Over the past six years, Florida’s Hispanic and Latino voters appear to be abandoning the Democratic Party, and as the 2024 elections get closer, President Joe Biden, and all other candidates sporting the blue Democrat label, could be in trouble.
In the 2016 presidential elections, Hillary Clinton held favor in the county by 30 percentage points over now-former president Donald Trump. By 2020, Trmp’s deficit to his Democratic challenger, sitting President Biden, was reduced to only 8 points.
In the 2018 gubernatorial election, Miami-Dade County chose Democrat Andrew Gillum over Governor DeSantis by 20 points. But in 2022, DeSantis won the county in his reelection bid by 10 points.
As the 2024 presidential election looms, Miami might find itself going red again.
Mayor Suarez has served the City of Miami since 2017, and just completed a term as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. While the office of the mayor officially takes no political stance, Suarez identifies himself as a Republican, citing his politics as pro-business and pro-police that have taken hold over the years. On June 15, he announced he would also run for the presidency.
Florida’s Hispanic Voters Are Stepping Up
Peter Vivaldi lives in Osceola County, outside of Orlando, which boasts a population that is 68 percent Latino. He is the host of the Americano Media talk show “Sin Miedo con Peter Vivaldi,” as well as a Republican candidate for Florida state senate district 25 (losing the seat to the incumbent by only 200 votes). He reported that Republicans were winning over the majority of Hispanics in and around the Orlando metropolitan area and the stretch of land between Orlando and Tampa known as “the I-4 Corridor.”“Once you do a deeper dive, it’s even scarier for the Democrats,” he said. “I am of Puerto Rican descent. And one of the biggest fallacies that has been sold was that the Puerto Rican voters specifically—because I’m on the I-4 Corridor from Tampa to Orlando—has been that the Puerto Rican vote is pretty much Democratic. And when you look at the numbers that just happened with the vote, specifically with Ron DeSantis.”
Several nationalities make up the “Latino” vote, and each has been assumed to vote in certain ways. Vivaldi explained that on a superficial level, Puerto Ricans had been assumed to be Democrats. At the same time, Dominicans have been staunchly Republicans, and then there are the Cubans and Venezuelans who are fleeing their communist homelands.
“Not necessarily am I saying that they registered as a Democrat or as a Republican,” he added, “but definitely are more in tune with the conservative values when it comes to family, especially to education and our children. Those are real key. Not just [as] talking points, but actual living points for our community.”
(Courtesy of Peter Vivaldi)
He goes on to say that the Puerto Rican community is becoming increasingly politically aware as it develops in the Sunshine State, which he sees as “a big red flag for the Biden administration.” Declaring that the voters are no longer being bought by the ideas of socialism or social issues, and their main focus turning to their bottom line and the quality of life they are able to provide for themselves and their families.
Along with the financial issues, Vivaldi credited a significant part of the voting change to divisive family matters, specifically the Left’s vocal support of LGBT issues and its permeation into the school systems, many of whom strongly supported the Parental Rights in Education Law and School Choice legislation.
“Orange County is one of those where we have had issues with the school board, and now they’re handling the situations,” he said. “But what we see more and more is that parents, Hispanic parents—or, Puerto Rican parents—who have and said, ‘We did not know that this was going on. We will not tolerate this kind of behavior from our school district.’”
“The population obviously in Osceola County, predominantly Puerto Rican, has gone to the right on mindset,” he added. “They do not want to see their children indoctrinated, they don’t want to see an economy fall apart, and they want to make sure that they can get back to the days of when they could afford things.”
Blurring the Lines of Party Politics
Jackie Espinosa is another politically active Osceola County resident who is noticing the shift among Floridian voters, along with the demographics. A registered Democrat from New Jersey, she has spent the last 30 years becoming heavily invested in central Florida, owning and operating several successful businesses, including restaurants and real estate, and venturing into local politics.She explained that we’ve seen an uptick in the Latino community, mostly driven by a big exodus from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. And the people who decided to stay didn’t know which way to register when they were pressed to register while updating their driver’s licenses. She also reported the latest influx of Venezuelan immigrants.
“Puerto Ricans are Americans, for all intents and purposes, so they don’t have to wait for the whole process of legal immigration,” she said. “In Puerto Rico, they don’t have Democrats or Republicans. It’s a different party. Kind of the same philosophies, but different names. So they come here and most of them would start registering NPA”—No Party Affiliation.
She said that the number of NPAs has grown to supersede Democrats and Republicans, but many of them lean Republican in a historically Democratic state. She also credits the superficial sense of Democrat dominance to the flow of transplants from the Northeast who retain their party affiliation.
And while Orlando and Orange County seem to be turning a solid “progressive” blue, Osceola County, which receives an overflow of Orlando-centric residents, is thrown into a time of change where immigrants from Puerto Rico and Venezuela, northerners, and the “old blood” Floridians have to break down party lines to vote on matters of principle.
“It’s just such an interesting dynamic here,” she said. “I was born and raised in New Jersey. Everyone was a Dem, and it’s like everyone stood by the same principles. And you know, they had faith and family, but it wasn’t radical to any extreme. So it’s interesting to see what we see here. Because it wasn’t segregated, even as far as beliefs, because Christians were still holding on to their values, even if they were Dems. I think that’s where the misnomer is.”
Espinosa is currently running for mayor of Kissimmee, her third time running for public office. She constantly finds herself and her neighbors crossing traditional party lines quite often.
“I go to the Republican meetings because they actually endorsed my campaign,” she said. “There will be a big sign sitting in front of the [supervisor for elections] ‘Republicans Endorse Jackie.’ That’s never happened in Osceola, County. First time ever.”
“But I won’t switch to being a Democrat,” she confessed. “There’s so many Democrats here, that if you switch you probably won’t win a race. Because [it is] what it is. So there’s a lot of us that identify right in the middle.”
However, the party gatekeepers are not giving up so easily. Espinosa told The Epoch Times that she got in trouble for speaking positively about a Republican candidate she’s known for years.
Pandering to Voters
Meanwhile, Vivaldi reported that Telemundo and Univision, the Spanish-speaking sides of the mainstream media, and “[George] Soros-funded” nonprofits like Alianza for Progress and Hispanic Federation Florida continue to push the liberal narrative.“They’re trying, and they’re all about money,” he said. “They’re not about the community. They’re about winning elections, and they don’t care what the result brings.”
Using his platform on Americano Media, which has listeners in 26 states now, he says he tries to transmit conservative values, and truth about matters from immigration and parental rights in education.
“You worry about CNN and MSNBC, and then Fox versus all those [stations]. But with us, there has been no voice. Zero voice. It’s been Univision and Telemundo, and that’s what the people have been buying for decades,” he said. “We’re being bombarded by the left-wing media, I mean from Media Matters to everyone else with access because we’re bringing not just conservative values, but we’re speaking the truth.”
“When you start speaking truth, that’s the last thing they want. And then they start screaming louder and making an almost deafening sound for the Hispanics not to hear, but I believe we’ve been able to overcome that.”
Vivaldi also stated that the Democrats continue to approach Latinos in the wrong way, calling Biden’s infamous event opening when he played the song “Despacito” a “complete insult.”
“You’re talking about cultural appropriation,” he said. “[Biden] comes to Kissimmee with Ricky Martin and Luis Fonsi to try to pander to the Puerto Rican vote. Are they going to use Bad Bunny next? That’s not how you want to vote. You don’t pander to the folks. It’s very offensive. And it doesn’t represent our community.”
Vivaldi also said spoke out against the Left’s push for the adoption of “Latinx.”
“Yeah, that’s not resounding in any way. You know, we’re talking about 3 percent of Hispanics are buying that because they want to put us in that non-binary, or whatever they want to call it, situation.”
Suarez was also quoted by the Associated Press as saying that Biden and the Democrats have failed to connect with Hispanic voters and their adoption of “Latinx” instead of “Latino/Latina” has also done more harm than good.
“They’re missing leadership,” Espinosa said of Florida’s Latino Democrats. “They don’t have a voice, and that’s what we’ve been fighting for. And the people that are sitting in the small pockets are not vocal enough. They’re not out there enough.”
“We need to get different caucuses going,” she added, reporting that a large number of Florida Democrats don’t become “active” until the months leading up to an election. “You’ve got to stay active all year round. This is not a part-time thing. You know, you’re a Democrat all year long.”
But, despite the Democrats’ floundering, Vivaldi does not believe that Republicans can just walk their way to victory in the polls. Both he and Espinosa stress that each candidate’s message and mission needs to shine brighter than any generic party labels.
Suarez announced he was running for president as a Republican, but Vivaldi says that even the Cuban-American Miami mayor can’t play “the [Latino] card” and get a leg up on other candidates after his time in Miami. Many Miami residents have spoken out against his tenure, and others are beginning to cry “RINO” as it becomes known that the Republican candidate has voted for Democrats in the last three elections.
“I’m not complaining about DeSantis, but I think it is time we have a good candidate,” Vivaldi said, “and I think that his voting record alone will turn off a lot of Republicans.” He said there’s no way Suarez goes anywhere with “Anglo Republicans” and there’s no way he goes anywhere with Hispanic voters.
“The Latino voter is a lot more educated than that,” he said. “I don’t see this going well for him.”
Wanted: Message-Driven Candidates
“I hear a lot of Republicans say, ‘Oh, we have to get these people registered Republican.’ The first thing you have to do before you register anybody to change parties is give them a messaging that’s correct,” he said. “If you don’t have messaging, they’re not gonna register to anything.”“They’re tired of the pulling one side and the other. Now they’re voting not by party. They’re voting by person.”
Both he and Espinosa seem to agree that the independent voters are going to play a major role in the 2024 election, specifically in Florida.
“All the NPAs are voting mostly based on people,” she said. “They’re not caring about a party going through right now.”
She also described the voter base as being “tired” of the parties and how “disengaged” elections have become.
“The common storyline is, ‘Both parties have failed us. We’re just gonna stay NPA. We’re voting for the person. We’re not voting for the party.’”
“Whoever gets that message out to that group is going to win,” said Vivaldi.
