Puerto Rican voter turnout up in the air
All year, the political spotlight has been on the Puerto Rican community in Florida and whether people who fled the island after Hurricane Maria would bring a surge of new voters.
With little more than a week to go before the Nov. 6 election, liberal-leaning groups say they’ve registered thousands of new Puerto Rican voters over the past few months, creating a potential windfall for Democrats Andrew Gillum, who’s running for governor, and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson,
who’s seeking re-election.
“I can tell you we are seeing significant enthusiasm among Puerto Ricans and Latinos in Central Florida,” said Jose Calderón, president of the Hispanic Federation. “We’re not leaving anything to chance. We’re tripling down on efforts to get them to come out and vote.”
Conservatives, though, are skeptical of the many outside groups that have come into Florida. They think Republicans, including Gillum opponent Ron DeSantis and Nelson challenger Gov. Rick Scott, will hold their own with Puerto Rican voters.
Jorge Bonilla, a conservative talk-show host and former Republican congressional candidate, questioned the “parachute groups” which have come into Florida, “all bringing charts about voter enrollment and making noise about voter turnout.”
The Hurricane Maria evacuees he talks to, Bonilla said, are focused on getting and keeping jobs, housing and transportation more than politics.
“That’s where people’s lives are at,” he said. “They’re more interested in that than being someone else’s electoral cattle.”
Despite having to distance himself from President Donald Trump’s comments falsely claiming the Maria death toll in Puerto Rico of 2,975 was inflated, Scott “has his own goodwill built up to [act] as insulation from some of the incoherences the president tends to tweet out,” Bonilla said.
Determining just how many new Puerto Rican voters have registered since the 2016 election – and whether, after everything, they will actually turn out – is difficult.
Not only have estimates of the number of permanent evacuees been downgraded from the hundreds of thousands to between 30,000 to 50,000, the state doesn’t categorize voters by origin or ethnicity, only Hispanic or non-Hispanic.
A Pew Research study shows that of the 14 of the 18 Florida counties with the largest Puerto Rican populations, including Polk, Osceola, Lake, Volusia and Seminole, Hispanic voter registration grew faster than the statewide Hispanic average of 6.2 percent. But in Orange, which has one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in Florida, Hispanic voter growth was equal to or slower than the state average.
Overall, with voter registration complete for this year, there are more registered active Democratic Hispanic voters statewide, with about 856,500 Democrats to about 790,000 unaffiliated voters and about 536,000 Republicans, but in past general elections, the turnout rate tended to be higher among Republican Hispanics.
The 36 percent of Hispanic voters registered as non-party affiliated, or NPA, is the highest it’s been in at least 10 years. They make up a key group of persuadable voters.
All this month, after the final registration numbers came in, Hispanic and Puerto Rican groups have touted the number of Puerto Ricans they’ve registered and their plans for getting them out to vote.
Frederick Vélez, director of the Hispanic Federation’s get-out-the-vote branch, Respeta Mi Gente, said his group and others had registered almost 40,000 Puerto Rican voters in the past year, adding that the group has knocked on 60,000 doors in an effort aimed at Puerto Ricans in Central Florida and planned to knock on 50,000 more in the last few weeks.
The federation, founded by Luis Miranda, the father of composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, included the “Hamilton” creator in a news conference alongside singer Frankie Negrón, who recorded a song also called “Respeta Mi Gente” to help bring attention to voting.
“One of the most important things they can do after a harrowing year is vote for the candidates and [officeholders] who have been paying attention to what’s been happening on the island and have their interests at heart,” Lin-Manuel Miranda said.
The national group UnidosUS said it’s registered more than 48,000 people in South Florida and Central Florida combined, many of them also Puerto Rican, and the Puerto Rican voter outreach organization Boricua Vota issued endorsements Thursday of Democrats Andrew Gillum for governor and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson for Senate.
Jimmy Torres-Vélez, founder of Boricua Vota, said some Puerto Ricans are starting to question their first impression of Scott made in the days after Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck.
“He’s not running for governor, he’s running for Senate,” Torres-Vélez said. “When you change the conversation, people realize if he does in Washington what he’s done in Florida, everyone’s going to be screwed on education, women’s rights, the environment.”
He said because registration numbers are so high despite the lowered estimates of evacuees shows there’s “a big, huge push in that community.”
One limited study suggests that Puerto Rican
vote-by-mail and early-voting turnout has not been strong so far.
Daniel A. Smith, chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida, looked at the limited numbers available and found turnout of self-identified Puerto Rican-born voters – at least those who had been registered within the first two months after Maria – had an 11 percent turnout rate as of Thursday statewide and in Orange County. That lagged behind the overall statewide rate of 12.5 percent for all voters.
Puerto Rican Francisco Garcia – a Nelson voter – said he will make sure to vote just like he’s done in every election since he came to Florida in 2000.
“Some people, after they vote they care less about you,” Garcia said. “They talk about how they’re helping and after that they forget – especially our president. … We’ve seen this situation before. We’re going to take care to remember who’s who.”
“When you change the conversation, people realize if [Gov. Rick Scott] does in Washington what he’s done in Florida, everyone’s going to be screwed on education, women’s rights, the environment.” Jimmy Torres-Vélez, founder of Boricua Vota