As the coronavirus raged across Florida this summer, and the Democratic party was concentrating on locking in the support of the state’s hordes of senior voters, Donald Trump’s campaign was focused in an entirely different direction.
In the streets of Miami’s Little Havana and Doral neighborhoods, the Puerto Rican communities of Orlando and Kissimmee, and Cuban-American areas of Tampa, activists from Latinos for Trump and other Republican groups were knocking on doors and talking to families and business owners. They delivered a simple message: “Joe Biden is a radical socialist. Donald Trump is your friend.”
And for some of Miami’s Cubans and Venezuelans in particular, familiar with communism and authoritarian rule in their homelands, despite “red baiting” not being a new tactic, it was “kryptonite”, Trump activists claimed.
Whatever their motivations, on Tuesday, across the state but mostly in Miami-Dade county, home to 2 million Latinos, voters turned out in droves to hand the president victory by a margin significantly larger than his 2016 success.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
