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Sheldon Alberts: Hispanics could give Florida to Romney, White House to Obama
By Sheldon Alberts
“Mi papa no habla espanol.”
My father doesn’t speak Spanish, Craig Romney announced to the crowd gathered in the parking lot outside Casa Marin restaurant in Hialeah, Florida.
It was less apology than explanation, and it hardly mattered to the 200 mostly Cuban-American voters who had ventured out on a muggy South Florida afternoon to hear Mitt Romney make his pitch to be the 45th president of the United States.
Whatever his linguistic limitations, the former Massachusetts governor was telling his audience in English exactly what it wanted to hear — slamming a decision last year by President Barack Obama to liberalize U.S. policy toward Cuba.
“So with Cuba, he says, ‘OK we’re going to open up remittances and extend travel to Cuba as a show of kindness and a gift.’ And, of course, gifts to people who are fundamentally evil are never returned,” Romney said. “The right course for America is to stand with strength against despots.”
Fidel and Raul Castro make for easy targets here in Miami-Dade County, home to America’s largest expatriate Cuban population.
The historically conservative community has long played a central role in Florida’s Republican politics — and Romney’s support among Cuban-Americans has surged in the run up to Tuesday’s GOP primary in the Sunshine State.
According to a poll last week by ABC News and the Spanish-language Univision network, Romney had 49 per cent support among Latinos planning to vote in the GOP primary. Only 23 per cent said they would back Newt Gingrich.
Romney’s strength has come thanks to a series of high-profile endorsements from members of South Florida’s Republican congressional delegation, including Cuban-American lawmakers Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart.
Their backing has fed the growing perception here that Romney is set to re-establish himself as the GOP front-runner with a victory over Gingrich in Tuesday’s primary.
An NBC/Marist poll released Sunday showed Romney with a double-digit lead over Gingrich in the state.
But even as polls show Romney on the cusp of victory in the primary, there are signs he’d face a tougher challenge carrying Florida in the November general election.
Notwithstanding his support in the traditionally Republican Cuban-American community, Romney is battling perceptions elsewhere among Latinos that he is anti-immigrant.
He sparked controversy last week with a call for undocumented workers to “self-deport.”
Gingrich called the self-deportation idea “fantasy,” and an aired an ad last week denouncing Romney as anti-immigrant.
Romney had also drawn criticism from immigration reform proponents for vowing to veto the so-called Dream Act, proposed legislation that would offer citizenship to children brought illegally to the U.S. if they join the military or attend college.
“The idea that I’m anti-immigrant is repulsive,” Romney says in response.
To court Latino voters and counter any negative image, Romney’s Spanish-speaking youngest son, Craig, has been featured in radio ads touting his father’s candidacy.
Whether Florida’s Latinos — now 22 per cent of the state’s population — buy into the idea of Romney as hostile to immigrant aspirations could be a huge factor if he wins the Republican nomination.
Obama carried Florida in 2008 with 50.9 per cent support. His decision in 2011 to ease some travel restrictions to Cuba and allow Americans to send money to relatives there was popular among younger Cuban-Americans.
“One of the keys to Obama’s 2008 victory in Florida was his winning over a substantial slice of Cuban-Americans plus a larger slice of non-Cuban Hispanics,” says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
“I’m not sure Obama will be as successful with Cubans this time but other Hispanics consistently show support for Obama in the neighbourhood of two-thirds of the vote.”
Ana Martinez Escalona, a 26-year-old Cuban-American who was at Sunday’s rally, said she has no issues with Romney’s tough stand on illegal immigration.
“We need to legalize people. We need to give them the opportunity to work,” Escalona said. “But at the same time we cannot legalize hundreds of thousands of people, especially those that come and that enter the country by violating our laws.”
Recent polls have produced a mixed picture of how Florida would vote in the general election. According to the NBC/Marist poll, Obama has 49 per cent support in the state, compared to 41 per cent for Romney. Another poll, for the Miami Herald, showed Romney ahead.
But the troubling thing for Romney is the ABC News/Univision survey — which showed Obama with a 10-point advantage over the potential GOP nominee among Florida Latinos.
That kind of deficit among Latinos could be enough to cost Romney Florida, its 29 electoral college votes and – potentially – the election.
Without Florida, it becomes very hard for Romney — or any Republican nominee — to win back the White House.
Sabato says there are “theoretically plenty of ways the Republican nominee could win in November without Florida in the red state column. But practically speaking, it is “doubtful” because Obama is stronger in a number of other states that the GOP would need if it loses Florida, Sabato says.
Should Romney win Tuesday’s primary and begin to inch closer to the GOP nomination, expect plenty of talk about the possibility of him picking a Floridian as his running mate. The short list would include rookie U.S. senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, or even former governor Jeb Bush.
“That’s a live possibility in my mind,” says Sabato. “Yes, there’s the dynasty problem but it may well deliver Florida. And Bush’s wife is Hispanic, and the whole family is Spanish-speaking.”
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/29/sheldon-alberts-hispanics-could-give-florida-to-romney-white-house-to-obama/
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