“As long as they focus on the economy and the solutions for improving the economy, they will attract a lot of votes, not only Latino votes,’’ said Bettina Inclan, who was raised in Miami’s Little Havana and was appointed earlier this week as the Republican National Committee’s director for Hispanic outreach.
Florida, which holds its vote Jan. 31, is shaping up to be a broad battleground featuring an array of diverse interests. The Sunshine State has 50 delegates up for grabs, more than Iowa and New Hampshire combined and twice as many as South Carolina.
Unlike those states, Florida politics is keenly influenced by the state’s burgeoning Hispanic communities.
“As the Hispanic vote goes, Florida will go. And as the Florida vote goes, the country will go,’’ said Alci Maldonado, who chairs the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.
In the 2008 general election, Latinos voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, but they backed George W. Bush in 2004, making them a crucial swing vote in a key swing state.
Their influence has grown. Of the 11.2 million Floridians registered to vote in fall 2010, 1.4 million identified themselves as of Hispanic descent - nearly 346,000 more than four years before, according to the state’s elections office. Although Democrats have registered more Hispanics than Republicans have - 550,799 to 445,353 - analysts say Hispanics who align themselves with the GOP, particularly Cuban Americans, are more likely to vote.
It would be a mistake for candidates to come through Florida thinking they can win without the support of such a sizable voting bloc, Inclan said.
When Republicans gather in Tampa for their national convention, few, if any, will venture into Richard Avila’s neighborhood west of the city’s gleaming towers. They would see a thoroughfare of supermercados, florists, tire shops, and boarded-up storefronts that once pulsed with life. Avila, a barber, lamented his neighborhood’s woes.
