Ethnic Politics Update

Far from Miami, the big old kettle of American ethnic politics has certainly runneth over with some kind of witches’ brew lately. First, Barack Obama was considered too white by some black folks, then too black for some white folks. Hillary Clinton is as caucasian as they come, but too Latina for, say, honkies who sympathize with the self-appointed border vigilantes of the Minuteman Project. Meanwhile, Republican candidates have continued pouring their own discourse about sealing the southern border and cracking down on the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Opinion polls indicated that most U.S. Hispanics will prefer a Democratic rather than Republican presidential candidate. Then journalists desperate for a controversial new angle started saying they will favor Bill Clinton’s wife over Michelle Obama’s husband because of a historical rift between Latinos and African-Americans. But Miami’s unique little political cauldron overflowed long ago, then got tipped upside down. Here, Hispanic minorities form the mainstream majority. A majority of that majority are Cubans, who are legal regardless of how they got here. Thanks to the great Caribbean melting pot, Miami’s Latinos can be black, white, Asian, European, and everything in between. Some are even Democrats. Yet, despite the bigoted undertones and xenophobic overtones that are perceived to have emanated from GOP candidates for many months, most Hispanic-Americans who are registered to vote in Miami-Dade remain Republican, and not all are Cubans. That should give pause to anyone counting on GOP anti-immigrant sentiment to automatically fuel a Democratic surge when Floridians of Hispanic heritage vote in November. Because, in practice, it’s not giving pause to the likes of people like Elena Gonzalez and her friend Alejandra Amador. Gonzalez is a talkative 39-year-old real estate agent; Amador, a more reticent, 36-year-old warranty manager for a diesel engine company. Each hails from Venezuela and lives in Miami. Both are recently naturalized U.S. citizens and are excited about voting— Republican—in their first U.S. presidential election in November. “They’re pandering, but you have to understand that that’s part of politics,” Gonzalez says, referring to the immigrant bashing by the GOP contenders. “I know many, many Republicans that like me and don’t oppose immigration. They oppose criminals. They want to send the criminals out!” “Wherever they come from,” Amador interjects. “Or the people that come here just to give birth to kids like bunnies and only want to be on welfare,” Gonzalez continues. “Those need to be out!” Venezuelans aren’t the only ones who take this Machiavellian view of the Republicans’ message on immigration. “It’s just political positions, just trying to get more votes or whatever,” says Gustavo Mandrini, a 45-year-old immigrant from Rosario, Argentina, who owns a small painting company. He became a new U.S. citizen in December and registered to vote as an independent, although he’s leaning GOP.

Mandrini, who is also willing to look past the Republicans’ anti-immigrant rhetoric, even finds it understandable. “I think it’s about [that] we go through the very hard economic times,” he says with his slightly rough command of English, “where job’s hard to keep it, and money is not enough. And they try to show that they gotta move some people out to make a statement.” He opposes amnesty for all immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally. There are other forces working to keep the lid on a potential Democratic outpouring by Hispanic voters in Florida. Common sense suggests that the importance of family in Latin American culture will make it difficult for many Latinos to support a Republican this year, especially Latinos whose families are separated because of U.S. immigration rules. The GOP frontrunners all have said, in one way or another, that the border must be “secured” before they would support reforms that would help reunite such families. But strong family ties could also make voting Democratic difficult for some Latinos, particularly when one’s relatives are Republican hawks. “Pretty much when you’re in the military there’s just one way, there’s not the wrong way,” says 25-year-old Gilberto Barraza, a Mexican immigrant who served in the U.S. marines for four years before becoming an American citizen last December. Barraza’s parents migrated from Mazatlán about 20 years ago and now live in Miami. “My family always has been Republican,” he explains.

Barraza is bothered, though, by anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from Republican presidential candidates. “They’re going to stereotype us to the end. I think that’s very hypocritical of them,” he says, adding that “every country has its bad things.” But this one, he wants to believe, doesn’t stem from hatred. “It’s not that they hate us. They hate the people that come and destroy this country. Unfortunately a lot of people that come to this country—they’re criminals, they’re running away from their country for a reason.” It should have come as no surprise that John McCain, the only Republican embodiment of humanitarian immigration reform in the GOP field, received about half of the Hispanic vote in the Florida Republican primary. Nor that Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, whose rhetoric smacked of support for the deportation of millions of illegal immigrants, mustered 15 percent and 7 percent, respectively. In the months ahead, for every Hispanic Republican who will tolerate or even justify the anti-immigrant clamor there may be two new Democratic-leaning Latinos who won’t, polls show. “Republican Hispanics watching this debate for the last year are like, ‘Let me get this straight. Pretty much outside of Miami, they hate us,’” submits Jeffrey Garcia, a Cuban-American political strategist who works for Democratic candidates. Although the Republican oratory targets illegal immigrants, Garcia observes, “you can tell it’s xenophobia, and that’s how people are reading this.” A Pew Hispanic Center study released in December showed that 57 percent of Latino registered voters nationwide are Democrats, while only 23 percent are Republicans. The lack of immigration law reform was among their top concerns. Florida is still a grand old exception. New voter registration data from the secretary of state shows that in Florida the Republican Party has about 25,000 more Hispanics than the Democratic Party (408,490 versus 383,877). In the past two years, however, the Republicans have lost 5,695 Hispanics from their rolls, while the Democrats have gained 13,975.

“Hispanics vote Republican in Miami more than anywhere in the country,” Garcia acknowledges. “But without an exceptional candidate, they also sometimes follow national trends, which this year is to participate in the Democratic Party.” Because of this phenomenon, party politics in the Miami area are soon to roil like never before. The biggest indication is a surge in Cuban-American Democrats running for office. One, Luis Garcia, actually got elected last fall and now represents the people of Florida House District 107, a traditionally Republican stronghold that includes Key Biscayne, South Beach, and part of Miami, including Little Havana. Things could get much messier in the months ahead as Miami’s two Cuban-American Republican Congressmen, U.S. Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his brother Mario, duel with Cuban-American Democrats Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia, respectively. Miami’s Cuban-American Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will also be in the kitchen, confronting a Democrat from relatively new ethnic quarters, Colombian-American Annette Taddeo. “This is the first culmination, in a really broad, eye-catching way, of the change in one-party domination in the Cuban-American community,” says Jeffrey Garcia, the Democratic strategist. The cauldron is bubbling, and the situation on the ground is almost certain to get caustic.