Republicans believe they have a good chance on Tuesday of capturing Miami-Dade County in the Florida gubernatorial election for the first time in two decades. It’s a feat that would have been almost unthinkable six years ago, when Hillary Clinton, running for president with Donald Trump, won the all-important county by no less than 29 percentage points.
“The Republicans are going to take Miami-Dade County on November 8,” Lieutenant Governor Jeanette M. Núñez predicted last month, saying aloud something that political analysts had begun to privately predict about the ticket she forms. with Governor Ron DeSantis.
Democrats also believe in this possibility.
“The way the numbers are going, they [os republicanos] can win, without a shadow of a doubt,” said State Senator Annette Taddeo, a Miami Democrat who is running for a congressional seat representing a district that was recently one of the most competitive in the country but now leans toward the Republican side.
The fact that the possibility of Florida’s most populous urban county switching sides is being discussed openly reveals much about the crushing defeat that nervous Democrats fear and confident Republicans predict in Tuesday’s midterms, which will likely end Florida’s era as a state. purple, politically undecided, and convert it to at least a shade of pink.
On Wednesday, the day after President Joe Biden attended a Miami Gardens rally with Democratic candidates, the number of registered Republican voters who voted early in Miami-Dade surpassed the number of Democratic voters who had done the same.
Democrats, who still vastly outnumber Republicans in county voter registration data, usually make their biggest early-election push the weekend before the election. But the large turnout of Republican voters so far is making Biden’s acronym fearful. Even if the Democrats win by a narrow margin in Miami-Dade, statewide party math will almost certainly not result in their victory.
The repercussions of a Republican victory in Miami-Dade could extend beyond Florida. Democrats predict that Republicans will repeat what they have done in the past, taking the strategies and messages that worked here to other communities with many Hispanic voters in areas that are now fiercer battlegrounds. According to census data, of Miami-Dade’s 2.7 million residents, more than two-thirds identify as Hispanic.
“Republicans will be encouraged and will use what they’ve done here as a role model in communities across the country, from Nevada and California to Virginia and Pennsylvania,” said Democratic political adviser Christian Ulvert in Miami. “This needs to be a big wake-up call to Democratic leaders across the country.”
Trump is expected to lead a rally this Sunday (6) in Miami-Dade County with Senator Marco Rubio and other Republican candidates. But Governor DeSantis, Trump’s likely rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, will be noted for his absence.
DeSantis, who lost Miami-Dade by 21 percentage points in 2018, plans to campaign on Monday in Hialeah, a city northwest of Miami with a large Cuban-American and Republican presence.
The last Republican gubernatorial candidate to win in Miami-Dade was Jeb Bush, a longtime resident of the county, in 2002. Marco Rubio, who also lives in the county, won a plurality of the county’s vote in 2010 but lost it. by 11 points in 2016.
In the past, Democrats relied on a few large urban Florida counties, like Miami-Dade, to bolster voter turnout, aware that they would inevitably suffer losses in the state’s many rural and suburban counties. Former President Barack Obama won in Florida in 2008 and 2012 by mobilizing the participation of Democratic voters in the cities and minimizing the party’s margins of loss in the rest of the state. Since then, however, only one Democratic candidate has been elected to state office.
Opinion polls suggest that DeSantis is up to 10 percentage points clear of his Democratic rival Charlie Christ, a former governor and congressman who has not generated much enthusiasm. Marco Rubio is ahead of Democratic Representative Val Demings of Orlando by a smaller but still comfortable margin. Not so long ago, such broad advantages would have been inconceivable in Florida state elections.
Two years ago, after Trump defeated Biden in Florida by three percentage points, a shift to the right occurred. Miami-Dade County was instrumental in Trump’s victory: Biden won it by a mere seven percentage points as the Hispanic vote switched sides and went to Trump, punching Democrats in the stomach nationally.
Democrats and Republicans agree that the coronavirus pandemic marked a turning point that drew more voters to the Republican side in South Florida, where the local economy is heavily based on small businesses and the tourism industry. DeSantis has been basing his campaign on his decisions to reopen schools and businesses at an early stage of the pandemic.
“The Democrats haven’t been able to win the support of many Latino families,” said former Representative Carlos Curbelo, a moderate Republican who lost his congressional seat in 2018. “These are workers who often depend on tips for a living. children are still learning English, so skipping school means they will fall behind in their studies.”
Curbelo and others, including several Democrats, also pointed to a Democratic message seen by at least some Hispanics as being overly focused on social issues, identity and issues such as racism and inequality. DeSantis portrays himself as a culture warrior against the “woke” left as well as someone who focuses on keeping the state’s economy running smoothly.
Miami-Dade is far from Florida’s only problem. As of last year, the number of active voters in the state who registered as Republicans had surpassed Democrats for the first time in history. As of last week, in yet another red flag for Democrats, the number of registered Republicans in Florida who had already voted by mail in next week’s election had already surpassed the number of registered Democrats.
In recent election cycles, Democrats have accumulated early votes cast by mail and in person, with the hope that Republicans would not be able to outrun them with their traditionally huge Election Day turnout.
While the Democrats have been failing, the GOP, despite being hampered by the growing participation of the far-right, has maintained a year-round presence in Miami-Dade, where for decades it has managed to persuade Hispanics to vote for Republican candidates and run for office. elective positions. Last year the Republican National Committee opened a Hispanic community center that, among other things, offers prep classes for the civics portion of the US citizenship exam.
For years, Annette Taddeo, the Democratic state senator vying for a congressional seat with Republican Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, has criticized her party for failing to maintain an operation in South Florida comparable to the Republicans’ after Election Day.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve said, ‘This is happening, folks,'” Taddeo said this week, alluding to Republican growth in Miami-Dade. “The problem is that we’re not always there, and not just at election time. It’s the lack of infrastructure and planning. And also the lack of candidates who really mobilize people. That’s really important.”
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