Targeted pitches missing in campaigns
Tal Abbady
www.sun-sentinel.com
Nov 6, 2006
Hispanics are the nation's fastest-growing community, but no one would guess that from the media campaigns of Florida's candidates for governor, according to some observers and campaign analysts.
Just days before the election, some say neither Republican Charlie Crist nor Democrat Jim Davis has aggressively courted Hispanics with a tailor-made pitch. That could come at a price, analysts say.
"I don't know that their messages are to Hispanics," said Jorge Mursulli, executive director of Democracia USA. The nonpartisan group registered 105,000 new Hispanic voters this year in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The 56,003 newly registered voters in Florida, where Hispanics make up roughly 13 percent of the vote, include a growing number of immigrants from Central and South America who recently have become U.S. citizens, have no strong party affiliation and whose votes are up for grabs.
Edith Oliva, of Argentina, a naturalized citizen since 2003, voted for President Bush in 2004. But her vote for governor can go either way next week.
"I want to vote. That's why I became a citizen. But I haven't heard much from either one of these candidates about their positions on the Latino community. You'd think it'd be an important part of their platforms, now that Anglos are becoming the minority in South Florida," said Oliva, 49, a translator who lives in Lauderhill. "I'm undecided at the moment."
Isabel Martinez, 50, a native of Colombia and member of the Democratic Caucus of Palm Beach County, is voting for Davis, though the Lake Worth resident says both candidates need to make stronger appeals to the Latino community.
"They aren't campaigning enough in Spanish, and they will both lose Hispanic votes," said Martinez, who co-owns an agency that prepares legal documents for clients.
Though immigration is largely a federal responsibility, Oliva and Martinez say the issue is high on their priority list as voters. Crist and Davis favor a broad, Senate-backed bill that would help undocumented immigrants gain citizenship.
The centerpiece of Crist's Spanish-language campaign is an ad called El Sueño Americano, or The American Dream, in which U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Florida, invokes his Cuban immigrant success story and endorses Crist.
The Davis campaign aired its first Spanish-language television ad Tuesday in Central Florida, a battleground for Hispanic votes. The 30-second spot, Familia, or Family, presents Davis as a family man concerned with school class sizes and health care costs.
Both campaigns stand in sharp contrast to the 2002 governor race, when the Florida Republican Party and the Jeb Bush campaign aired more than 900 Spanish-language spots worth $1.8 million, according to the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins University. Democrat Bill McBride and his party aired about 250 spots, or $150,000 in Spanish-language ads.
Neither Crist nor Davis has Bush's fluency in Spanish or ties to Latin America, which is underscored by Crist's reliance on Martinez, said Adam Segal, director of the nonpartisan Hispanic Voter Project.
"It's obvious by looking at this ad that Charlie Crist needs a gigantic crutch to help prop him up in the Hispanic community," Segal said. "I can't remember a Jeb Bush ad that featured a Hispanic official more prominently than himself."
Nevertheless, Republicans, more than Democrats, have effectively wooed undecided Hispanic voters, Mursuli and others say.
Mursulli is doubtful. Until both parties invest in bilingual campaigning and cultural outreach, Hispanic swing voters will remain fickle, he said.
"The days of party loyalty beyond a shadow of a doubt are almost gone for Hispanics," he said.
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