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      Rubio and Demings Have Their First and Only Debate

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      Follow our live coverage of Marco Rubio and Val Demings’s debate for Senate in Florida.Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and his Democratic challenger, Representative Val Demings, will face off on Tuesday evening in a debate in Lake Worth Beach, Fla.It is the only scheduled debate in the Senate race in Florida, where polls have consistently shown Mr. Rubio ahead. Florida has trended to the right in the past few years, transforming from the nation’s most famous swing state to fairly reliable Republican turf. But with Mr. Rubio’s leads in the single digits, Democrats are holding out hope for an upset.Mr. Rubio, a onetime presidential candidate who is seeking a third term in the Senate, has focused heavily on crime and on economic issues like inflation that polls show are drawing swing voters toward Republicans.Ms. Demings, who was elected to Congress in 2016 after being the first woman to lead the Orlando Police Department, has not shied away from the issue of public safety but has also emphasized abortion and, in a state recently devastated by Hurricane Ian, climate change. A livestream of the debate will be available from WPBF-TV in Florida.According to Federal Election Commission filings, Ms. Demings has raised $65.5 million for her campaign, significantly more than Mr. Rubio’s $44.5 million. But Mr. Rubio has more money on hand for the final weeks of the campaign. More

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      ‘Cold war narratives’: why Miami’s Cuban Americans remain staunch Republicans

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      ‘Cold war narratives’: why Miami’s Cuban Americans remain staunch Republicans Republican politics centering on opposition to Cuba’s late dictator Fidel Castro continue to resonate in Florida, even as they have faded in the rest of the USIt was a rainy Tuesday morning in South Florida, and two men in their 80s were deep into conversation and cafecito at the iconic Versailles Cuban Bakery in Miami.Born in Cuba and now retired, the pair – who would only give their first names Manuel and Juan – have lived in the area for more than 60 and 20 years, respectively. And when asked about their political stance, they shy away from the Republican label many of their neighbors proudly embrace and instead simply describe themselves as deeply anti-communist.“We believe the government should be small, everyone should have the right to work, and private companies are what make a country grow,” the more outspoken of the two, Manuel, said.He and Juan prefer to call themselves conservatives and haven’t considered backing a Democrat since the 70s, saying – without much evidence – that the party is full of the Marxist ideas embraced by the Cuban regime which they fled from and which took the belongings of many refugees’ families.Manuel said he and Juan supported the Donald Trump White House because he opposed communism, and his talk on the economy attracted them. “If we had the chance,” said Juan, who spent 10 years as a political prisoner in Cuba, they would send Ronald Reagan back to the Oval Office.For what seems to be countless election cycles now, Democrats and other Republican opponents have hoped that such staunch rightwing postures among south Florida’s key Cuban American electorate would die out – if not fade away – as younger generations from that community came of age, giving progressives an opening to more consistently win a perennial battleground state.But that hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t look like the stronghold and advantage that the Republican party enjoys in such a consequential part of Florida is weakening any time soon.A number of Cuban American Republican congressional candidates are up for re-election come November and the support of the Cuban American community will prove to be essential to secure positive outcomes. In the case of stalwart Republican senator Marco Rubio, who is up against Democratic challenger Val Demmings, some analysts predict “this could be the closest race of Rubio’s career”.Similarly, incumbent Republican House representative María Elvira Salazar could face a tight race in a district that is known for swinging in the past.Meanwhile, Republican House members Mario Diaz Balart and Carlos Gimenez, the former Miami-Dade mayor, are both expected to have favorable re-election results for the midterms.Still, with the Democratic party trying to cling on to razor-thin advantages in both congressional chambers in the looming 2022 midterms, conservative Cuban Americans remain the most influential bloc embedded within the 2.5 million Latinos that account for 17% of Florida’s registered voters.A Pew Research Center report from 2018, stated Cuban Americans make up 29% of registered Latino voters in the state of Florida, followed only by Puerto Ricans, who make up 27% of this demographic. The remaining 44% is composed of numerous origin nationalities, such as Mexicans, who account for 10% of this electorate, and Colombians, who account for 8%. NBC News exit polls for the 2020 election found that while 55% of Cuban American voters in Florida cast their ballot in favor of Trump, this was also the case for 30% of Puerto Rican voters and 48% of the remaining Latino electorate in the south-eastern state.In any case, Hispanics across the rest of the state preferred Joe Biden over Trump by a 2-to-1 margin during Biden’s successful run to the White House in 2020, according to a 2021 report by the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative at the University of California, Los Angeles.Yet Latinos in and around Miami supported Trump over the race’s Democratic victor 2-to-1, that same report showed. And the Democratic polling firm Catalist, which looked back at the 2020 election and estimated dips in leftwing support across presidential battleground states, found “the biggest drop by far was in Florida” despite Biden’s relative popularity.Both sets of data show that Reagan’s decision to align his Republican party with that populous region’s Cuban American majority is still paying dividends, said Northwestern University professor Geraldo Cadava, who teaches history as well as Latina and Latino studies.“Since the 1980s, Republicans have put boots on the ground [in Florida], they have organized Cuban Americans, they have supported Cuban American candidates, they have invested them, [and often] left the Democratic Party in the dust,” said Florida International University’s Guillermo Grenier, a professor of the college’s department of global and sociocultural studies.As Cadava sees it, Florida’s Cuban Americans remain loyal to Republican politics because of cold war-era narratives centering on opposition to Cuba’s late dictator Fidel Castro that continue to resonate here, even as they have faded in the rest of America. It’s why presidential candidates’ campaign stops in Florida have historically involved speeches on foreign policy, which is important to the many who either fled Castro’s regime themselves or have relatives who did.To this day, Cadava thinks many Cuban Americans in Florida are drawn to Republicans because this continues to be a group “driven by cold war narratives of opposition to Castro”. Similarly, Grenier points out, “when presidential candidates come to Florida, they give foreign policy speeches because they know there is a population that will respond to that”.A Cuban-born retiree who would only identify himself as Pablo said he gave up on even considering support for the Democratic party when the Barack Obama White House sought to thaw the US’s long hostile relationship with Cuba, including by easing restrictions on travel to the island of 11 million people for pursuits such as academics.Obama’s stance set the stage in 2016 for him to become the first US president to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years despite the regime there being repeatedly cited for human rights violations. And Pablo, along with many of his neighbors, preferred it when Trump reimposed some of the sanctions that Obama spurned but which predecessors had left in place in hopes of pressuring the communist Caribbean island toward capitalism and democracy.“I vote with Cuba’s freedom in mind,” Pablo said during one of his frequent visits to the renowned Calle Ocho in Miami-Dade county. “Republicans are better at putting more pressure on Cuba, and that’s why I align with the party.”A poll on Cuba that Grenier helps helm for FIU found in 2020 that 60% of Cuban Americans in south Florida were like Pablo, favoring the embargo of trade against the island, which is a stance that is tough to adopt for any candidates seeking progressive support.Meanwhile, 79-year-old Cuban retiree Thelma Dominguez said: “I’ve been a Republican since I came to this country.” One of her first acts as a citizen was to vote for Richard Nixon before the Watergate scandal forced him to become the only president to resign from the Oval Office.Dominguez now says she is a fierce supporter of Trump and is quick to call him a patriot. She did not seem all that worried that his supporters staged the January 6 2021 US Capitol attack in a desperate, undemocratic attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his loss to Biden.She’s more concerned about keeping guns accessible to the public through the US constitution’s second amendment, and she likes that Republicans are devoted to that, saying Cubans lost the right to bear arms after Castro’s ascent.When at the polls, she said the economy is at her mind’s forefront. And she counts herself among the 80% of Cuban Americans in south Florida who, according to the FIU Cuba poll, support the economic agendas of Trump, Florida’s extreme rightwing governor Ron DeSantis, and their Republican allies.“I deeply hate communism, and Democrats today are complete communists,” Dominguez said. “They’re against rich people and millionaires who have companies. If a country goes against big companies – the ones who employ people – the country goes south like it happened in Cuba.”Dominguez is far from alone in her thoughts. Many of the Latinos in and around Miami, as well as throughout Florida, see the Republicans as the party of “prosperity”, Cadava said.“[The Republican party is seen as] the party that helps you get a good paying job, pay lower taxes and own a home,” Cadava added.Latino Republican loyalists in south Florida don’t necessarily feel a kinship with other immigrants who flee violent, impoverished and corrupt countries – but who then aren’t granted asylum automatically because their native nations aren’t run by dictatorial communist governments.That could explain why they aren’t put off when DeSantis does something like arrange to fly 50 Venezuelan migrants to the wealthy liberal island of Martha’s Vineyard, a move he carried out recently whose legality is in question amid allegations that the migrants were deceived about where they were going.Arisleidy Rodriguez, a 39-year-old mother of two who makes a living selling her husband’s art after coming to the US more than two decades ago, said ensuring that close loved ones prosper will always be more important to her and many of her neighbors than some of the social justice and equality issues which the Democratic party has built itself around.“When I vote, I think about my children’s wellbeing,” said Rodriguez, who noted that the news sources she trusts the most come from Facebook and the Cuban news site Cubanos por el Mundo.All of which leads Grenier to conclude that the Democrats have not implemented the organization necessary to overcome the anti-leftist narrative that Reagan began deeply ingraining in voters like Rodriguez as control of Washington DC’s levers of power hangs in the balance in November.“In Florida, you can’t just believe that your ideas are right,” Grenier said. “You have to actually get on the ground and organize. Otherwise, people will either not vote or vote Republican.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022FloridaUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Jill Biden Ramps Up Visits to Democratic Midterm Campaigns

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      ORLANDO, Fla. — Jill Biden’s weekend included five flights, 11 events and three appearances with Democrats who all requested her help ahead of the midterm elections. There was also a spin class in there somewhere.During one particularly busy 27-hour chunk of time, Dr. Biden, the first lady, appeared in Atlanta, where the voting rights activist Stacey Abrams is in an uphill race against Brian Kemp, the Republican governor. Then it was on to Florida, where she toured a breast cancer research facility and gave an interview to Newsmax, the conservative network. After that, she appeared with Representative Val B. Demings, who hopes to unseat Senator Marco Rubio, and Charlie Crist, a centrist Democrat who trails Ron DeSantis, the governor and conservative firebrand.“It’s not going to be easy,” Dr. Biden, on the last leg of a 15-hour day, told a group of people at a second event to support Ms. Demings on Saturday. “But we know how to win because we’ve done it before.”With President Biden’s job approval hovering at about 40 percent at a moment when Democrats are struggling to hold on to the House and Senate, Dr. Biden has become a lifeline for candidates trying to draw attention and money but not the baggage that an appearance with her husband would bring. According to a senior White House official, she is the most requested surrogate in the administration.“She does not offend people in a way that a president can because she’s much less polarizing and political,” said Michael LaRosa, a communications strategist and her former press secretary. “It’s why she was sent all over rural Iowa and New Hampshire during the campaign and why she can go places now that the president can’t.”Modern first ladies are usually relied on to humanize their husbands or translate their policies, but how much they decide to engage is almost always up to them. Melania Trump was more popular than her husband and was a much-requested surrogate, but she did not campaign for him during the 2018 midterms or during the 2020 campaign, often saying she was too busy parenting her son or tied up with her own engagements as first lady.Dr. Biden greeting supporters at a campaign event in Iowa in February 2020. Joshua Lott/Getty ImagesMichelle Obama was largely viewed as a secret weapon for Democrats ahead of the 2010 midterms, when she campaigned with personal stories about her family. But she spent large stretches of time away from politics, and her popularity was not able to counter the losses the Democrats sustained in the House and Senate that year.There are risks involved for women who try to do too much: When Democrats lost their House majority in 1994, enough people blamed Hillary Clinton’s efforts to reinvent health care that she publicly apologized.Lauren A. Wright, a professor at Princeton who has written extensively about political appearances by first ladies, said the East Wing under Dr. Biden, 71, who kept teaching as an English professor as first lady, has become completely intertwined with the political efforts of the West Wing.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.The Final Stretch: With less than one month until Election Day, Republicans remain favored to take over the House, but momentum in the pitched battle for the Senate has seesawed back and forth.A Surprising Battleground: New York has emerged from a haywire redistricting cycle as perhaps the most consequential congressional battleground in the country. For Democrats, the uncertainty is particularly jarring.Arizona’s Governor’s Race: Democrats are openly expressing their alarm that Katie Hobbs, the party’s nominee for governor in the state, is fumbling a chance to defeat Kari Lake in one of the most closely watched races.Herschel Walker: The Republican Senate nominee in Georgia reportedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion, but members of his party have learned to tolerate his behavior.“This role has become so serious and political,” she said. “It must be part of the strategic White House planning and effort. Otherwise you’re wasting opportunities.”As first lady, Dr. Biden has traveled to 40 states, and lately, she has tucked a plethora of political visits into trips that spotlight her policy interests. On Thursday, she taught a full day of classes at Northern Virginia Community College before flying to Fort Benning in Georgia, where she visited with military families.Her political appearances began on Friday evening, when she stood in the foyer of a home with Ms. Abrams and asked some 75 attendees, mostly women, to step closer to her. Then she took aim at Mr. Kemp and the policies that he supports, including a law he signed that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and another that limits voting access.“I know that makes you angry,” she told them. “And it should make you angry.”Her presence is not just a morale boost for Democrats in close races: She is a fund-raising draw who appeals to grass roots supporters, and people are more likely to donate if she’s asking, according to a spokeswoman who works for the Democratic National Committee who was not authorized to speak publicly. Her events, emails, text messages and mailings have drawn millions of dollars for Democrats.In Atlanta, Dr. Biden told her audience that she knew they had already donated, but “I’m asking you to dig a little deeper.” (Each had already paid at least $1,000 to attend the event.) The whole appearance took about 20 minutes, and then she was on the road to the next event, slipping out through a kitchen door with a coterie of aides.By Saturday morning, Dr. Biden was in Florida — her second visit there this month — where she started the day on a bike at a spin studio in Fort Lauderdale with several aides. (Aside from finding boutique fitness classes when she travels, she is also an avid runner, and has said that the exercise “creates a sense of balance in my life.”) Then she stopped for a coffee (black, no sugar) with Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Fort Lauderdale before the two of them toured a breast cancer research facility.She delivered an interview focused on breast cancer awareness with the host of a show on Newsmax, then she flew to Orlando, where she appeared with Mr. Crist and Ms. Demings in front of City Hall, clasping hands and holding their arms up in a victory gesture.Dr. Biden, who recently spent time in Florida with Mr. Biden and Mr. DeSantis to tour storm damage from Hurricane Ian, offered her pointed assessment of the state government: “This state deserves a governor who will get to work for all of Florida’s families.” After the event, Dr. Biden, surrounded on all sides by Secret Service agents, walked down from the steps of City Hall and toward a group of people who wanted to shake her hand.Dr. Biden and President Biden toured storm damage in Fort Myers, Fla., with Gov. Ron DeSantis this month.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe first lady is not the only Democrat crisscrossing the country ahead of the midterms.Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a smooth-talking Midwesterner and potential future presidential candidate is also high on the list of popular surrogates. Kamala Harris, the vice president, has an approval rating lower than the president, but she has been sent across the country to energize young voters on issues including abortion rights and student loans.Dr. Biden is used differently.The first lady has long been thought of in Biden world as a “closer”: a surrogate they rely on to travel to corners of the country that her husband cannot easily reach, ideologically or geographically. White House officials believe she appeals to suburban women and can communicate to Americans “beyond the Twitterverse and cable news chatter,” according to Elizabeth Alexander, her communications director.Compared with her husband, Dr. Biden is the more disciplined communicator. Her missteps, which are rare, have occurred not off the cuff but during the speeches she works to commit to memory. Over the summer, she was criticized when she compared the diversity of the Hispanic community to the breadth of breakfast taco options available in Texas.She is incredibly protective of Mr. Biden, and has been involved in the hiring of his press staff and other senior aides. (She vetted Jen Psaki, Mr. Biden’s first press secretary, alongside her husband.) She has been direct when she believes they have not protected him: After Mr. Biden delivered a nearly two-hour news conference in January, members of his senior staff were rehashing the appearance in the Treaty Room when the first lady appeared.She pointedly asked the group, which included the president, why nobody stepped in to stop it, according to a person who was in the room. Where was the person, she demanded, who was supposed to end the news conference?Dr. Biden after a presidential debate in 2020. She can be President Biden’s staunchest defender on the campaign trail.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesThe first lady is also Mr. Biden’s staunchest defender on the campaign trail: Within each interaction, each visit or even each naysayer, she sees an opportunity to extol her husband’s accomplishments — and maybe change someone’s mind.In event after event, people try to come close to her, for a picture or a hug or, sometimes, to air their grievances. This year, as they did on the 2020 campaign, Democrats have approached her at events to share their thoughts about the president, including suggesting that he is too old for the presidency. She replies by ticking off her husband’s accomplishments, his travel schedule and his victory over Donald J. Trump.“I’ve been to places where they think Joe is the best thing ever,” she said next to Ms. Abrams on Friday in Atlanta. “And there have been times when I’ve been met with anger or hurt. But I’ve also found that the values that united us are really deeper than our divisions.”Polling shows that Americans have mixed feelings about her. A CNN survey this summer found that some 34 percent of Americans had a favorable opinion of Dr. Biden, compared with 29 percent who said their view was unfavorable. Almost as many people — 28 percent — had no opinion, and 9 percent said they had never heard of her.That poll also found that she performed well with women and Black voters, and people from both groups turned out to see her as she went from event to event over the weekend.Dr. Biden speaking during a campaign event in Iowa in January 2020. “She does not offend people in a way that a president can because she’s much less polarizing and political,” her former press secretary said.Andrew Harnik/Associated PressIn speeches designed to warm up a crowd and draw laughs, she shared several snapshots of her life story: “When I first met Joe, I felt really kind of out of touch with his world in D.C.,” Dr. Biden said. “On our first date, I remember saying, ‘Thank God I voted for him.’”As the sun was setting in Orlando on Saturday evening, she repurposed a story that she recently shared for the first time, telling supporters that she once helped a friend recover from abortion in the late 1960s, before Roe v. Wade had established a constitutional right to an abortion. “It happened a long time ago, but it is a story that might not be unfamiliar to you,” she told Ms. Demings’s supporters.They nodded along as she spoke. More

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      ‘I decided to share my voice’: Estela Juarez on her mother, who Trump deported, and her new book

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      Interview‘I decided to share my voice’: Estela Juarez on her mother, who Trump deported, and her new bookRichard Luscombe Just nine when zero-tolerance policy saw her mother sent to Mexico, now a teen, the Floridian has written a book for childrenFew stories exposed the cruelty of Donald Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policies more than that of Estela Juarez. Just nine, she saw her mother, Alejandra, the wife of a decorated US marine, deported to Mexico, leaving her and her sister Pamela, then 16, to grow up in Florida on their own.‘It’s heartbreaking’: military family shattered as wife of decorated US marine deported to MexicoRead moreNow a teenager, Estela has written a book about her experiences, Until Someone Listens, which also chronicles her years-long effort to reunify her family.From missed birthdays and holidays, the smell of Alejandra’s flautas no longer wafting from their kitchen, to Pamela’s high school graduation ceremony without her mother by her side, the story lays bare the pain of forced separation, even as the family never gives up hope of being whole again.The book is not Estela’s first turn in the spotlight. Her fight included a heartbreaking video played at the 2020 Democratic convention. As images of migrant children in cages filled the screen, she read a letter telling Trump: “You tore our world apart.”Now, with a colorful illustrated book aimed at children, albeit with a powerful plea for immigration reform directed at adults in positions of power, she is bringing her story to a new generation, with the message it is never too early to stand up for what’s right.“I know that if I decided to never share my voice then my mother wouldn’t be here right now next to me, and she wouldn’t be in the US,” Estela said on a Zoom call from her home in central Florida.“And I think that’s very important for other people to share their voice and I hope that they can get inspired by my story, and know that they’re not alone, because I know it’s hard to speak out, especially at such a young age.”Alejandra was able to return to Florida in May 2021 after almost three years in exile in Yucatan, as one of the early beneficiaries of an executive order signed by Joe Biden in his first days in office.The action reversed the Trump policy of deporting undocumented residents without impunity even if, as in Alejandra’s case, they’d lived in the US for decades, paid taxes, were married to US citizens, had US citizen children and stayed out of legal trouble.Biden’s order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to form an interagency taskforce to identify and reunify families separated under Trump. An interim report in July revealed that 2,634 children have been reunified with parents, with more than 1,000 cases pending.“We’re spending as much time as we have together and we try not to think about the fact that in a year or so my mom could be deported again,” Estela told me, referring to the temporary nature of her mother’s immigration “parole”, which will be reviewed in 2023.“Knowing that my story is not finished yet has inspired me to continue to write another book that’s more for teenagers and adults, and to give them a chance to be inspired.“I love writing, it helps me get my emotions out. When it comes to children’s books it has to be brief, and my story is very complicated, so I have to make it in a way where other children would understand.“My mother was never supposed to come back from Mexico. She was told she would be there for life. And knowing that after almost three years of being there she was able to come back shows me basically that anything is possible, so I have a lot of hope for the future.”Estela has grown since the Guardian first met her, Pamela and Alejandra in a playground in Haines City, Florida, in late summer 2018, about a week before their mother was deported.But even then, having only just turned nine, an advanced awareness of her family’s plight and that of others sat comfortably alongside her joyous, playful nature. She spoke eloquently of immigration reform and working with a Florida congressman, Darren Soto, on a bill to protect military families if any member was undocumented.Now 13, Estela is in her final year in middle school. She is studying the naturalization process in civics lessons she says are helping to inspire her career path.“I hope to become an immigration lawyer,” she said. “I know that right now I’m a minor, and with my writing I’m doing all I can to help immigrants. In the future I want to continue to help them.“Seeing how the broken immigration laws hurt my family, and others, seeing how it changed them forever, really gave me the courage to continue to speak out and spend my time helping them.”As Estela says in the book: “My words have power. My voice has power. I won’t stop using my voice until someone listens.”
      Until Someone Listens: A Story About Borders, Family and One Girl’s Mission is published in the US by Macmillan
      TopicsBooksUS immigrationUS domestic policyUS politicsTrump administrationBiden administrationPolitics booksinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Anger as DeSantis eases voting rules in Republican areas hit by hurricane

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      Anger as DeSantis eases voting rules in Republican areas hit by hurricaneExecutive order makes voting easier in Florida’s Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties but not in Democratic Orange county Governor Ron DeSantis has made voting easier in certain Florida counties battered by Hurricane Ian – but only Republican-leaning ones.DeSantis signed an executive order on Thursday that eases voting rules for about 1 million voters in Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota counties, all areas that Hurricane Ian hit hard and that all reliably vote Republican.Meanwhile, Orange county, a Democratic-leaning area which experienced historic flooding from the storm, received no voting exceptions, reported the Washington Post.The accommodations include extended early voting days and the ability for voters to send mail-in ballots from addresses not listed in voting records.Voting rights groups had previously asked the governor to extend the statewide voting registration deadline, which ended on Tuesday, and to add more early voting days, as well as implement other accommodations.DeSantis complied – but only for the three Republican counties.“Tens of thousands of Floridians have been displaced, and today’s executive order fails to meet the moment and ensure voting access for all Florida voters,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, founder of voter rights organization Equal Ground, in a statement. “Instead, Governor DeSantis is politicizing a natural disaster.”In the emergency order, DeSantis said the decision to only accommodate three counties was based on “based on the collective feedback of the Supervisors of Elections across the state and at the written requests of the Supervisors of Elections in Charlotte, Lee, and Sarasota counties”, the Post reported.But Burney-Clark said that the decision to exclude other counties “will remain yet another example of Governor DeSantis disenfranchising voters”.The governor had previously declined to make adjustments in voting laws during other statewide emergences, including at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite requests from local election officials.DeSantis and Florida Republicans have also enacted a number of laws that restrict voting in the past two years, including one measure that bans anyone helping drop off mail-in ballots from having more than two ballots that do not belong to them.TopicsRon DeSantisFloridaUS voting rightsHurricane IanUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      DeSantis Eases Election Rules for Counties Hit Hard By Hurricane

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said Thursday that the state would ease election rules for three counties that were the hardest hit by Hurricane Ian, allowing them to create “super polling” centers and to extend early voting by a couple of days.He signed an emergency order on Wednesday that will also allow voters in those counties in southwest Florida — Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota — to request by phone that their mail-in ballots be sent to a different address from the one kept on file.The move by Mr. DeSantis came two weeks after Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 4 storm along the Gulf Coast, leading to more than 100 deaths in Florida and to widespread destruction, including to early voting sites and Election Day precincts.Election officials expected that many of those sites would not be available, placing another burden on workers who had already been dealing with threats and misinformation.The order cited a dire situation in Lee County, where it said the county’s head of elections reported that only a few Election Day polling locations were viable after the storm.The Aftermath of Hurricane IanThe Victims: The storm, Florida’s deadliest since 1935, has been linked to the deaths of at least 119 people in the state. Many were at least 60, and dozens died by drowning.A Housing Crisis: As the extent of the damage from Ian comes into focus, many in Florida are uncertain of their next chapter, fearing they may become homeless.Uncertain Future: Older people displaced by Hurricane Ian are confronting a wrenching situation: At their age, remaking the lives they loved so much in Florida may not be possible.Lack of Insurance: In the Florida counties hit hardest by Ian, less than 20 percent of homes had flood insurance, new data show. Experts say that will make rebuilding harder.In addition to property damage, election officials in the state have said that their work is being hampered by the displacement of voters, a shortage of poll workers and disruptions to telecommunications and other utility services.Under the order, Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota Counties will be allowed to relocate and consolidate polling locations, creating what are known as “super polling” centers to serve displaced voters from precincts devastated by the storm.The order also authorizes the counties to offer early voting from Oct. 24 through Election Day, on Nov. 8. Previously, the cut off was Nov. 6. In an effort to recruit more trained poll workers in the three counties, the order will let those with experience from the 2020 election or who have worked in elections since then be eligible to do so again this November. State employees were also being encouraged by the governor’s office to serve as poll workers.For the three counties, Mr. DeSantis suspended a requirement that requests be made in writing for those who want mail-in ballots to be sent to a different address from the one on file for them. They can now make those requests by phone, but they will still be required to provide a driver’s license number, an ID card number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.He also lifted a restriction on the forwarding of mail-in ballots in the three counties.A similar order was signed after Hurricane Michael in 2018, when the governor at the time, Rick Scott, who is now a U.S. senator, relaxed voting rules in eight counties along the Panhandle.Mark S. Earley, the president of the statewide association of election supervisors, said in a statement on Thursday that while the governor’s order took somewhat longer to be issued than the one in 2018, it addressed the group’s concerns.“With this order, we have the flexibility needed to provide all voters with an accessible opportunity to vote and to have their voices heard through the ballot box, while maintaining the procedural integrity needed for those voters to have faith that the election is being conducted in a fair, impartial and secure manner,” said Mr. Earley, a top election official in Leon County, which was outside the hurricane’s direct path.The action by Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, to loosen these election rules for a few affected counties contrasted with his overall push for more rigid voting policies in Florida.Last year, Mr. DeSantis signed voting restrictions into law that limited the use of drop boxes where voters can deposit absentee ballots, and added more identification requirements for anyone requesting an absentee ballot. The law also requires voters to request absentee ballots for each two-year election cycle, rather than every four years.Democrats and civil liberties groups have criticized the 2021 restrictions, arguing that they make it more difficult for voters, particular those of color, to cast ballots.Mr. DeSantis, who is seeking re-election this year, also spearheaded the creation of a new state office of election crimes and security. In August, he announced that 17 people had been charged with casting illegal ballots in the 2020 election, in which 11.1 million Floridians voted.That initiative has also drawn some backlash, with critics saying that the vast majority of those charged were Black and that election officials had previously told them that they were eligible to vote. More

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      Florida, a ‘Microcosm of the Country’

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      The Times’s Miami bureau chief, Patricia Mazzei, shares what it’s like to cover hurricanes and elections, sometimes in the same day.The day before Hurricane Ian touched down in Florida, cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic lined State Road 60, headed southeast, away from Tampa to avoid the storm. Patricia Mazzei, The Times’s Miami bureau chief since 2017, was in one of the few vehicles driving on the other side of the road, toward Tampa.“It’s a very strange feeling,” Ms. Mazzei, who worked at The Miami Herald for a decade before joining The Times, said of driving toward a storm, which she sometimes has to do for her work. “It’s always that way, but it doesn’t stop being weird.”Ms. Mazzei and a team of journalists covered the hurricane and its aftermath from the ground in Tampa and the Fort Myers area. The devastation was the latest headline-grabbing event for a state that has recently been at the forefront of the news cycle, with the F.B.I.’s seizure of documents from former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and the flights arranged by Gov. Ron DeSantis that transported migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.In a video call, Ms. Mazzei discussed the often frenetic pace of news in the state and how she keeps track of it all. This interview has been edited.Hurricane Ian has dominated both local and national news coverage in recent weeks. How do you approach the different facets of hurricane coverage?The Aftermath of Hurricane IanThe Victims: The storm, Florida’s deadliest since 1935, has been linked to the deaths of at least 119 people in the state. Many were at least 60, and dozens died by drowning.A Housing Crisis: As the extent of the damage from Ian comes into focus, many in Florida are uncertain of their next chapter, fearing they may become homeless.Uncertain Future: Older people displaced by Hurricane Ian are confronting a wrenching situation: At their age, remaking the lives they loved so much in Florida may not be possible.Lack of Insurance: In the Florida counties hit hardest by Ian, less than 20 percent of homes had flood insurance, new data show. Experts say that will make rebuilding harder.There is so much news in this region that it is more manageable to think of it in pieces. Sometimes you feel as if you’re in the middle of the vortex: How many articles have been written this week? How many different topics have come up? Because we’re coming at it from a news lens, most things are not necessarily related. There’s stuff happening in court. There are natural disasters. There are these things that aren’t related — they just happen to happen at the same time.You always know in an election year that the fall — when storm season and election season overlap — is going to be very busy. You’re hoping there’s no storm, but you have to pivot depending on any given moment. In 2018, we were covering the midterms, and Hurricane Michael hit the Panhandle. It’s 2022 and we’re covering the midterms, and Hurricane Ian hits southwest Florida.What audience are you thinking about in your report?Florida is a microcosm of the country, generally speaking. There’s a lot of interest from people in other places about this state because they have connections to it, either through family or work or vacation. You want the people who are represented in the stories, in the communities that you are in, to feel represented. And you want people nationally and internationally who maybe have never been in a hurricane to understand what it means.You want it to be informational, not just for the locals. It’s a balancing job, trying to let people who might not be in southwest Florida understand the geography of this place.Is there a specific moment of surprise or immediacy that you remember from any of these bigger news events?We were reporting a story following up on the migrants who were sent to Martha’s Vineyard by the state of Florida when Hurricane Ian took aim. I had to send my outline and my notes for my part of the story to my colleagues and then just be like, I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to find gas, I have to get supplies. I’ve got to move out west. It sort of encapsulated the whiplash, and the fact that you have to be flexible and lean on your colleagues.Is that whiplash unsettling?It’s what we do. The lead-up to storms is stressful in a different way than actually covering them. There’s a lot of waiting and a lot of anxiety. You have to be worried about flash flooding. You’re not going to have connectivity, so how are you going to let people know to be safe? There’s a lot of worrying and planning. And then once the storm hits, you have to try to get a sense of the scope of the destruction by just going one foot at a time, one town at a time, to see how it looks.It’s stressful on both ends. But the more you do it, the more it becomes something that you know how to plan for. It helps to get experience and have a plan going into the next one.Do you think the hurricane is attached as a news story to the political news cycle?We have to wonder how the election is going to look in southwest Florida because it is the base of the Republican Party. The governor wants to keep things as normal as possible, but hurricanes sometimes require special accommodations for people to vote afterward. The long-term effects — in this case, long term is a month to the election — we’re going to have to see how one thing ends up affecting the other. More

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      in Elections

      The ‘Sleeping Giant’ That May Decide the Midterms

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      The choices made by Latino voters on Nov. 8 will be crucial to the outcome in a disproportionate share of Senate battleground states, like Arizona (31.5 percent of the population), Nevada (28.9), Florida (25.8), Colorado (21.7), Georgia (9.6) and North Carolina (9.5).According to most analysts, there is no question that a majority of Hispanic voters will continue to support Democratic candidates. The question going into the coming election is how large that margin will be.In terms of the battle for control of the House, three Hispanic-majority congressional districts in South Texas — the 15th, 28th and 34th — have become proving grounds for Republican candidates challenging decades of Democratic dominance. In a special election in the 34th district in June, the Republican candidate, Mayra Flores, prevailed.Two weeks ago, The Texas Tribune reported that:Since Labor Day, outside G.O.P. groups have blasted the Democratic nominees on multiple fronts, criticizing them all as weak on border issues and then zeroing in on candidate-specific vulnerabilities. Democratic groups are countering in two of the races, though for now, it is Republicans who appear to be in a more offensive posture.Last week, Axios reported that in the 15th Congressional district, which is 81.9 percent Hispanic, national Democratic groups had begun to abandon its nominee as a lost cause:Texas Democrat Michelle Vallejo, a progressive running in a majority-Hispanic Rio Grande Valley district against Republican Monica de la Cruz, isn’t getting any Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee support in her Trump +3 district. House Majority PAC is planning to cancel the scheduled ad reservations for her at the end of the month, according to a source familiar with the group’s plans.Across a wide range of studies and exit poll data analyses, there is general agreement that President Donald Trump significantly improved his 2016 margin among Hispanic voters in 2020, although there is less agreement on how large his gain was, on the demographics of his new supporters, or on whether the movement was related to Trump himself, Trump-era Covid payments or to a secular trend.In their July 2022 paper “Reversion to the Mean, or their Version of the Dream? An Analysis of Latino Voting in 2020,” Bernard L. Fraga, Yamil R. Velez and Emily A. West, political scientists at Emory, Columbia and the University of Pittsburgh, write that there isan increasing alignment between issue positions and vote choice among Latinos. Moreover, we observe significant pro-Trump shifts among working-class Latinos and modest evidence of a pro-Trump shift among newly-engaged U.S.-born Latino children of immigrants and Catholic Latinos. The results point to a more durable Republican shift than currently assumed.That is, the more Hispanic voters subordinate traditional party and ethnic solidarity in favor of voting based on conservative or moderate policy preferences, the more likely that are to defect to the Republican Party.The authors caution, however, that nothing is fixed in stone:On the one hand, there is evidence that working-class Latino voters became more supportive of Trump in 2020, mirroring increases in educational polarization among the mass public. If similar processes are at play for Latinos — and if such polarization is not Trump-specific — then this could mean a durable change in partisan loyalties.On the other hand, they continue,Historical voting patterns among Latinos reveal natural ebbs and flows. Using exit poll data from 1984-2020, political scientist Alan Abramowitz finds that the pro-Democratic margin among Latinos ranges from +9 in 2004 to +51 in 1996, with an average margin of +35 points. Instead of reflecting a durable shift, 2020 could be a “reversion to the mean,” with 2016 serving as a recent high-water mark for the Democrats.In an email responding to my inquiry about future trends, Fraga wrote:My sense is that most of the Latinos who shifted to the Republican Party in 2020 have not returned to the Democratic Party. Many of these new Republican converts were ideologically conservative pre-2020, so Republicans didn’t have to shift their policy message very much to win them over.“Portrait of a Persuadable Latino” — an April 2021 study by the nonprofit Equis Research of Hispanic defections from the Democratic Party — found similar overall trends to those reported in the Fraga-Velez-West paper, but revealed slightly different demographic patterns.The Equis survey found that the largest percentage tilt toward Trump was among women, at plus 8 percent, compared with men, at 3 percent; among non-college Latinos, plus 6, compared with just 1 percent among the college educated; among Protestants, plus seven compared with plus 5 among Catholics and plus 15 percent among conservative Hispanics — compared with no tilt among liberals and a plus 4 percent tilt among moderates.Carlos Odio, co-founder and senior vice president at Equis Labs, a nonprofit committed “to massively increase civic participation among Latinos in this country,” emailed a response to my query about Hispanic voter trends:While Latinos shifted toward Republicans between 2016 and 2020, an 8-point swing toward Trump, we do not see evidence of a further decrease in Democratic support since Biden’s win. In most states, things do not look worse for Dems with Latinos than they did in the last election, nor do they look better.But, Odio pointedly cautioned,The political environment has the potential to lead to further erosion of Democratic support among Latinos. A meaningful share of Latino voters remain on the fence, having not firmly chosen a side in the election. These late breakers could move toward either party, or toward the couch, before the midterms are over.Odio sent me a September 2022 Equis report, “Latino Voters in Limbo — A Midterm Update,” which found thatYoung Latinos (18-34), Latino men, and self-identified conservatives are overrepresented among the 2020 Biden voters who today disapprove of the president’s job performance. Among the most likely to be undecided today are ideological holdouts: conservative and moderate Latinos who have held back from Republicans, despite seeming to share some characteristics with their G.O.P.-supporting white counterparts. Notably Republicans have not increased support among these Latinos in the last year in almost any state — likely because a large majority of conservative or moderate Latinos who don’t yet vote Republican believe Democrats “care more about people like them.”Today, the report continues, “what keeps many Latinos on the fence is again concerns about the economy and fears that Democrats don’t consistently prioritize the economy, handle it as decisively as business-obsessed Republicans, or value hard work.”A separate Equis study, “2020 Post-Mortem: The American Dream Voter,” found that a negative attitude toward socialism was a factor among Hispanics nationwide, especially among those who stress the importance of working hard to get ahead:There isn’t one overriding concern about “socialism”— but a package of complaints usually rises to the top around government control over people’s lives, raising taxes, and money going to ‘undeserving’ recipients. If a through line exists, it is a worry over people becoming “lazy and dependent on government’ by those who highly value hard work.”The American Dream Voter study found that the declining salience of immigration in 2020 compared with either 2016 or 2018, combined with the debate in 2020 over Covid lockdowns versus reopening the economy, diminished ethnic solidarity in 2020, allowing conservative Hispanics to shift their allegiance to the Republican Party:The economy unlocked a door: the issue landscape shifted to more favorable ground for Trump, opening a way for some Latinos who found it unacceptable to vote for him in 2016. The socialism attack broke through: it created a space for defection,” according to the report’s authors. “Democrats retain some natural credibility with Latino voters but have lost ground on workers, work and the American Dream; they’re also open to attack for taking Hispanics for granted; Republicans have some openings but are still held back by their image as the uncaring party of big corporations.In 2016, the study continued,some Latinos who we might predict would vote Republican — based on their demographics, partisanship and ideology — were held back from supporting Trump by (a) opposition to his hard-line immigration positions and (b) the importance of their Hispanic identity. By the middle of 2020, neither views on immigration nor the role of Hispanic identity were showing a major effect on vote choice — they were no longer cleanly differentiating Trump voters from Democratic voters.In 2018, according to the study, “Trump lost even the conservatives on family separation. But family separation was not front-and-center by the end of the (2020) election. Reopening the economy — one of Trump’s most popular planks with Latino voters — was.”A 2021 Pew Research report found that Latinos view anti-Hispanic discrimination differently from anti-Black discrimination. Hispanic voters were asked whether “there was ‘too much,’ ‘about the right amount’ or ‘too little’ attention paid to race and racial issues” when it comes to Hispanics and then asked the same question about Black Americans.Just over half, 51 percent, of Latino respondents said, “too little” attention is paid to discrimination against Hispanics, 28 percent said, “about the right amount” and 19 percent said, “too much.” Conversely, 30 percent of Latino respondents said that in the case of Black Americans, “too little” attention is paid to discrimination, 23 percent said, “about the right amount” and 45 percent said, “too much.”The American Dream Voter survey Equis performed found that when Hispanics were asked “which concerns you more, Democrats embracing socialism/leftist policies or Republicans embracing fascist/anti-democratic policies,” 42 percent of Latinos said socialism/leftist policies and 38 percent said fascist/anti-democratic politics.Equis did find substantial Democratic advantages when Hispanics were asked which party is “better for Hispanics” (53-31), which “is the party of fairness and equality” (51-31) and which party “cares about people like you” (49-32). But the Democratic advantage shrank to statistical insignificance on key bread-and- butter issues: which party “values hard work” 42-40 and “which is the party of the American dream” 41-39, and a dead 42-42 heat on “which party is better for the American worker?”Last month, Pew Research released a survey that showed continuing Democratic strength among Hispanics, “Most Latinos Say Democrats Care About Them and Work Hard for Their Vote, Far Fewer Say So of G.O.P.”Pew found that over the past four years, Democrats experienced a modest gain in partisan identification among Hispanics over Republicans, going from 62-34 (+28) in 2018 to 63-32 (+31) in 2022.From March 2022 to August 2022, the share of Latinos identifying abortion as a “very important issue” shot up from 42 to 57 percent in response to the Supreme Court’s decision’s decision in Dobbs in June. Hispanics favor abortion rights by a 57-40 margin, slightly smaller than the split among all voters, 62-36, according to Pew.At the same time, the percentage of Latino respondents listing violent crime among the most important issues rose from 61 to 70 percent; support for gun control rose from 59 to 66 percent; and concern over voter suppression rose from 51 to 59 percent.Registered Latino voters split 53-26 in favor of voting for a generic Democratic congressional candidate over a generic Republican, according to Pew, but there were striking religious differences: Catholics, who make up 47 percent of the Hispanic electorate, favored a generic Democratic House candidate 59-26; evangelical Protestants, 24 percent of Hispanics, backed Republicans 50-32; Latinos with little or no religious affiliation, 23 percent, backed Democrats 60-17.Matt A. Barreto, a professor of political science and Chicana/o & Central American Studies at U.C.L.A, pointed to data in the Oct. 2 National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials weekly Latino voter poll:Indeed if you look at issues like access to abortion, student debt, immigrant rights and gun violence, there are no signs at all that Latinos are becoming more conservative. When asked about government policy, 70 to 80 percent of Latino voters give support to the Democratic Party policy agenda. Indeed for the fourth week in a row, the NALEO tracking poll shows that abortion rights are the number two most important issue to Latino voters in 2022 and issues such as mass shootings and lowering the costs of health care are top 5 issues as well.Trump’s 2020 gains reflected “a clear pattern that concern over the Covid economic slowdown helped Trump make temporary gains with Latino voters,” Barreto argued. “Because so many were negatively impacted by the slumping economy in 2020, Trump was able to convince at least some Latinos that he would reopen the economy faster.”Despite those improvements, Barreto contended, “the reality is that Trump’s gains in 2020 were not part of any pattern of realignment or ideological shift among Latinos. As the national economy continues to recover and improve, Biden favorability continues to recover among Latinos.”In September 2020. Ian F. Haney López, a law professor at the University of California- Berkeley, wrote an essay for The Times with Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win, a liberal advocacy group. They wrote that when they asked white, Black and Hispanic votershow “convincing” they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. The message condemned “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs “and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.” Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos.In other words, Haney López and Gavito wrote, “Mr. Trump’s competitiveness among Latinos is real.” Progressives, they continued,commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no doubt partly because progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well. Certainly, we both once took that perspective for granted. Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of color. In contrast, the majority rejected this designation. They preferred to see Hispanics as a group integrating into the American mainstream, one not overly bound by racial constraints but instead able to get ahead through hard work.I asked Haney López about the current political and partisan state of play among Hispanic voters going into the 2022 election. He emailed me his reply:As with white voters, the most important predictors of support for Republicans track racial resentment as well as anxiety over racial status. Rather than an ideological sorting, we are witnessing a racial sorting among Latinos — not in terms of anything so simple as skin color, but rather, in terms of those who seek a higher status for themselves by more closely identifying on racial grounds with the white mainstream, versus those who give less priority to race, or even see Latinos as a nonwhite racial group.Some Latinos, Haney López continued,are susceptible to Republican propaganda promoting social conflict and distrust. The greatest failure of the Democratic Party with respect to Latinos, and indeed the polity generally, is its failure to pursue policies and to stress stories that build social solidarity, especially across lines of race, class, and other wedge identities, including gender and sexual identity.Asked the same set of questions, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Boston and a former dean of the U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, had a somewhat different take.By email, Suárez-Orozco wrote:I am unpersuaded by the claim that Hispanics are becoming more conservative. To be more precise, over time, they are becoming more American. The holy trinity of integration: language, marriage patterns, and connectivity to the labor market tell a powerful story. Over time, Hispanics mimic mainstream norms. They are learning English much faster than Italians did a century and a half ago, they are marrying outside their ethnicity at very significant rates, and their connectivity to the labor market is very muscular.To Suárez-Orozco, Latinos in the United States are primed to play an ever more significant role — in politics and everywhere else: “The dominant metaphor on Hispanics qua elections over the last half-century has been ‘the sleeping giant.’ When the sleeping giants wakes up: Alas, s/he is us.”The question is whether this sleeping giant will move to the right or to the left. The evidence points both ways — but this is not a contest the Democrats can afford lose.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More