DEMOCRATS OF INDIAN RIVER


 

Democratic Club of Indian River


Recycle Derby

Saturday, September 24, 1-4p.m. Walking Tree Brewery is hosting the annual Recycle Derby, a fun day for the whole family. To volunteer in the Democrats' tent, please contact Wendy at [email protected]

Democratic Club Meeting October 20^th at 6 p.m. at the Heritage Center, 2140 14^th Ave., Vero Beach.

Democrats of Indian River Voter Protection Team


POLL WATCHERS are STILL NEEDED!
The Democrats of Indian River 2022 Voter Protection Team needs poll watchers for the November Midterm election. Poll watchers are needed for early voting Oct. 24 - Nov. 5 from 7:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. and for the general election Nov. 8 from 7:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Training is conducted by the Florida Democratic Party. Various days and times are offered. To sign up for the Zoom training go to:

https://floridadems.typeform.com/to/eB1DoQhN

For more information contact Claudia Martino at [email protected]

Democratic Women’s Club
 

 

 

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

 

 

 

Letters to the Editor links: 


TCPalm:
https://static.tcpalm.com/forms/?wid=q1jkscld1v7h87e

 

Hometown News:
https://www.hometownnewsirc.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/


Vero News.com:

https://www.veronews.com/site/forms/online_services/letter/

or via email:

Vero Beach 32963, Vero News & Sebastian River:
[email protected]


 

FEDERAL
 

Democrats lost ground with Hispanic voters in 2020

In Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, he won the Hispanic vote over Mitt Romney by 40 percentage points — 70 percent to 30 percent, according to Catalist, a political research firm. Four years later, Hillary Clinton did even better, beating Donald Trump by 42 percentage points among Hispanic voters.

But then something changed.

The economy became even stronger at the start of Trump’s presidency than it had been during Obama’s. The Democratic Party moved further to the left than it had been under Obama. Trump turned out to have a macho appeal, especially to some Hispanic men. And some Hispanic voters became frustrated with the long Covid shutdowns.

Whatever the full explanation, Hispanic voters have moved to the right over the past several years. As a group, they still prefer Democrats, but the margin has narrowed significantly. In 2020, Joe Biden won the group by only 26 percentage points. And in this year’s midterms, the Democratic lead is nearly identical to Biden’s 2020 margin, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll — a sign that the shift was not just a one-election blip: The problem for Democrats is that winning the Hispanic vote by only 20 points may not be enough for the party to accomplish its main goals. “Let’s not forget that 2020 levels of Hispanic support were nearly catastrophic for Democrats,” Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, told me. It helped cost the party House seats in California, Florida and Texas and allowed Republicans to win statewide races comfortably in Florida and Texas. It nearly helped Trump win re-election. Democrats need to do better with Hispanic voters (or reverse some of their recent losses with white voters) to build solid congressional majorities. The party currently controls the Senate by only a single vote, and Republicans are favored to take control of the House in this year’s midterms. “The whole theory of Democrats really benefiting from demographic change rests on them winning the Hispanic vote by a wide margin,” Nate says. Without a better showing, Democrats probably cannot flip Florida or Texas, even as they face a growing Republican threat in the Midwest because of the continuing drift of white voters away from Democrats. Remember that Democrats don’t merely need to win Hispanic voters; the party needs to do so handily. When only a narrow majority of Hispanic voters favors the Democratic position, it’s a sign that Republicans could seize on the issue to gain voters. Nate tried to figure out which Hispanic voters were moving right by creating a subgroup of poll respondents: people who said they had voted for a mix of Democrats and Republicans in recent elections and said they were planning to vote Republican this year. This subgroup made up 17 percent of all Hispanic voters. More were registered as Democrats than Republicans, despite their voting intentions this year. They were even more heavily skewed to the working class (with about 80 percent not having a bachelor’s degree) and the young (with almost 60 percent under 45) than Hispanic voters as a whole. More than half were men, but the group also included many women. By a wide margin, people in the subgroup said that the Democratic Party had moved too far left on social issues. By an even wider margin, they said that economic issues like jobs, taxes and the cost of living would influence their 2022 voting more than social issues like guns, abortion and democracy would. At the root, the Hispanic voters drifting to the right appear to be pocketbook voters, focused more on their daily lives than divisive national debates. It's the Economy Looking more broadly at all Hispanic adults, I find the below chart to be helpful. It shows 10 questions from the poll, ranked from liberal to conservative, based on the responses from Hispanic respondents: On the issues at the top of the chart, Democrats seem to be in a stronger position, including abortion, climate change and student debt. On the issues at the bottom, Hispanic adults support the progressive position less strongly than they support the Democratic Party, suggesting the party may be vulnerable. Neither gun policy nor immigration, for example, are as strong of an issue for Democrats as many people might assume. “I know this country is a country of immigrants, but they should immigrate in a legal way,” Amelia Alonso Tarancon, 69, who lives outside Fort Lauderdale, Fla., told The Times. The most nuanced issue may be the economy. On the one hand, Hispanic Americans say that the Democrats are the party of the working class and agree with many Democratic positions. And yet the issue is still a problem for the party. My colleague Jennifer Medina, who’s based in California and covers politics, told me that she thought Democrats’ identity as the working-class party cut both ways. “I’ve spoken to several Latinos, particularly men, who have told me a version of this: ‘I grew up hearing that Democrats were the party of the poor. But I don’t want to be poor, so I became a Republican,’” Jennifer said. Many of them, she added, run small businesses. Many of these policies appear to be too subtle and complex for voters to understand. Another problem for Democrats, according to the poll, is that many voters — across racial groups — appear to be unaware of the substance of the economic policies that Biden and Democrats have enacted on infrastructure, health care, energy and more.   The bottom line For much of the past few decades, Hispanic voters supported the Democratic Party so strongly that many people came to think of them as a safe Democratic constituency, along with Black voters, Jewish voters and secular college graduates. Instead, Hispanic voters appear to fall somewhere between these reliably progressive groups and working-class whites — and have become a crucial swing group in American politics. A recent story by Jennifer, Jazmine Ulloa and Ruth Igielnik goes into more detail on the strengths of both the Republican and Democratic Parties among Hispanic voters. David Leonhardt The New York Times

STATE

 

REPUBLICANS EYE RED FLORIDA FUTURE WITH GROWING HISPANIC VOTER REGISTRATION

 

 

Joe Biden won 65% of the Hispanic vote in the last presidential election.  He campaigned on defending the working the class and fixing the U.S. immigration system. Two years into his presidency, he has so far failed to do so, and Hispanic voters are increasingly deserting the Democratic Party. With the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Washington Examiner series "Taken for Granted" will look at how Biden and Democratic Party policies are failing to connect with the Latino electorate, how Republicans have benefitted, and how it could swing the November midterm elections. 

Hispanics really appreciate strong leadership
 

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) presided over Republicans outnumbering Democrats in voter registration for the first time in Florida history, and the red takeover was fueled by a shift in Hispanic voters.

The number of Hispanic voters registered as Republicans increased by about 15% from August 2020 to August 2022, outpacing the overall increase in GOP voter registration of 5% as well as the growth of total Hispanic voters of 7.8% during that same two-year period, state records show.

The Florida GOP cited DeSantis's strong policies in support of individual freedom as the reason for its success at the state level as Hispanic voters across the country begin to shift from blue to red.

Aguirre Ferre, who previously was director of communications for DeSantis and director of media affairs for the Trump White House, said the governor's message of "what's good for one group is good for all" has helped him connect with the Puerto Rican, Cuban, Venezuelan and other Latino immigrants who call Florida home.  "Hispanics really appreciate his strong leadership, his fearlessness, his not backing down," she said. "He's fighting for everyone, but he has a soft spot in particular for the man on the street, for the blue-collar guy, the person who's working really hard and sacrificing so much to pull their family ahead. And Hispanics, we're all about family. We're all about community. We're all about faith. And when you look at all of that, that only really thrives if you have freedom."

The total number of Hispanic voters has been increasing since 2019, and while Democrats still have an advantage in total numbers, they lost registered Hispanic voters in the last year.

In August 2020, the GOP had 587,552 registered Hispanics, and the Democrats had 920,324. By last month, Republicans had 676,826, while Democrats had 902,744. During that time, the total number of Hispanic voters increased from 2.37 million to 2.56 million, accounting for 18% of all registered voters in Florida.

Hispanic voters have been indicating for years now that they do not want to be pandered to along racial lines, according to Republican strategist Wes Anderson. He worked on Sen. Rick Scott's (R-FL) 2018 campaign and, in polling and focus groups, found that the Democratic strategy of assuming certain interests due to race wasn't working with Hispanics.

"One of the things we found early on was a really sharp rebuke to Democrat racial policy and race theory," Anderson told the Washington Examiner. "The notion that we should be teaching our kids that your race is super defining in one way or another is a notion that a really sizable majority, pushing three-quarters of all Hispanics, said in Florida ... 'Oh, hell no, that's a horrible idea.' And DeSantis policies play right into that [sentiment]." He continued that many Hispanics are seeking "full assimilation" into American culture, and outreach that tries to "force them into an identity" doesn't play well with their aspirations.

DeSantis has gone on the offensive in his reelection campaign against Charlie Crist, his Democratic opponent. Crist's running mate is Karla Hernandez-Mats, herself Latina and a teachers union official. A Spanish-language radio ad targeted Hernandez-Mats's opposition to school openings and her 2016 comments after Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's death.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the Florida Democratic Party and Crist's campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

Hispanic voters are trending more toward the Republican Party across the country with each election cycle and are becoming a battleground vote between the parties. Issues like border security, school choice, crime, the economy, and social conservatism align with many Hispanic values, according to Republican Party officials, and the result has been victories such as Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX) in a historically Democratic South Texas district's special election. Other South Texas districts are trending Republican, and the Nevada Senate race may come down to the Hispanic vote.



Virginia Aabram
Washington Examiner


 

LOCAL
 

 

Indian River County Vote by mail "curing" policies

 

When there’s a problem with a voter’s mail ballot — most commonly a missing signature — it’s set aside for a process called “curing.” The elections office is required to notify the voter, who then has until 5 p.m. the second day after an election to submit an affidavit in English or Spanish.

In addition to mailing the voter a letter, “we email them, we call them, and we reach out by any method we have available with their information on their record and let them know,” Rossway Swan said. “We’ve gotten a lot of cure affidavits back.”

Over 1,300 primary mail ballots in Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties were set aside for curing last month. A 63% majority, over 800 ballots, were accepted by the three county canvassing boards.

In the context of a close race, the 497 rejected ballots may sound like a lot. However, nearly 62,000 Treasure Coast residents voted by mail in the primary, yielding a 0.8% rejection rate.
Nearly 62,000 Treasure Coast voters cast mail ballots in the Aug. 23, 2022, primary election. Problematic ballots, including those with missing or mismatched signatures, were set aside for a process called "curing." Ballots not cured by 5 p.m. Aug. 25 were rejected.

There isn’t a typical rejection rate, said Martin elections supervisor Vicki Davis, noting it “depends on the election.”

Among primary ballots in need of curing, 37% were rejected. In the 2020 general election, when a record number of Treasure Coast voters requested mail ballots, 28% were rejected.

Over 165,600 locals cast a mail ballot in the 2020 general, resulting in an overall rejection rate of 0.2%.

While voting by mail in Florida looks much different in 2022 than 2020 because of overhauled election legislation, the ballot curing process is unchanged.

When was the last time you looked at the signature on your driver’s license? Along with ballots missing signatures, ballots with a signature not matching that on the voter’s license or state ID card accounted for the majority of rejections. “Voters should update their signature on a new voter’s registration application,” said Sherrie Williams, voter registration administrator for the St. Lucie elections office. “Then their signature would match the signature on file and help to reduce the number of rejections.” Voters may update their signature at any time, though elections supervisors advise doing so before signing the part of the mail ballot called the “voter’s certificate.” Electors who are unable to sign their name due to a disability may update their signature with an identifying mark.

Because elections supervisors are legally obligated to inform a voter why their mail ballot was rejected, yours most likely was counted unless you were otherwise notified. 

If you plan to vote by mail in the Nov. 8 general election, submit your ballot early to allow ample time for curing, if necessary.

Check whether your ballot has been received and counted here: 

• Indian River: VoteIndianRiver.gov/Vote-By-Mail/Track-Your-Mail-Ballot-Status

 

CALENDAR



Thursday, September 22, 2022

3:30 p.m. - Indian River Shores Town Council Meeting 
5:00 p.m. - Budget Public Hearing
6001 N. State Rd A1A, Indian River Shores, FL 32963 


Friday, September 23, 2022

2:30-4:30 p.m. - DWC Book Group in the first-floor meeting room at the Indian River County Main Library   
For information contact Maryann and Rita at [email protected]


Saturday, September 24, 2022

1:00-4:00 p.m. - Recycle Derby at Walking Tree Brewery


Wednesday, September 28, 2022

6:00 p.m. – Sebastian City Council Meeting
Sebastian City Hall - City Council Chambers 1225 Main Street, Sebastian, FL 32958
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87200228203?pwd=UEZPOTROMHhwbkFRcllpTUpXalV4Zz09


Wednesday, October 5, 2022

6:00 p.m. - Nonpartisan Candidates Forum at the Gifford Community Center, 4855 43rd Ave, Vero Beach, FL 32967. Sponsored by the Indian River County NAACP, Faith in Florida Treasure Coast, and The Links, Incorporated. All qualified candidates for School Board District 2 and Florida House of Representatives District 34, were invited to participate.