A New Latino Mix

At a Puerto Rican community center in Orlando two weeks ago, a parade of Republican luminaries took the stage to plug their presidential candidate en español. "John McCain es nuestro amigo," said John Quiñones, an Osceola County commissioner born in Puerto Rico ("John McCain is our friend"). "El país primero antes que la ambición personal," declared U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez ("Country first before personal ambition"). There, too, were former Florida Governors Jeb Bush and Bob Martinez and current Governor Charlie Crist. When McCain himself arrived, he rattled off a litany of proposals tailored to the audience. He pledged his support for a referendum on Puerto Rican statehood. He eulogized the sacrifice of Latinos who served in the military. And he exalted the "cultural input" and "vitality" of Hispanics across the country. Then he concluded with the bottom line: "We have to win Florida."

The scene signals just how important some of Florida's emerging Hispanic communities are to winning the state. Though Cuban-Americans dominated the Latino electorate in Florida for decades—accounting for 70 percent of it in 2000—newer arrivals have scrambled the demographic mix. For the first time, non-Cuban Hispanics make up a majority of Florida's Latino voters (who, as a whole, account for 11 percent of the state's electorate). The groups fueling the growth: Puerto Ricans, who have mostly converged in the Orlando area, and Central and South Americans, who have largely settled in South Florida. Unlike GOP-leaning Cuban-Americans, these constituencies tend to tilt Democratic. That helps explain another milestone: registered Democrats now outnumber registered Republicans among Latinos in the state. "The increased number of non-Cuban Hispanics is becoming a really significant factor in Florida politics," says Dario Moreno, a professor at Florida International University. "Both of [the presidential campaigns] have been working them very hard."

In theory, the changes bode well for Democrats. "Republicans are so used to using the foreign policy-related angle," appealing to Cuban-Americans by taking a hard-line stance against Fidel and Raúl Castro, says Susan MacManus, a professor at the University of South Florida. "Now they need to have a domestic message"—terrain that favors Democrats these days. If he manages to capitalize on the opportunity, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama could outdo John Kerry's performance in 2004, when the Massachusetts senator captured 44 percent of Florida's Latino vote. "If [Obama] gets 55 percent, then he would pretty much ensure winning the state," says Sergio Bendixen, a pollster for the New Democratic Network (NDN) and expert in Hispanic public opinion.

Yet that won't be easy. Recent polls show Obama trailing McCain among Florida Latinos by as much as 10 points. Part of the reason: the newer groups, "while being less Republican than Cubans, are far less Democratic than their counterparts in other parts of the country," says Moreno. (National polls show Obama leading among Hispanics overall by roughly 30 points.) The state's non-Cuban Latinos have a pronounced independent streak: they account for a significant chunk of the 29 percent of Hispanics in the state who registered with no party affiliation.

In South Florida—the seat of Cuban-American power—newer Hispanic groups like Colombian- and Venezuelan-Americans are just beginning to flex their political muscle. Many of them are middle-class professionals who fled unrest in their home countries and remain more focused on the political scene there than the one in the United States. "People physically might be here, but their minds are still back home," says Republican State Rep. Juan Zapata, the first Colombian-American to be elected to the Florida legislature. "The Colombian community didn't get me elected. It was the Cuban community." But the various groups are getting more organized. Four years ago, Ernesto Ackerman founded the bipartisan Independent Venezuelan-American Citizens to promote involvement in local politics. And this year, the hard-fought presidential race has galvanized the newcomers. "There's a tremendous movement of people who want to get involved in the political process," says Fabio Andrade, a Colombian-American and Miami-Dade County co-chair for the McCain campaign.

The presidential contenders are targeting these communities. McCain repeatedly cites his support for a free trade agreement with Colombia on the stump and even paid a visit to the country's president, Alvaro Uribe, earlier this year. The Obama camp, for its part, has deployed Dan Restrepo, a Latin America policy advisor to the senator and also a Colombian-American, to meet with the Colombian community in Miami. The candidates are vying on the airwaves as well. McCain is now running a Spanish-language commercial that hammers Obama for saying he'd be willing to communicate with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. In the spot, an announcer asks, "Did you see who Obama wants to talk with?" Then footage appears of Chávez thundering, "Go to hell, you filthy Yankees!" Obama's campaign fired back with a statement that read, "We cannot afford more of the same foreign policy that has strengthened Chávez and set back U.S. leadership in Latin America, while doing nothing to break our dependence on foreign oil."