Florida Shows GOP How to Win with Latinos

President Donald J. Trump looks at diagrams and photos during his meeting with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Tuesday, April 28, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official Photo by Shealah Craighead)

November 2022 was a disappointment for most of the GOP. An expected tidal wave turned into barely taking the majority in the House of Representatives. There was one state, though, that broke through as a major success story for the GOP—Florida. NPR’s Claudia Grisales explains:

Republicans did not see the red wave they were betting on during last year’s midterms, so now they’re setting their sights on expanding success stories that did break through, such as the big gains they made in South Florida.

The largely conservative Latino community in Miami-Dade County turned red last year for the first time in two decades.

Who are they? The Latino community in South Florida is largely conservative, and includes immigrants from Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela and other Latin American countries.

What’s the big deal? South Florida marks a community where politics seemingly never sleeps. And it’s also where the political ground game for 2024 is already underway.

• Kevin Cooper, vice chairman of the Republican Party of Miami-Dade County says he’s gotten calls from Republican Election Committees and other GOP groups in Texas and beyond hoping to replicate the South Florida model.
• Florida International University politics professor Eduardo Gamarra says an early, relentless ground game by Republicans helped flip the Miami-Dade region red. Gamarra says Democrats set up their ground game too late and treated Latino voters there like a monolith, potentially costing them a generation of voters.
• Former Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell says depressed voter turnout, culture war issues and Republican disinformation played a key role last year. She also concedes her party has abandoned the state.
• Voters like Martha Casamayor, a 73-year-old Cuban American, says President Joe Biden, his administration and Democrats have betrayed voters like her. Casamayor says they haven’t applied enough pressure on the Cuban communist regime and issued proposals to expand trade with the country.