South Florida’s mammoth Latino population for years has been a force politicians must reckon with and more recently the number of Central Florida Hispanics has likewise ballooned.
Latino expansion in metropolitan cities like Orlando and Miami over the years has shifted the regions left. Latin American expatriates have historically tended to support more Democratic policies.
But recent census numbers show traditionally more conservative regions like the First Coast are now leading the state in the rate of Latino population growth as national furor over hot button issues like immigration reach a fever pitch.
If this surge of Hispanic transplants continues in Northeast Florida, what might that mean for the outcome of future Florida elections? The answer to that question is as varied as the cultures of the 33 countries that fall under the umbrella of Latin America.
Late Thursday morning was the first time Tomas Jimenez Jr. visited Kathy’s Bakery Cafe, a traditional Cuban eatery on Beach Boulevard, but the Cuban-American real estate lawyer said it’s not hard to feel at home here.
“I was born in Miami and came to Jacksonville when I was 2-months-old,” he said stirring a café con leche and breaking off pieces of his guava-filled pastelito. “So, I consider myself to be a Jacksonville native.”
After his family escaped Fidel Castro’s communist regime in 1960, the Jimenez clan bounced around a bit before planting roots in the River City. Jimenez said at the time, it felt like they were the city’s only Latino family.
“When I was a kid — I speak Spanish fluently — we would sometimes, if we didn’t want someone to understand what we were talking about or wanted to kind of talk in code, we’d say something in Spanish. Today I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I don’t think I would get away with it as easily.”
According to the latest U.S. Census figures, Jimenez is right: It’s getting harder to secretly speak Spanish in Northeast Florida. Though South Florida trounces the rest of the state in pure numbers, North Florida counties have seen the fastest recent growth in Latino population in the state — numbers that don’t include the influx of Puerto Rican migrants after last year’s Hurricane Maria.
Between July 2016 and July 2017, Georgia-bordering Nassau County had Florida’s second-largest year-over-year growth rate at nine percent. And over the previous decade, St. Johns County was number one for Latino growth — climbing by two-thirds.
In the late 1990s, Jimenez’s dad founded the city’s Hispanic-American Advisory Board with Republican Mayor John Delaney. The board, which the younger Jimenez now serves on, is City Hall’s bridge to the burgeoning community. Junior is hoping to build on his father’s legacy by hosting a bipartisan candidate forum October 9.
He said having Republicans and Democrats talk to Latino constituents can help dispel what he calls the “monolith myth.” Hispanics have political views just as nuanced as the general population, he said.
“I think to encourage people to be part of the process and for people to want to be part of it, I think they need to be able to make their own choice and not be spoon-fed or have a candidate shoved down their throats,” he said.
Depending on when they immigrated, what religious tradition they belong to or where they’re from, Latin American transplants can vary widely in political opinions. In Duval County, Hispanics make up around 10 percent of the population and five percent of voters. According to a Supervisor of Elections report, Latino voters almost doubled between 2006 and 2016.
Graciela Cain, who goes by the stage name Geexella, is a Jacksonville educator, DJ and hip-hop artist. Cain prefers to be described as “they,” a gender neutral pronoun.
The afro-Mexican rapper synthesizes activism and music channeling their experience as a queer person of color in the South. They moved to the River City with their family when they were just five-years-old.
“My mom was born in America. Most of my family were migrant workers. So, they would go from Mexico up to Minnesota… they were all kind of born sporadically up and down the Midwest,” they said. “I know most of my mom’s family — were all pretty much raised here.”
Cain’s U.S.-born Latino story isn’t unique. Cain’s political ideology tracks with the prevailing progressive views of their millennial peers and their working class, secular Mexican roots makes them a reliably-left political thinker.
“For myself, I definitely want to see change. I think a lot of folks are like feeling these horror stories with a lot of Latin folks right now with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and things like that,” they said. “It’s very oppressive to be black; to be Mexican. I definitely think there’s going to be a huge change and a huge voice for Hispanics in this [upcoming] election.”
Millennials made up almost half of all eligible Latino voters in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. “Forty-four percent of the 27.3 million Hispanic eligible voters is a share greater than any other racial or ethnic group of voters,” a Pew analysis of Census data found. The catch? Just like any other millennial group, Latino millennials aren’t as likely as their more conservative parents or grandparents to show up to the polls. Although Hispanics over 65 make up the smallest share of the overall Latino population, more than 60 percent of them reported casting ballots in 2012.
In Duval, Puerto Ricans make up the largest share of the Hispanic population and although most don’t register with a political party because of confusion over differences between island and mainland ballots, they tend to vote Democratic. That’s in contrast to older Cubans with memories of communist revolutions who skew conservative.
Over the last couple of years, First Coast politicians have sponsored stricter immigration measures or have expressed support for a federal immigration crackdown that’s steadily lost support among Hispanics since Donald Trump took office.
Former State Rep. Lake Ray (R-Jacksonville), current candidate for Duval County Tax Collector and early supporter of the president sponsored a failed measure during his legislative tenure that would grant military powers to the governor to prevent “restricted persons, immigrants and refugees” from entering Florida, Reveal and WJCT reported early last year.
“The intended goal, at the end of the day, is, finding out who's here, securing the borders, and not necessarily creating a path for citizenship unless there's some sort of quid pro quo,” he said in January 2017. “You know, what is the something? Somebody walking across our borders should not necessarily just be entitled citizenship.”
State Sen. Aaron Bean (R-Fernandina Beach), who faces reelection, last year filed a similar failed bill that would force municipalities to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts or face state financial penalties. The bill would also strip noncompliant entities of their sovereign immunity, opening localities up to lawsuits, among other things.
“If they let a criminal go or if they don't report and that illegal creates or makes a crime then that official, that municipality, that county government — whomever is engaging in it — can be held directly liable for those actions,” he told WJCT last October.
Flagler College Political Science professor Rachel Cremona said that’s just good strategy for officials in overwhelmingly white, conservative areas and it can play well with Latinos who don’t hail from Central America, where the majority of unlawful immigrants come from.
But a swelling Hispanic population and aversion to hardline policies like family separation is creating solidarity between traditionally disparate Latino nationalities. That could spell trouble for the GOP in the long run. She said more moderate Latino conservatives are being alienated from the Republican Party, while the younger generation has already moved further left.
“We have seen just nationally over the last 10, 15 years or so, that Latin American immigrants were starting to vote in large numbers. Going forward, might that affect the dynamics? I think definitely,” she said.
Even that demographic path to change shouldn’t make Democrats complacent, Cremona cautioned. Although most Latino polling still shows broad disagreement with Trump’s immigration policies, a strengthening economic recovery and tough foreign policy also drove a “10 point climb [in overall Trump support] among Hispanic voters,” according to a June Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released by the Hill.
“As the proportion of the population increases it will become more of an issue for people in Northeast Florida, particularly because we have such a conservative Republican base here,” she said. “One of the tricky parts of this is that there are people in the Democratic base — you know, older generations of Latinos — people who have been here for decades, also fear incoming immigration because they see it was negatively affecting their own position.”
In the end, Cremona said, both political parties would benefit from understanding Latino voters as less of a reliable bloc of single-issue voters and more as individuals with intersecting identities, histories and experiences — all of which they’ll bring with them when they cast ballots in Tuesday’s primary and November’s general election.
