucking up to Hispanic voters—not in the fall of 2020, but now. They did see improvements in non-Cuban Hispanic voter registration and turnout in 2018 compared to previous midterms, thanks in part to grass-roots efforts by unions and liberal groups heavily funded by California billionaire Tom Steyer, and they did elect more Spanish-speaking Democrats who can serve as surrogates in 2020. But as Miami-Dade Democratic chairman Juan Cuba acknowledges, many of those efforts were too little and too late. “If you look at the races we won, those investments in the field were made early,” Cuba says.

The appeal of old-fashioned grassroots field work is that it can help no matter what happens in Washington, and operatives in both parties agree that there’s no way to know what’s going to happen in Washington. Custin says it’s impossible to predict the actions of a president who would send military troops to the Texas border to greet a caravan that was heading to the California border, just to rally opposition to Democrat Beto O’Rourke. “You understand? He’ll do anything!” Custin marvels. “I’m not knocking him. I’m not praising him. I’m giving it to you agnostically.” Nobody can be sure how Hispanics will vote in 2020, he says.

“For all we know, Trump will do airstrikes in Cuba or Nicaragua or Venezuela,” Custin says. “You just don’t know!”