Giuliani’s Spanish-Language TV Ad Campaign

What do Rudy Giuliani and a Miami grocery store chain have in common? Each is counting on America TeVe and other Spanish-language stations to deliver the goods: Cuban-Americans.

Tuesday marks the start of Rudy Giuliani’s second week of TV advertising in the crucial South Florida Spanish-language television market. Crucial, because whichever Republican presidential candidate draws the most Cuban-Americans to the polls for Florida’s January 29 primary is better positioned to win.

Cuban-Americans living in South Florida vote overwhelmingly Republican in presidential contests and turn out in high numbers. Political strategists say that in past GOP primaries for U.S. senate or governor’s races, when turnout is low elsewhere in the state, Cuban-Americans have comprised from 15 to 20 percent of voters statewide.

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Giuliani’s Spanish-language TV Ad

Here’s the Giuliani campaign ad en español that begins airing today on at least three Spanish-language television stations in Miami (WLTV-Univision, WSCV-Telemundo, WJAN-AmericaTeVe). It is called Liderazgo (Leadership) and opens with a shot of the late president Ronald Reagan shaking Giuliani’s hand. The ad says Giuliani reduced crime, lowered taxes, created jobs and shrunk the bureaucracy in New York City. The ad closes with the assertion that he did it in New York and he can do it in Washington.

Read about how Giuliani is Gunning For Cuban-American Voters.

Guiliani Pursues Cuban-American Voters

From our Monday morning PDF newsletter:

Giuliani Gunning For Cuban-American Votes

As the Huckabus rolled with increasing momentum from Iowa to New Hampshire, Rudy Giuliani’s campaign acted as if the next major contest was in Florida. That state’s primary isn’t until January 29th. But Giuliani ads are slated to start airing this week in South Florida on independent America TeVe (Channel 41) and on Telemundo owned-and-operated station WSCV (Channel 51)., according to station executives. A third Spanish-language station in Miami, MegaTV, reported it was still in negotiations with the campaign.

Two other Republican candidates are considering joining the barrage. “We have been receiving inquiries from the Romney and the Ron Paul groups, and most likely you’ll be seeing them around very soon,” says Francisco Framil, national sales manager at AmericaTeVe, which claims the largest share of Cuban-American viewers in South Florida. Framil says he has contacted the Mike Huckabee campaign “but we haven’t received a formal request for information.” The latest tracking polls, released last month, showed Giuliani’s lead in Florida winnowing to only four to seven percentage points over Huckabee, with Romney and McCain behind them.

“I think Giuliani is trying to make a statement that he is going to stay in the competition even if he loses the first four primaries,” Framil observed, referring to the Iowa and Nevada caucuses and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. “Obviously if he loses Florida, I think he’s out of the race.”

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Giuliani in Hialeah

The discussion surrounding Rudy Giuliani’s decision to skip the Iowa caucus and head for Florida has largely overlooked exactly where Giuliani will be in Florida – namely, Hialeah.

La Ciudad del Progreso (the City of Progress), as it styles itself, is a bastion of Cuban-American machine-style politics and the home of colorful politicians and off-color campaign slogans. Milander Auditorium, where Giuliani will speak later today, is named after longtime mayor and political boss Henry Milander who was re-elected less than a year after a grand larceny conviction for using city funds to speculate in local real estate.

According to the Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey, 68 percent of Hialeah’s residents were born abroad. The 2000 Census, the latest year for which the figure is available, found that 90.3 percent of city residents were Hispanic with Cuban Americans representing 62.1 percent of the city’s population.

Last week, Giuliani went to the Bay of Pigs Memorial in Little Havana. Yesterday, the campaign launched a Spanish-language radio ad called “Liderazgo”, which opens with the line “President Reagan trusted him to combat crime.” And today, Hialeah.

Clearly, the Giuliani campaign is working to attract Cuban-American Republicans in South Florida, which represent between eight and ten percent of all likely Florida Republican primary goers.

But, Hialeah is not the Republican bastion you might expect given the high concentration of Cuban American voters. Raul Martínez, a Democrat, was elected Mayor several times and Hillary Clinton has raised more money in Hialeah than Giuliani.

Still, if you are looking for Cuban American votes, then Hialeah is a great place to visit. Florida is crucial to Giuliani and winning the Cuban American vote is an important piece of winning in the Sunshine State.

UPDATE: Giuliani is now planning to air a Spanish-language television ad starting next week in South Florida.

 

The Fidel Follies – Op Ed

The following is an excerpt from an op ed written by Manny González for this past Monday’s newsletter:

The Fidel Follies

By Manny González

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But when it comes to Republicans and Miami, it’s more a case of flaunting your escapades. Republican presidential candidates parade through the Magic City whispering sweet nothings to Cuban exiles and sternly repeating Fidel Castro is a naughty man. There’s no need for handlers to shape the message – just tell them what they want to hear.

No one exemplifies this craven Republican attitude better than Mike Huckabee, who went from holding a rational position against the Cuban embargo to passionately embracing it. What makes his political pandering so crass is that the circumstances which led him to take his previous stance have not changed one bit. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee argued his state’s agricultural industry would benefit tremendously by selling its products to Cuba.

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Rudy Giuliani in Hialeah

Rudy Giuliani’s decision to spend Thursday, the day of the Iowa caucuses, in Florida has drawn plenty of analysis. Less discussed, though, is where exactly the former mayor will be in Florida and why. Namely, he will be in the heavily Cuban-American city of Hialeah attending an event at Milander Auditorium. And as explained here, Cuban-Americans make up between eight and ten percent of the likely Florida Republican primary vote.

Latino Evangelical Politics

We have been consistent about covering the political preferences of Latino Evangelicals. Our latest entry, from this past Monday’s newsletter, is Voting With Your Soul, which specifically focuses on Florida:

This past summer Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean declared, “Contrary to partisan rhetoric, the truth is that Democrats are people of strong faith and we are guided by our values.” He launched a “faith outreach intitiative” to “reach out to diverse members of the faith community to build coalitions around shared priorities.”

Among those members was Luis Cortés, a Philadelphia-based minister and former George W. Bush supporter who is now on the DNC’s Faith Advisory Council. Last week Cortés predicted that many Latino evangelicals who voted for Bush in 2004 will abandon the Republican Party in 2008 and vote Democrat.

“We’re really saying with a straight face that Democrats have figured out some kind of way to go after Hispanic evangelicals?” asks Jeffrey García, a Miami-based Democratic strategist. “I think it would be more useful to go after hermaphroditic evangelicals. With all due respect to hermaphrodites.”

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Previously, we took a big-picture look at political challenges faced by Latino evangelicals nationwide.
For Dios, But For Which Candidate?

Caught in the crosshairs of their double-barreled identity, Latino evangelicals are having a hard time finding a candidate to back in 2008.

Like their mainstream evangelical peers, the group’s advocacy of conservative stances on social issues has traditionally allied them with the Republican Party. But this year, the hard-line anti-immigration position taken by some leading Republicans has soured Hispanic evangelicals on the GOP.

“The Republicans have put us in a very difficult spot,” says Reverend Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, which represents some 3 million Latino evangelicals. “We are ashamed of our party.”

That’s quite a turnaround. For the past eight years, the Republicans have enjoyed the embrace of Latino evangelicals largely through the personal appeal of George W. Bush. Bush made it a point to address Latino evangelicals directly through Spanish-sprinkled speeches at National Hispanic Prayer Breakfasts.

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We also feature an op ed on the topic by José Cruz, a Democratic political consultant who is also an associate pastor:

Hispanic “Faith-based” Voters Are The Real Swing Vote

After years of being courted by the GOP, one crucial demographic of the “faith-based” community may be the determining vote of the 2008 elections. Hispanic evangelicals might shift to the Democrats or simply abstain. Either way, the impact will be significant.

“Center stage for the Hispanic faith-based community in the 2008 election is the family values issue of family reunification which is the immigration issue” says Reverend Luis Cortés, president of Esperanza USA a network of 10,000 evangelical churches. Cortés says “The vast majority of people come here because there are jobs available that they need to do in order to help their own family survive. That’s a faith issue.”

For over two decades “faith-based” voters have been a pillar of the Republican Party and Hispanic evangelicals have by and large found a home within this political movement. They represent a small but rapidly growing percentage of the overall “faith-based” electorate, yet they can have a critical impact in the ‘08 election.

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And lastly, here is a piece we did about the immigration political activism of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States:

Hispanic Voter Outreach From On High
Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony on Sunday led the 76th annual procession in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe through the streets of East Los Angeles. The theme of this year’s mile-long parade: Mother without Borders: Bringing Down the Walls of Injustice.

It’s no surprise the Los Angeles Archdiocese picked immigration as the theme of the procession.

Over the past year, Archbishop Mahony has emerged nationally as an outspoken advocate of immigration reform. And what he says carries weight. He heads the country’s largest archdiocese, comprising five million souls, more than half of whom are Hispanic.

Last year, he urged his flock to disobey the harsh immigration reform bill if it passed and was instrumental in getting thousands to turn out for massive protest rallies. “He had a galvanizing effect on the opposition to that bill,” notes Kevin Appleby, director of migration and refugee policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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Mel Martinez

The Miami Herald carries an interesting AP article about Florida Senator Mel Martinez:

“U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez had to give President Bush two pieces of bad news recently.

“Not only was Martinez quitting a Republican Party job the president lobbied him hard to accept, he was also planning to help Democrats override Bush’s veto of a multibillion dollar water bill with Everglades cleanup money.

“It was a landmark for both Bush and Martinez, whose political history is rich in mutual benefit. The first override of Bush’s career, and one of the first times Martinez importantly told the president “no.”

“Perhaps not coincidentally, it came as his approval ratings tumbled toward Bush’s.”

Granma on Cuban American Politics

A South Florida Republican strategist alerted me to two articles that appeared on Friday in Cuba’s state-run daily, Granma. Not surprisingly, the pieces were critical of President Bush and South Floriday’s trio of Cuban American Representatives (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart). The article is noteworthy because it clearly represents the Cuban state-run daily’s take on electoral politics in Florida:

“In the Senate, Mel Martínez appears to be weakened after being obliged by his colleagues to resign as president of the Republican Party. In the House of Representatives, the three Cuban-Americans have for years enjoyed a block community vote in their favor during Florida Congressional elections. They have welded political and economic power coming from Washington with mafia threats and the corrupt wheeling and dealing typical of their Miami districts in order to win their seats for the Republican Party. Now, however, they face serious challenges according to The Hill, a capital newspaper that circulates daily when the U.S. Congress is in session.

THE MAYOR’S THREAT

“The opposition is going to be significant, according to The Hill, if Raul Martínez, former Democratic Party mayor of Hialeah for 24 years, is convinced to run for the seat in Congress held for eight years by Lincoln Díaz-Balart, descendent of one of the prominent Cuban families that supported former dictator Fulgencio Batista.

“’Martinez is exactly the kind of candidate the Democrats would need to seriously challenge Diaz-Balart because their battle would take place in a district where cultural ties matter more than party affiliation,’ according to David Wasserman, U.S. House editor for The Cook Political Report.

“Florida Democrats think, as do many analysts, that the political climate within the Cuban community in Florida is changing and, therefore, have begun a media campaign criticizing Republican votes in Congress against the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“Joe Garcia, former director of the Cuban-American National Foundation (from which the Cuban fundamentalist group split), and the current chairman of the Democratic Party in Miami-Dade County, has declared that the politics of Díaz-Balart are losing ground. The Republicans respond that their ideas are those of the majority.”

The Republican strategist wrote “pretty obvious who they would favor in potential races.”

UPDATE

Joe Garcia called up and said “whoever runs against the Diaz-Balart family will inevitably be running likewise against the hardliners in Cuba. They are bookends to the same problem. They enshrine the status quo.”

Hialeah Politics Pop Quiz

Yesterday, we posted the question researched by our man in Miami, Kirk Nielsen. And today, here is the answer:

 

If Hialeah is the city with the greatest concentration of Hispanic Republicans in Miami-Dade County, and Rudy Giuliani is the only presidential candidate to campaign there so far, which of his rivals has received almost twice as much money in campaign contributions as he?

 

 

a) Mitt Romney

b) John McCain

c) Fred Thompson

d) none of the above

 

 

If you guessed d) either you have a very keen ear to the Hialeah ground or have been spending too much of your precious time looking at the FEC’s campaign finance reports. Hialeah residents have donated about $36,000 to Giuliani through September, compared to $16,000 for Mitt Romney and $9000 for John McCain. Leading the money game in Hialeah: Hillary Clinton, with nearly $66,000. Richardson trails her with about $13,000. Hialeahans have given Obama about $7000 and Edwards $3000.

One explanation might be Clinton’s run to the right on Cuba policy (she’s endorsed the Bush Administration’s ultra-tight restrictions on family visits and remittances to the island.) But another is the political machine of charismatic former mayor Raul Martinez, an unrepentant Cuban Democrat in the GOP’s Cuban-American stronghold, who is now working his magic for the Clinton machine.

 

However, a look at 3rd Quarter fundraising alone presents an intensifying scramble between Rudy and Hillary. Clinton raised $34,000 during that period; Giuliani $27,000.

The numbers are provided by the Federal Election Commission but crunched via the Washington Post’s campaign finance software.