FORT LAUDERDALE — U.S. Sen. Rick Scott plans to spend millions of dollars to reach Florida’s Hispanic electorate, a group of voters that has increasingly leaned toward Republicans and is key to his re-election campaign in November.
Scott’s campaign said Wednesday that it plans to spend about $700,000 a week on a series of radio, digital, television and streaming service ads in English and Spanish.
Over the next few weeks, the campaign will roll out different ads targeting this key group of voters, who have increasingly chosen Republicans in recent election cycles. These ads will air in Miami, West Palm Beach, Orlando and Tampa, all large Florida cities critical to his re-election campaign. Miami has the largest group of Hispanic voters.
The first television ad aired on Wednesday, without mentioning Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former federal representative from Miami who aspires to unseat the senator.
This week, Democrats celebrated a glimmer of hope for this election cycle after the Florida Supreme Court approved a pro-abortion ballot initiative that Florida voters will have to decide on in November.
Against the socialist agenda
“In Florida, we understand how socialism stifles the human spirit,” Scott said in the announcement released Wednesday morning. “That’s why I fight against the socialist agenda in Washington.”
Scott, like other Republicans, has often accused Democrats of leaning toward socialism because the far-left wing dominates the Democratic Party. This charge has generally maintained a wedge between Democrats and groups of Hispanic voters who escaped the communist regimes of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, who make up a large portion of voters in Miami-Dade County. This traditionally blue county shifted red in the last midterm, and is currently the most populous county in Florida. More than 60% of registered voters in the county identify as Hispanic.
Scott said last month that he puts a lot of effort into talking to Hispanic voters and finds that they are concerned about “the same issues as everyone else,” such as education, public safety and employment.
“People who have come to this country from another country, legally, came here because they wanted the rule of law,” Scott said. “They want what America has to offer.”
Political adversary is of Hispanic origin
Mucarsel-Powell, who announced her campaign last August, was elected in 2018. She was born in Ecuador and was the first Ecuadorian-American in Congress and the first congressional delegate born in South America. She lost her seat to Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez after one term. Giménez has two terms in the legislative seat.
Mucarsel-Powell said last month that she relates to Hispanic voters because her story is similar to that of “a lot of people who live here in South Florida.”
As part of his campaign, he conducts radio interviews in Spanish every two weeks to reach Hispanic communities. In these interviews, he often speaks to voters concerned about socialism and has accused Scott of promoting “disinformation,” despite evidence of the repression and poverty that has caused the exodus of millions of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans.
“I’ve seen firsthand what it looks like when a dictator takes power,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “Many people identify with that. “That’s why it’s going to be harder — very difficult — for him to be able to really get in touch with the reality of Latinos living here in South Florida and what we’re facing.”
The Democratic administrations have had rapprochements with the Cuban regime during the presidency of Barack Obama, while the current president Joe Biden has offered concessions to the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro and maintains a failed policy towards Venezuela, a country from which almost 8 million have emigrated. people.
Nicaragua, governed by the Sandinista dictatorship, has created a corridor for immigration to the United States and the Biden administration, which for three years has maintained a flexible policy on undocumented immigration, arguing reasons of security for migrants, and is indifferent to the policies of the dictator Daniel Ortega.
Source: With information from AP and DLA Editorial Team
