KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Melao Bakery in Kissimmee bustles on a Saturday afternoon. Lines grow in different sections of the Puerto Rican eatery for sandwiches and hefty plates of rice and beef on the right, alcapurrias and empanadas in the middle, and sweets like tres leches on the left.
The predominant language is Spanish, but the staff is patient if a customer doesn’t speak it.
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Puerto Ricans have been settling in Kissimmee since at least the 70s and 80s. But State Sen. Victor Torres, a Democrat who represents the area, says the community is far bigger now than it was even when his family first came to the area in 2003.
“They’re more established now,” Torres said. “You have more businesses in the community that are bringing the workers to support those businesses.”
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According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between the 2012 and 2022 American Community Surveys, the number of Hispanics in Osceola County increased by more than 102,000 people. The 2022 Hispanic population was 239,907 — 57% of the county’s population of 422,545.
That also means Hispanics have the potential to wield a lot of voting power. But in 2022, many did not come out to vote – in the county, or across Florida.
And if candidates want Hispanic voters to turn out in higher numbers in 2024, experts say they need to get into the communities now.
How the Hispanic population grew in Osceola County
“There’s been a continuous series of events that have promoted the exodus of people from Puerto Rico to Central Florida,” said Dr. Fernando Rivera, director of the Puerto Rico Research Hub at the University of Central Florida.
For the Kissimmee area, a big push began in the 1970s and 80s, when development companies like Landstar Homes heavily advertised in Puerto Rico, bringing them to communities like Buenaventura Lakes.
“You see those commercials now like buying property in Georgia and North Carolina, and stuff like that, that was happening in Puerto Rico, right,” Rivera said. “So a lot of people bought land in the Kissimmee area.”
Rivera said periods of economic turmoil also brought Puerto Ricans to Central Florida.
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The island’s government’s debt crisis in 2014, for instance, proved to be a population accelerator for the area, as did Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Puerto Ricans from other states are also joining the state-to-state migration to Florida, Rivera said, coming from New York and other Northeastern states.
One of them was Torres, a retired police officer in New York who moved his family down, first to Marion County in 1993, then to the Orlando area in 2003 where he drove a LYNX bus.
“I was able to see how different parts of the community survived and how they lived,” said Torres. “And you saw at that time, unemployment, lack of jobs, lack of good-paying jobs.”
How Puerto Rican growth translated into political power
Puerto Ricans now make up the largest concentration of Hispanics in Osceola County with 116,839, according to the U.S. Census. In 1996, the first Puerto Rican, Robert Guevara, was elected to the Osceola County Commission.
In 2016, Darren Soto became the first Puerto Rican in Florida to be elected to Congress. Soto, a Democrat, represents Osceola County as part of U.S. House District 9.
Among the Republicans hoping to challenge Soto for his Congressional seat this year is John “Q” Quinones, who was the first Puerto Rican Republican to be elected to the Florida Legislature in 2000.
While a majority of Hispanics, and Puerto Ricans in particular, tend to vote for Democratic candidates, they are not a monolith, says Rivera. He says younger voters and voters moving in from up north tend to vote more Democratic.
Then there is a very strong independent streak, particularly from Puerto Ricans new to mainland U.S. politics and now able to immediately vote here because Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.
“They come with a different set of issues out there, obviously, the ones that you had to come here because of the failed economic measures that were put out there by politicians, they’re very displeased with politics,” Rivera said. “They’re very hesitant to really engage in that sense.”
And there is also a more conservative contingent, Rivera says, particularly among Puerto Rican voters who have been in Florida for a long time. They tend to follow 1980s Reagan-style Republican values.
In 2022, Osceola County, which is usually reliable for Democrats, went to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Democratic incumbents in Congress and the Florida Legislature narrowly escaped tight races. Turnout figures show Hispanic Republicans voted in far higher numbers than Hispanic Democrats and no-party-affiliate voters.
What other Hispanic communities are there in Florida?
According to U.S. Census data, Cubans make up the largest concentration of Hispanics in Florida, with 1.5 million. That should not surprise anyone, Florida had a large Cuban population even before the Communist takeover of the island in the 1960s.
Puerto Ricans have the next largest concentration with 1.18 million, followed by Mexicans with more than 785,000, Colombians with more than 435,000, and Venezuelans with more than 307,000.
Dr. Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University in Miami, said the largest concentration of registered Hispanic voters in the state are No-Party-Affiliate voters.
“I guess the reasons are numerous,” Gamarra said. “One is they don’t know enough about parties, right? Then they have the thing that’s happening everywhere, which is this entire distrust of political parties and therefore they’re registering as independents. And, three, they’re abandoning their traditional parties.”
One issue that can make a difference, Gamarra says, is the attitude a voter may have toward U.S. policy regarding a home country.
“So for example, you look at Colombians, OK? Colombians have gradually, since 2016, gradually but decisively been moving toward the right. And they are probably the group that has moved farthest to the right,” Gamarra said.
Gamarra said Colombia’s 2016 peace accord with the far-left guerilla group FARC divided the country. The election of left-wing president Gustavo Petro in 2022 and U.S. Republican criticism of Petro helped strengthen the relationship between Colombians and the GOP. Colombians are also upset that the Biden administration removed FARC from the State Department’s list of terror organizations.
“Our surveys measure this, right? And they measure how this community moves in accordance to those two things: what Washington does, and what’s going on back home,” Gamarra said. “As authoritarianism consolidates back home, and as Washington plays geopolitics or whatever other else, right? We’re essentially driving Hispanics into the Republican Party.”
Why aren’t Hispanics voting?
But while the Hispanic population has the potential for great power, history has shown it doesn’t wield it the way it could.
In Florida right now, there are roughly 2.7 million Hispanic voters, according to voter rolls released by the Florida Division of Elections in May, representing 17.7% of Florida’s voting population. That’s the second largest voting bloc in the state, behind white voters.
But historically, a large number of Hispanic voters do not go to the polls in Florida.
A good indicator of this is the number of Hispanic voters who this year were labeled “inactive” by county supervisors of elections, who must conduct voter roll maintenance every year.
An inactive voter is one who hasn’t voted in recent elections and hasn’t responded to notifications by the county to update their status.
According to the Florida voter roll released in May, 449,589 Hispanic voters have been declared inactive. Broken down by party, 199,179 of them are no-party-affiliate voters, while 171,960 of them are Democratic voters, and 72,705 of them are Republican voters.
Being an inactive voter does not remove them from the voter rolls — in fact, to become an active voter again, all one has to do is vote.
What will get them to vote?
Hispanic Federation is a nonpartisan group dedicated to getting Hispanic voters to the polls.
Frederick Velez III Burgos, senior director of communication and community outreach for Hispanic Federation, says the biggest problem is a lack of continuous engagement with Hispanic communities.
“The thing that we hear the most is that ‘political parties are not here year-round, they only come here for my vote,’” Burgos said.
In Florida, this is something Republicans have done a better job of than Democrats, Rivera says.
“I think that’s a lesson that continues to be learned and I think Republicans have stepped up the game,” Rivera said. “In that sense of doing the engagement, use as an example that (Sen. Rick Scott) came with a Hispanic Outreach Campaign like a month ago, you know, way before that, because he understands sort of the importance of doing this.”
Gamarra, meanwhile, believes Democrats have largely written Florida off, and it shows in the way they approach the Hispanic community.
“You know, I’ve been looking at this for 30 years, right? They always start late. They never have good candidates. And they also never do their research,” Gamarra said.
“They always take communities for granted… Cubans are Republicans, therefore we really don’t need to worry about Cubans. We shouldn’t spend too much of an effort there. The other Hispanics, well, you know, they’re not really that large in number, a lot has been made about how big they are, but they’re really not that big and not that important. And, those four things that I just talked about, those four things have characterized the Democrats in the state and it’s a big mistake.”
Fernandez and Gamarra agree that the issues that will get Hispanics to the polls are the same ones any American would vote on – affordable housing, property insurance, pay and the cost of living. Access to health care and education are also important issues.
Immigration is also important, but many Hispanics care about border security, according to the most recent Hispanic Public Opinion Survey that Gamarra conducted. Groups should not assume that just because someone is Hispanic they support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
But it’s also in the way the issues are communicated. Burgos says candidates looking for the Hispanic vote need to understand cultural nuances as well as language differences.
“It means knowing where our community is, knowing how to talk to our community, knowing what they care about,” Burgos said.
Burgos also says that if candidates want to reach more Hispanic voters, they need to be continuously in the community, starting now.
“This is not about opening a Latino center in October,” Burgos said.
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