Puerto Rican salsa star Marc Anthony endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in a video called “Recuerdo” (I Remember) criticizing Donald Trump’s treatment of Puerto Rico in his first presidency.
Many Puerto Rican political activists agree.
“The Republicans have done a very good job of messaging to Puerto Ricans who feel disenfranchised today,” says former Florida state Rep. Robert Asencio, a Miami Democrat.
“You’ve got to talk to the Puerto Ricans about their quality of life, right? You’ve got to inspire them. We felt left behind in the COVID economy like any other American group, man.”
In 2016, Asencio, a former Miami-Dade public schools police captain and army veteran, became the first South Florida Puerto Rican elected to the state legislature in half a century.
He believes a big reason the Democratic Party didn’t follow through with enough of that outreach this year is that it still too often considers Puerto Ricans and other Latino groups to be one, Democrat-voting monolith instead of the more complex if not balkanized demographic they actually are.
“The Democratic Party,” Asencio says, “has failed to see Puerto Ricans and the Latinos as individuals.”
Some have also questioned the Democrats’ push for endorsements from Puerto Rican celebrities like rapper Bad Bunny and salsa singer Marc Anthony (who made a video for the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, recalling Trump’s scornful treatment of Puerto Rico during his first presidency).
“There turned out to be not much more of a ‘Bad Bunny effect’ with Puerto Rican voters than there turned out to be a Taylor Swift effect with voters in general,” one Latino political expert told WLRN.
READ MORE: Boricua Boom: Can Puerto Ricans become the new Cubans of South Florida politics?
Democrats argue they and Harris’ team did spotlight Puerto Ricans in campaign ads in Pennsylvania, including one narrated by popular Puerto Rican radio personality Victor Martinez.
Still, community advocates says the party needs to look more closely at factors like the divisions among Puerto Ricans regarding whether the territory should become a state, an independent country or remain a U.S. commonwealth.
Another consideration critics say Democrats ignore: Puerto Rico’s more chaotic, non-binary party politics — which condition Puerto Ricans (who cannot vote in U.S. presidential elections on the island, but can if they reside on the U.S. mainland) to more often vote for the person than for a party.
“That’s how they learn to vote,” says Maruxa Cardenas, co-director of the Puerto Rican advocacy nonprofit La Mesa Boricua in Miami.
Cardenas also points out while the joke at Trump’s campaign rally last month was certainly insulting to Puerto Ricans, Democrats overestimated how it would affect the votes of Puerto Ricans who’ve come here largely to escape the island’s economic disaster and political dysfunction.
Either way, she says Democrats relied too much on nonprofits like hers to take care of the ground game with groups like Puerto Ricans — and it shouldn’t have waited until the moment of the Hinchcliffe joke controversy to specifically engage Puerto Ricans more seriously.
“They came in too late,” Cardenas says.
“There was a lot of lost engagement. You need to do this work all year round. Election or non-election year, you have to keep on working with the communities.”
Puerto Ricans say that’s a reality Democrats can no longer afford to joke around with.
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Publish date : 2024-12-03 22:00:00
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