SoFla congressional races heat up

Aside from the U.S. presidency, several legislative seats are up for grabs and will be decided on November 4th. An increasingly heated race has developed in Southern Florida where the Latino electorate will be a decisive factor.

Republican Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart has been in Congress since 1992 and has easily won reelection, sometimes uncontested. Yet he faces a strong challenge from another Cuban-born politico- former Hialeah mayor Raul Martinez.

The campaign between both Latinos has gotten ugly with allegations and insinuations flying between both campaigns. For instance, Diaz-Balart’s campaign recently aired a TV ad implying that Martinez was involved in the 1980s drug trade. Martinez, meanwhile, accused his GOP rival of being connected to a Puerto Rican bribery scandal.

Diaz-Balart is not the only legislator of Cuban background facing a tough campaign from Latino challengers. His brother, Mario, is running neck-and-neck with Joe Garcia while Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is facing tough competition from Colombian-American businesswoman Annette Taddeo.

Why is the trio of staunch anti-Castro Republicans in danger of losing their seats? As Time magazine mentioned in an August article:

Florida Democrats are drawing new strength from a growing number of non-Cuban Latinos…(Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s) 18th District is still 65% Latino, but it is less than 30% Cuban today. That has emboldened Democrats like her challenger…whose constituents worry less about Havana than about immigration, health care and U.S. indifference toward the rest of Latin America.

Still, a likely decisive issue in these races involves Cuba. In 2004, as a gift to conservatives, President Bush tightened restrictions on travel and remittances to the island…The move backfired: most Miami Cubans oppose the new rules, according to an FIU poll, and they have been particularly unpopular among younger Cuban Americans…What would have worked in 1985 to deepen GOP support had the opposite effect in today's more diverse Miami. Says Garcia, sipping a café cubano in Little Havana: "Bush succeeded in dividing what was once a monolithic vote for his party."

Image- Miami New Times (From the upper left corner clockwise: Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Raul Martinez, Joe Garcia, Mario Diaz-Balart)
Sources- Time, miamiherald.com, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Swing States Project, local10.com