Clinton campaign hopes GOP defections will woo Latinos in Florida
Donald Trump has accused the Mexican government of sending “rapists” over the border, questioned a federal judge’s fitness for office based on his Mexican heritage and reached out to Latino voters by tweeting a photo of himself eating a taco bowl with the tagline, “I love Hispanics!”
But despite these blunders and scoring the highest unfavorable rating from Latino voters of any presidential candidate in two decades, many lifelong Republican Latino politicians and voters have been reluctant to cross party lines and back Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton.
The Clinton campaign has a plan to change that, and her team is hoping it will boost her chances in Florida, the largest swing state.
Earlier this week, dozens of Republicans — including three former Cabinet secretaries and six current or former members of Congress — endorsed Clinton, ditching their party this election in order to prevent Trump from gaining the White House. The group of Republicans and independents backing Clinton is called “Together for America,” and according to a Clinton aide some of them will appear at Clinton events, vouch for her in the media and directly contact conservative voters to try to persuade them to back Clinton, too.
Among the group are five Latinos, including Carlos Gutierrez, the U.S. secretary of commerce under President George W. Bush and one of the highest-ranking Latino office holders ever.
“I support Hillary Clinton because she has the steady temperament and the experience to serve as president,” Gutierrez said in a statement. “She has shown her commitment to strengthening U.S.-Cuba relations, immigration reform, and America’s role in today’s competitive global economy.”
Endorsements like Gutierrez’s could help in Florida, where Cuban-Americans were once a reliably Republican voting bloc that could sway razor-thin presidential margins in the crucial swing state. Younger Cuban-Americans are now trending Democratic, and the Clinton campaign is working to woo them, along with the more solidly Democratic Latino groups like Puerto Ricans.
Clinton’s endorsements from GOP and independent leaders may also make other conservatives feel comfortable enough to back her as well, one Clinton campaign staffer said. “I think these endorsements matter for that older generation of Republican Latinos who say, ‘I can’t support Trump, but I can’t be a Democrat,’” the person said. The campaign hopes the endorsements will show conservatives they can break the habit of voting Republican, and give them permission to do so.
In Florida, the conservative billionaire businessman and Gov. Jeb Bush backer Mike Fernandez came out as a Clinton supporter last winter. Cindy Guerra, the former chair of Broward County’s Republican Executive Committee, also signed on to back Clinton.
“It was a two-way street,” Reggie Cardozo, the Clinton campaign’s Florida deputy state director, said of how Fernandez was recruited. “He was attracted to us and we were attracted to him.”
Cardozo added that he believes there will be more endorsements in the weeks to come, and that the campaign will highlight the conservatives’ support for Clinton in the state.
Though several prominent Republican Latinos have either refused to endorse Trump or vowed not to vote for him, fewer have taken the plunge of outright supporting Clinton. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the most senior member of Florida’s congressional delegation, told the Miami Herald in May that she won’t support either Trump or Clinton, and instead will write in former Gov. Jeb Bush’s name on her ballot. Rep. Carlos Curbelo has taken a similar position.
Other Hispanic Republicans in Florida are unenthusiastically voting Trump. Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump’s former primary rival, said he would keep his pledge to back Trump but still has deep concerns about the Manhattan developer’s candidacy. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart also said he will vote for the real estate tycoon.
“Some of us feel enough discomfort with Trump now to be reconciled with the notion that we won’t vote for the GOP nominee, in my case for the first time in my life,” Ana Navarro, a GOP strategist and CNN contributor, told Yahoo News. “But we just don’t feel enough comfort with Hillary to vote for her.”
Navarro said she and fellow Republicans are going through their own “excruciating” internal process to decide what to do. “Just picture a bunch of us sitting on a fence plucking petals from a daisy,” she said.
But even if these conservatives never fully back Clinton, their ambivalence about Trump boosts Clinton’s chances in the state, where prominent statewide officials like Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi are fully on the Trump train.
“I think that it is noticeable and sends a strong message to voters that these individuals are not endorsing Trump,” Cardozo said of Ros-Lehtinen and others. “Florida’s Latino community feels a collective disrespect by Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and it’s reflected through the vocal opposition of the state’s prominent Republicans.”
