MIAMI — Mauricio Restrepo is frustrated that Democrats have failed to put up more of a fight against Republican gains in his home county of Miami-Dade, a liberal stronghold that could be captured by a GOP gubernatorial candidate for the first time in 20 years.
“There’s no way around it. It used to be a toss-up state, but I would say it’s not even close anymore,” said the 39-year old Colombian American teacher, who is a registered Democrat. Restrepo predicts that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is running for reelection this year, is going to win in Miami-Dade County: “All the Republicans are going to win for sure.”
Although Democrats outnumber Republicans in Miami-Dade, the GOP has continued to make headway with Hispanic voters in the state’s most populous county. A GOP victory in Miami-Dade, where Hispanics make up almost 60 percent of the electorate, would be a stunning turnaround in a county that Hillary Clinton won by almost 30 points just six years ago. DeSantis himself lost the county by more than 20 points four years ago.
The Republican Party has kept up an aggressive year-round ground operation in Miami-Dade, work that has ramped up since former president Donald Trump made major gains with Hispanics here in 2020. The GOP is hoping for a strong overperformance with conservative-leaning Cuban Americans and further gains with the county’s growing Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and other Hispanic groups this election.
Democrats say they aren’t seeing enough enthusiasm from their own party.
Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo hasn’t shied from calling out Democrats in Florida and nationwide for what she says is a lack of investment and attention to Miami.
Taddeo, who is a Colombian American, is facing a battle against Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R) in one of the only competitive House races in the state, and she’s concerned the party hasn’t taken the current political environment as a wake-up call.
“Republicans can get slaughtered in an election, and their response is, ‘We need to be more present. We need to be there. We need to invest money,’” Taddeo said. “Democrats do terrible, and they walk away. … That is definitely one of the reasons why things are so tough.”
With Election Day looming, President Biden and Trump are both coming to Miami-Dade to campaign, a sign of the continued importance of the county. On Tuesday, Biden will be campaigning for Democrats Charlie Crist, the nominee for governor, and Rep. Val Demings, who is challenging Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Trump is scheduled to stump a few days later for Rubio — but not for DeSantis, who is viewed as a potential 2024 rival.
Democratic leaders and organizers caution that it’s still possible they’ll win the county; the party still boasts the largest number of registered voters in Miami-Dade. But they recognize that a win probably won’t rival Clinton’s performance in the 2016 presidential election and would probably be closer to Biden’s 2020 showing, when he won the county by only seven points.
Miami-Dade has more than 575,000 Democrats, 487,000 independents and 435,000 Republicans, according to county registration statistics. Among Hispanics, however, Republicans outnumber Democrats — a gap that is growing.
Despite his pessimism about his party, Restrepo said he’s excited to vote for Demings in her bid to unseat Rubio. He said he loves Demings’s “strong voice.” But he said he doesn’t plan to vote for Crist.
“I’m going to leave that one blank,” said Restrepo, who said that he canvassed for Crist in past election cycles. He said it’s not that he strongly dislikes Crist but that he thinks of him as “just a career politician.”
Interviews with other Democratic voters here show that some are not fully on board with Crist’s bid for governor — even if they aren’t fans of DeSantis — and some feel they don’t know enough about Demings.
Roger Ledesma, 43, said he’s discouraged by how contentious he’s seen politics become in South Florida and nationwide. Ledesma, a Democrat, said he doesn’t plan to vote this year because he hasn’t “seen any great-looking candidates running.”
Ledesma said he doesn’t see anything positive about DeSantis, whom he compared to a bully. But he said Crist “doesn’t seem like the strongest candidate, but I guess that’s what we’re given on the Democratic side.”
Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University, said the issue isn’t the Democrats at the top of the ticket. He said it’s not that Crist is a bad candidate, but that he’s running against a popular incumbent.
“Even the best of candidates would have a hard time against DeSantis,” said Gamarra, who polls Latino voters in the United States and throughout Latin America. “I think that’s probably the harshest reality of all.”
During his first term in office, DeSantis has built a national reputation for inflaming culture wars, which has positioned him as a top GOP contender for 2024. But beyond social issues, polls have shown that a majority of voters back how he has handled the pandemic and other challenges facing Floridians.
DeSantis is leading Crist by 51 percent to 44 percent with Florida’s Hispanic voters, according to a new Telemundo/LX News poll. In southeastern Florida, which includes Miami-Dade, 50 percent of Hispanic voters are backing DeSantis, compared with 46 percent supporting Crist, the poll found.
The poll also showed DeSantis leading with Hispanic independent voters, 56 percent to 34 percent. And DeSantis is getting 6 percent support from registered Democrats, compared with 1 percent of Republicans backing Crist, the poll found.
DeSantis’s more controversial decisions have been supported by Hispanic voters in the state, the poll found. Half of Florida’s Hispanic voters were in favor of the governor’s move last month to fly Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, while 43 percent disapproved.
“Gov. DeSantis is winning in Miami because his agenda is popular and his opponents are a walking arroz con mango,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a Republican media strategist who led Trump’s 2020 national Hispanic advertising, using Cuban slang that means “a messy situation.” “The Democrats could earnestly address their issues with Hispanics, but they prefer to attribute their losses to ‘disinformation.’ This helps them save face with donors, but there’s an electoral price to being so out of touch with reality.”
GOP leaders in South Florida also credit the national party for investing in year-round engagement. The Republican National Committee opened a Hispanic community center in Doral last year that aimed to deepen the party’s connection with the community, with such programs as sessions for immigrants to prepare for the civics portion of the naturalization test.
Fernand Amandi, a Democratic consultant and pollster here, agreed that there is a path for DeSantis to win Miami-Dade. The last GOP candidate for governor to accomplish that was former governor Jeb Bush 20 years ago. Bush is fluent in Spanish, and his wife is Latina.
A DeSantis win in Miami-Dade “means that Florida’s electoral votes, probably in the short term, hopefully not in the long term, will be safely in the hands of the Republican Party in presidential years,” Amandi added. “At the presidential level, it will be the declaration of Florida as a solid Republican state and no longer a battleground or swing state.”
Democratic and Republican leaders alike said much of the attention in this election has been on the gubernatorial race, because DeSantis is being watched nationally as a potential presidential contender. But voters are also facing a constant stream of ads about the Senate race between Rubio and Demings, the three-term congresswoman and former Orlando police chief. Although Demings has outraised and outspent Rubio, the Cuban American senator has continued to lead in polls. If Rubio wins the majority of the vote in the county, it would be the first time a GOP Senate candidate has accomplished that since 2004.
Demings’s campaign said it has made Hispanic outreach in the county a priority with efforts such as investing in Caribbean radio and TV ads targeting the Afro-Caribbean community and making campaign stops in South Florida to meet with Hispanic voters.
Crist’s campaign is “leaving no stone unturned in Miami-Dade where we’ve made multi-million dollar investments to reach voters in both English and Spanish through grassroots, radio, television, and in mailboxes,” spokesperson Samantha Ramirez said in a statement.
Noel Chavez, 49, an independent voter, said that he doesn’t really agree with everything he’s seeing from DeSantis and Rubio but that he’ll still be supporting them this election. For him, the top issue is the economy, as he continues to see inflation affecting his day-to-day expenses.
“I don’t like everything about Ron DeSantis, but Charlie Crist is a joke,” said Chavez, a truck driver. “I like Democrats outside of Florida, but the Democratic Party just doesn’t have good leaders in Florida.”
Chavez said Crist’s political résumé — he served as a GOP governor of Florida, lost a 2010 Senate bid in which he ran as an independent, then lost a 2014 bid for governor as a Democrat — suggests that he lacks commitment. Chavez, who came to the United States from Cuba in 2009, said he was a fan of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum in 2018, and these days, he’s a big fan of Beto O’Rourke, this year’s Democratic nominee for governor in Texas.
Several Democratic voters in Miami-Dade held out hope that the county would remain blue even if they know DeSantis has a good chance of winning.
Nancy Suarez, 46, a teacher, said she supported Crist in the past and is enthusiastically supporting him again.
“The Republicans are just anti-everything. They’re very pro-charter schools. They’re trying to privatize education here, and that’s what feeds my family,” Suarez said, adding that she’s most focused on protecting abortion rights, LGBTQ rights and public education. “People come here for freedom … and they’re trying to take that away.”
At a recent rally hosted by progressive group Latino Victory in Coral Gables, Angel Montalvo, 29, said he’s excited about some candidates down the ballot and likes Crist’s running mate, Karla Hernandez, president of the United Teachers of Dade. But, he added, “I don’t trust Charlie Crist.”
Pebble Yaffe, 32, who attended the event with Montalvo, said, “This is about finding the lesser of the evils.”
Yaffe and Montalvo said they’ll still be voting for the Democrats on the ticket. Montalvo said he feels there’s too much GOP messaging on fighting socialism. “We want health care. We want housing. Let’s focus on that. Nobody cares about communism,” he said.
But Republicans have found success in painting Democrats as socialists. It’s a message that has resonated in the county because it is home to a huge concentration of Hispanic voters and Latin American exiles who fled leftist violence or dictatorships in Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Raúl Martinez, a Democrat who served for decades as the first Cuban-born mayor of Hialeah, said he’s disappointed with the way campaigns are being run this cycle, with fewer in-person events and a larger emphasis on ads and social media. He’s also worried about Republicans’ success in using socialism to rile up voters and says Democratic candidates just aren’t fighting hard enough.
“It’s just not the same Miami that it was in 2016,” Martinez said.