Florida Dems push back against socialism label
MIAMI — From a tiny studio in the sprawling Miami suburb of Doral, a popular Venezuelanborn radio host recently pressed one of Florida’s best-known Democrats on a touchy topic: socialism.
“Older voters associated you with socialists,” host Julio Cesar Camacho told Andrew Gillum, who narrowly lost a bid for governor last year. Gillum blamed Republicans for preying on “sensitivities” of Latinos in Florida, as Camacho translated his complaint into Spanish for listeners.
The conversation wasn’t just a rehash of another narrow Democratic loss in the battleground state. Camacho’s weekly show is funded by the Florida Democratic Party — part of a statewide effort to bolster its standing with Florida’s Latinos ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
While Latino voters nationally have leaned Democratic, Republicans in Florida continue to find strong backing in the nearly 2 million Floridians of Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan origin — voters whose deep skepticism of socialism has been shaped by Latin American authoritarian leaders. Democrats are trying to shake the label.
“We waited a bit too long before we started to push back,” Gillum told the Associated Press, saying the party wasn’t aggressive enough in 2018. “Now we know better. You see more Latino voices in radio and print who are elevating this conversation around socialism.”
Republicans are elevating the attacks, too. President Donald Trump and his allies have been hammering Democrats as leftists and anti-capitalists — knowing such labels call up images of corruption and poverty.
At a news conference earlier this year, Trump mockingly said there was a “rumor” the Democratic Party was changing its name to the “Socialist Party.” In