Word: cuban
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Obama looks to be in a statistical dead heat with McCain in the district (just as the Democratic challenger in the 25th, Joe Garcia, is neck-and-neck with the Cuban-American GOP incumbent, Mario Diaz-Balart). The key is how many Cuban-Americans Obama can poach from the GOP; and Obama volunteer Jose Realin thinks he can deliver them. Realin, 38, a bail bondsman and a lifelong registered Republican now on the Democrat's side, was heading out of the Obama campaign office in the 25th on Monday evening to knock on doors in Cuban neighborhoods. "They worry that...
...last-ditch effort to persuade last-minute voters, Republicans in South Florida have resorted to robo-calls in which they describe former Cuban President Fidel Castro as supporting Barack Obama for President. "The calls began this past weekend," says Kendall Coffey, former U.S. Attorney in Miami and a staunch Democrat. The calls quoted Cuba's official newspaper, Granma, when referencing Castro's support, Coffey says. "The robo-calls started three or four days ago. I haven't heard them, but my friends in the Cuban-American community have. They are targeting Democrats and Republicans based on age, because older Cubans...
This is not the first time the Republicans have relied upon robo-calls to spur voters to the polls. In 2000, a rallying cry was Elian Gonzalez, the boy who got sent back to Cuba with his father. Elian was a hot-button topic with Cuban Americans who fought to keep the boy with relatives in Miami, and Republicans emphasized his case in robo-calls. "It's a predictable tactic," Coffey says. "Yes, there's some effectiveness. Whether it's too little, too late, I don't know...
Nevertheless, exit-polling in Florida by organizations like the Miami-based Bendixen & Associates show Obama significantly reversing the lead McCain was supposed to hold with Latino voters in the state. If the early surveys hold up, says Bendixen pollster Fernando Amandi, it will be because non-Cuban Latinos are flexing their political muscle in an unprecedented fashion. Their main concern, he says, was "the economy and their insecurity about their jobs and futures in this country. And they're taking it out on the Republicans more than [on] McCain," Amandi says, noting that Latinos are also casting a voto...
Even among Cubans in Florida, says Amandi, Obama should pull 35%, which would be one of the all-time highs for a Democratic presidential candidate. Perhaps just as important, Amandi foresees Obama getting 65% of the under-40 Cuban-American vote in Miami, underscoring the generational divide unfolding in that community. Hialeah, a once predominantly Cuban exile enclave adjoining Miami that today has a growing non-Cuban Latino population, seemed a microcosm of Amandi's findings today. Mireya Concepcion, 57, a Cuban-born cosmetologist who fled Castro's revolution in 1969, walked out of the polling station at the Salvation...