The persistence of ethnic voting in the United States continues to defy the predictions of political scientists who predicted its demise. Robert Dahl presented a three-stage model in which immigrant groups would gradually become `assimilated' as their social mobility increased (Dahl, 1961, 34-51). When a large segment of the group has entered the `middle-class', economic factors would become more politically relevant than ethnic factors in their political choices:
To these people, ethnic politics is often embarrassing or meaningless. Political attitudes and loyalties have become a function of socioeconomic characteristics. (Dahl, 1961, 35)
Yet Dahl's conclusions were challenged by Raymond Wolfinger a fellow participant in Dahls 'study of New Haven, Connecticut. Wolfinger found that Dahl's model did not work for New Haven's Italian community, since their level of ethnic voting had actually risen while their socioeconomic status had improved (Wolfinger, 1965). In contrast to Dahl's assimilation theory, Wolfinger posited a `mobilization theory' of ethnic voting:
The strength of ethnic voting depends on both the intensity of ethnic identification and the level of ethnic relevance in the election. The most powerful and visible sign of ethnic political relevance is a fellow-ethnic's name at the head of the ticket, evident to everyone who enters the voting booth. (Wolfinger, 1965, 905)
Wolfinger's criticism of the assimilation model was reinforced by a broader critique of the whole `melting pot' concept. It seemed clear that ethnic consciousness and identification were still very much alive in the 1960s and had not disappeared as members of immigrant groups moved up the social scale and moved to suburbia (Parenti, 1967; Moynihan & Glazer, 1970).
The recent special election in Florida's 18th Congressional district - held for twenty eight years by Representative Claude Pepper - is one of the clearest examples in recent years of a campaign and election in which ethnic factors predominated over all others. This election largely corroborates Wolfinger's mobilization theory by demonstrating the capacity of ethnicity to override partisanship and all other issues in a particular context. It is even more interesting that this should occur in South Florida, which has been one of the areas of the United States in which the impact of recent Hispanic immigration has been greatest.
From the results of the 18th district's election and other recent contests in the Greater Miami area, it seems clear that there has been a genuine secular realignment (Key, 1959) of partisan forces in South Florida, which has taken place on the basis of both local and national concerns. However in this process, the Democratic and Republican parties in Dade County have become little more than `front organizations' for the interests of particular ethnic groups. If this assessment is correct then ethnicity will likely remain the most important factor determining electoral outcomes in South Florida for some time to come.
The Context
Florida's 18th Congressional district, is the House district based on the cities of Miami and Miami Beach. It also includes the upper-income city of Coral Gables and portions of the heavily Cuban city of Hialeah. In 1980 50% of the district's population was of `Spanish origin", 13% black, 1% Asian, and the remainder, non-Hispanic White (Barone 1988).
The district's voters live in neighborhoods which are usually dominated by one ethnic group or the other. Blacks are concentrated in the inner-city ghetto areas of Overtown and Liberty City, which have exploded in rioting four times during this decade. The Cuban population is concentrated in Little Havana and Hialeah. Miami Beach and the contiguous communities of Surfside, Bal Harbour and Bay Harbour are mainly Jewish, but the southern part of the Beach has been increasingly penetrated by Cubans and other Latins in recent years. Coconut Grove, Coral Gables and Key Biscayne are `upper income' communities with a more mixed ethnic profile than the other parts of the district.
Since 1961 House elections in the 18th district had been dominated by Democratic Congressman Claude Pepper. Pepper was a living reminder of the New Deal era. He had served as a US Senator during the 1930s, where he acquired a reputation as the South's leading supporter of FDR (Key, 1949, 605-6). Defeated by an infamous `Red-Baiting' Democratic primary campaign in 1950, Pepper returned as a Congressman from the Miami-based district in 196l, and had a second congressional career in the House, culminating in his accession to the chairmanship of the powerful House Rules Committee in 1982.
Despite often appearing as a figure from another era, Pepper was nevertheless a very canny politician as far as Miami politics was concerned, and his voting behavior in the House was well-attuned to the changing demands of his constituents. His national leadership on issues effecting the elderly earned him the devotion of the elderly Jewish voters on Miami Beach; his impeccable civil rights record; and New Deal credentials made him popular among the black population; and the more conservative Cuban voters were appeased by Pepper's strong anti-Castro stands. In recent years Pepper had been instrumental in establishing Radio Marti, and he had supported contra aid - both issues dear to his Cuban constituency.
While House incumbents are generally invulnerable these days, Pepper was even more invulnerable than most. His only serious re-election challenge came in 1978, when a Cuban-Republican challenger actually out spent him. Yet Pepper still secured 63% of the vote. No serious Republican challenge could be mounted as long as Pepper held the seat.
Yet beneath Pepper's aura of impregnability the demographics of his district were changing rapidly.
(Table One about Here)
Table one reflects the rapid rise of Hispanic registration in the 18th district and the switch of these voters to the Republican party during the 1980s. As the Hispanic population continued to grow and as these voters became increasingly Republican in their voting behavior, Democratic candidates at other levels of electoral competition began to lose out. This was especially true for offices that have great symbolic power such as President and U.S. senate, thus Ronald Reagan twice carried the district easily for President, and George Bush carried it again in 1988. In fact, both Reagan and Bush received nearly 90 percent of the vote in the Little Havana portion of the district. Republican Senate candidates Paula Hawkins and Connie Mack also carried the 18th, and even in state races an increasingly Republican identification became evident. Pepper's coalition was personal and unique to US House races; at other levels the 18th was slipping away from the Democratic party. It became generally assumed that if and when the seat did fall vacant, it would probably fall to a (Cuban) Republican.
The Candidates and the Parties
The Republican nomination in the race to succeed Pepper was more or less settled at a very early stage in the contest. There were basically only three serious potential contenders: Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez; State Senator Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; and State Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart - all prominent Cuban Americans. Suarez (a former Democrat now registered as an Independent) had no particular interest in going to Washington (Miami Herald, 6 June 1989). After a meeting between the three contenders with Republican state committeeman Al Cardenas (also Cuban), Diaz-Balart decided to stand aside for Ros-Lehtinen in the congressional race, and to run instead for her vacated state Senate seat (Miami Herald, 6 June 1989).(1) That left Ros-Lehtinen with businessman Carlos Perez as her only viable opposition for the GOP nomination.
For the Republicans there was no alternative to a Cuban-American candidate in this seat, and indeed the opportunity to further solidify their grip on the Cuban Vote and impress other Hispanic groups in the US by sending the first Cuban-American to Congress - was evident to GOP National chairman Lee Atwater. Atwater appeared before the convention of the principal national Cuban lobbying organization - the Cuban American National Foundation - and announced that the 18th congressional district seat `belonged' to a Cuban American (Miami Herald, 14 June 1989). At face value this might appear as a fairly innocuous piece of partisan needling on Atwater's part, but in the vexed ethnic climate of Miami, Atwater's throwaway line, became a major issue in the election campaign, persuading the most serious of the Democratic contenders to abandon the race, and accentuating anti-Cuban sentiments among Miami's other ethnic groups which would be exploited in the Democratic primary campaign.
On the Democratic side, the clear frontrunner was State Senator Jack Gordon, a veteran Miami politician, revered by Miami's increasingly beleaguered liberal community. Gordon by no means had the rapport with the Cuban community that Pepper had possessed however. Indeed he had gone out on a limb politically by supporting better relations with the Castro regime, opposing aid to the Nicaraguan contras, and opposing (successfully) a state budget proposal for an institute at Florida International University (F.I.U) to be administered by the Cuban American National Foundation. Gordon had thus engendered deep resentments in the Cuban community which would have made his candidacy controversial in any case. Atwater's statement raised the ethnic factor in the race even further, and after looking at some polling data, Gordon decided that the price of victory for him in the 18th District special election was too great to pay:
I think the only way that this election could be won by a Democrat, or will be won by a Democrat, is by virtue of raising ethnic divisiveness by saying `Stop the Cubans' in one fashion or another....I will not run a campaign that I am ashamed of. (Miami Herald, 16 June 1989)
After Gordon's withdrawal, the state Democratic chair Simon Ferro (another Cuban) scrambled desperately to try and find a Democrat who could challenge Ros-Lehtinen. The logic of the 18th's demographics led Ferro to conclude that the strongest Democratic contender was likely to be a Cuban Democrat, who could win the election by cutting into Republican support among Cubans and holding on to the traditional Democratic constituencies of elderly Jews and Blacks. The leading Cuban Democrat in South Florida, Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, was uninterested in a race that would make him enemies within the Cuban community, and which he appeared unlikely to be able to win. That left Miami City Commissioner Rosario Kennedy, a powerful vote-getter in municipal elections, as the leading Cuban Democratic alternative, and Kennedy was eventually cajoled into running by Ferro.
At the outset of the campaign the opposition to Kennedy did not appear to be too serious within the Democratic camp. Marvin Dunn, a black psychology Professor at FIU was widely respected for his intellect, but his somewhat eclectic issue positions stigmatized him as a maverick from the outset of the campaign, and he was never able to mount a really serious challenge. Sonny Wright - a black businessman - was unable to get any serious support outside the black community. Eastern Airlines Pilot John Paul Rosser and Jewish millionaire Bernard Anscher, never looked like being serious contenders, and Miami lawyer Gerald Richman, a previous president of the Florida Bar Association, was another political neophyte. Cuban banker Raul Masvidal looked as though he might pose some problems for Kennedy - at least among Cuban Democrats - but under pressure from state party officials Masvidal was persuaded to withdraw. The final candidate, was a surprise entrant - the late Congressman Pepper's niece Joanne Pepper, a federal probation officer, and another political newcomer who nevertheless hoped to be able to trade on the Pepper name.
Kennedy after her reluctant entry into the race, put together a strong campaign organization (with the tacit support of state chairman Ferro). She also picked up all the important endorsements - principally the AFL-CIO and that of the Miami Herald (23 July 1989). For most of the primary race it appeared that the main challenge to the frontrunner would come from Joanne Pepper whose name clearly evoked strong nostalgic support from black voters and many of the elderly on Miami Beach. In the week preceding the election these two appeared most likely to get into the Democratic runoff primary.
Only in the last few days of the primary campaign did the picture begin to change somewhat, and this was primarily due to the emergence of Jewish lawyer Gerald Richman as a serious contender. Richman pumped $180 000 of his own money into the campaign and made a strong pitch for the support of Jewish Democrats by taking a strong pro-Israel stance. In addition Richman latched onto the `Cuban seat' issue raised earlier by Lee Atwater and Jack Gordon. In the last week of the primary campaign he filled the airwaves with commercials stressing his campaign slogan, `It's not a Jewish seat, or a black seat, or a Cuban seat, it's an American seat'. Richman evidently had fewer qualms than Jack Gordon, about taking on the `ethnic' issue that Atwater had introduced into the campaign. His slogan was designed to appeal to those voters in the district who resented the notion that the seat somehow `belonged' to a Cuban American whether Republican or Democrat.
Sensing danger from Pepper and Richman, Kennedy saturated the district with pamphlets over the campaign's final weekend which derided the credentials of both her main opponents for public office. Pepper and Richman retaliated by holding a joint press conference on the Saturday prior to the poll, condemning Kennedy's `negative campaigning'.
In the meantime Republican frontrunner Ros-Lehtinen continued on her almost regal march towards certain nomination in the first Republican primary. In the polls she was outpolling the hapless Carlos Perez by three-to-one among Republicans. So confident was the Ros-Lehtinen camp of victory, that the candidate - with a view to the general election - was dispatched on a series of `fact-finding' trips to Israel and Central America. The Republican party and the Cuban political elite had ensured that the Republican nominee would win with the solid support of the Republican constituency in the district. By contrast despite Ferro's efforts, it was clear that there was little unity in the Democratic camp and that the infighting would be prolonged into a runoff primary. It appeared that the race had already become the Republicans' to lose.
The Primaries and the Runoff
The results of the Republican primary were not surprising. Although the Republican race was extremely one-sided while the Democratic contest was close, 35% of the district's Republicans turned out to vote compared to under a quarter of the registered Democrats (Miami Herald, 2 August 1989). Ileana Ros-Lehtinen won with 83% of the Republican vote, and the intensity of Cuban-American support for Ros-Lehtinen was indicated by turnouts of over 40% in some `Little Havana' precincts (Miami Herald, 2 August 1989). Even more interestingly despite the fact that the Republican race was dead while that of the Democrats was very much alive, and despite the fact that the district contained 100, 198 registered Democrats to 71,620 Republicans, the total primary vote for the Republicans (20,482) was almost equal to that of the Democrats (20,897) (Miami Herald, 3 August 1989). This very small Democratic advantage in overall turnout, was a further indication of the erosion of their electoral advantage in the 18th district.
In the Democratic race the winners were Kennedy ,as expected, and, more surprisingly, Gerald Richman. Richman, in fact, topped the poll among Democrats with 28% to Kennedy's 27%. Joanne Pepper finished with 24%, and none of the other candidates got into double figures. Kennedy did well in the Cuban precincts, Richman's base was elderly Jewish voters on Miami Beach, and although Pepper did well among blacks, their turnout was too low to carry her into the runoff.
The run-off campaign between Kennedy and Richman became a bitter ethnic confrontation, indeed apart from ethnicity, there was little else to divide the candidates. Kennedy took particular exception to Richman's `American Seat' slogan regarding it as a subtle exploitation of resentment against Cuban-Americans like herself. She picked up valuable endorsements from Joanne Pepper and from defeated black candidates Dunn and Wright. Richman, by contrast, found himself condemned by Dade's Fair Campaign Practices Committee - a bipartisan, quasi-official, `watchdog' body - the Miami Herald (which backed Kennedy), and the Spanish-American League Against Discrimination for his `divisive' `American Seat' slogan (`It Is Bigotry Sir', Miami Herald, 13 August 1989). He was also embarrassed by revelations that he and his wife had contributed to Republican George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign. All of this was of little account when the returns of the run-off election came in on August 15. Richman trounced Kennedy with over 60% of the vote - mainly due to his lock on the Miami Beach Jewish vote and the relatively small number of Cuban Democrats (Miami Herald, 16 August 1989). Kennedy's Labor and black endorsements were insufficient to withstand the groundswell of Democratic support for Richman, whose campaign benefited from the surprising degree of Anglo discontent with Miami's increasingly dominant Cuban-American political establishment. Indeed, in Richmans's success there were some ominous echoes of Jack Gordon's withdrawal statement at the outset of the campaign. Only by exploiting anti-Cuban resentments among Anglos and Blacks, could an Anglo-Democrat stand any chance of success in the 18th District.
Another interesting factor in Kennedy`s defeat was the utter failure of the local Democratic party machinery to `deliver' the nomination for her. Moreover, the Democratic nomination had been secured by a political unknown, who had been backing the Republican presidential campaign a year previously. In view of the strong support for Kennedy from state chairman Ferro and virtually all prominent local Democrats, Richman's victory was almost an insult to Miami's traditional Democratic party establishment. One could not have better evidence for the irrelevance of party considerations, when ethnic issues come to the fore to the extent that they did in this campaign. The Dade county Democratic leadership was drowned in a tidal wave of ethnicity.
The General Election Campaign
The general election campaign was even more dominated by the `ethnic issue' than the primary had been. Richman failed to get the endorsement of an embittered Rosario Kennedy, and Dade's only other prominent Cuban Democrat - Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez was forthright in his condemnation of Richman's campaign tactics:
If you really care about the community, you cannot vote for this man. I do not think that his campaign is what the Democratic party stands for. (Miami Herald, 18 August 1989)
Ros-Lehtinen - assisted by a personal visit from President Bush -on the day after the Democratic run-off - also attacked Richman as a `bigot', and announced that she would not engage in any face-to-face debates with him during the campaign:
Principle is more important than political gain, and a seat in Congress is not worth dignifying for even a moment Gerald Richman's racist view of America and of me. I will not dignify the bigoted campaign of Gerald Richman by appearing with him at any event, forum or debate. (Miami Herald, 18 August 1989).
The campaign subsequently became extremely embittered, with Ros-Lehtinen largely evading other issues and concentrating her attacks on Richman's `bigotry', and Richman, accusing Ros-Lehtinen of using bigotry as an excuse for not facing up to a debate on issues such as abortion and gun control - on which his views were more in line with those of the district than hers:
She has a lot of issues she does not want to talk about. She has a voting record that is completely out of step with this district and this country. (Miami Herald, 18 August 1989)
It is interesting to note that having capitalized on ethnicity to win the primary, the Richman campaign now sought to emphasize issues in the general election. Ros-Lehtinen's refusal to debate however, blunted the effectiveness of this strategy.
The campaign strategies of both campaigns were based purely on ethnic calculations. The race came down to a pure ethnic conflict, despite Richman's attempt to backpeddle from his earlier rhetoric. Richman realized that to win he needed to do more than just mobilize the voting potential of the non-Cuban groups in the district, he needed to penetrate into Ros-Lehtinen support in the Hispanic community. In addition he sought the vote of upper-income, `Anglo' Republicans who might be alienated by the fanatical Cuban support for their first serious congressional contender, and might also feel put out by Ros-Lehtinen's strong anti-abortion record. Certainly Richman lost no opportunity to try and use the abortion issue to his advantage, and he associated himself with `pro-choice' forces at every available opportunity (Miami Herald, 22 August 1989).
Ros-Lehtinen abandoned attempts at `bridge-building' with Jews and blacks, and concentrated on mobilizing her Cuban base. Polls indicated however, that Richman's cultivation of the ethnic issue had turned what intially looked likely to be an easy election for the Republicans into a very close race. Miami Herald polls showed the two candidates to be neck-and-neck with the whole election largely to be decided by the ethnic turnout factor (Miami Herald, 22 August 1989).
Only Chicago in recent years has witnessed an election in which voters were so clearly divided along ethnic lines as in this election. All of Miami's institutions were affected. The Miami Herald endorsed Ros-Lehtinen, but on the same day of the endorsement the paper also carried a story describing how publisher Dick Capen had overruled his editorial board, which favored Richman (Miami Herald, 27 August 1989). The credibility of the Dade County Fair Campaign Practices Committee was undermined when it too was torn apart by the ethnic conflict. On the Sunday prior to the poll, they condemned Ros-Lehtinen for distributing a leaflet designed to rally Cuban-American support against Richman. The following day however, a Hispanic member of the committee claimed that the committee had come under pressure from the Richman campaign to issue a condemnation of Ros-Lehtinen, and that proper procedures had not been followed in issuing the Sunday statement (Miami Herald, 29 August 1989). No institution could evade the ethnic issue, and the salience of that issue made this campaign one of the most interesting recent congressional races in the US.
The Results
Election day in Miami saw Gerald Richman and the Democratic party defeated by a large and monolithic Cuban-American vote. Richman's "American seat" slogan which was the key to victory in the Democratic runoff proved to be a two-edged sword. Cuban-Americans offended by the perceived racism of the Democratic candidate voted for Ros-Lehtinen by the remarkable margin of 94 to 6 percent (Miami Herald, August 30, 1989). The mobilization of the Cuban community around the Republican candidate was overwhelming and impressive. Local Cuban media, five radio and two T.V. stations, bombarded the airwaves on election day with anti-Richman propaganda including the dubious claim that Fidel Castro himself had endorsed the Democratic candidate. Richman carried all of the other blocs of voters: Jewish, Anglos, and Blacks but they represented only 47 percent of the electorate. High Cuban turnout - some Little Havana precincts reported 70 percent turnout - provided Ros-Lehtinen with the margin of victory, 53 percent of the votes. The Republicans won simply because more Cubans voted and almost all of them voted for Ros-Lehtinen.
The heavy Cuban-American vote and the high turnout for the Republican candidate was undoubtly aided by the fact that Ros-Lehtinen was Cuban. However, the support for Ros in the Congressional election, must be put in the context of dramatic trend toward the GOP among Dade county Cubans in recent elections.
(Table Two About Here)
Table Two illustrates the support that Dade's Hispanics have given to such conservative Republican candidates as President George Bush, Senator Connie Mack, and Governor Robert Martinez. Ros-Lehtinen thus received roughly the same support in the thirty most heavily Hispanic precincts(2) of the 18th district as other Republican candidates.
The 1989 special election strengthened and reinforced the trend of increasing Cuban-American support for the GOP. Cuban support for the Republican party and its candidate is reflected in the results of the correlations of the variable Hispanic with the vote received by Republican candidates. This set of correlations produces the following coefficients: Bush (.8590), Mack (.9303), Martinez (.8575), Ros (.9630), and Republican Party registration (.8898). These figures suggest that Hispanics in Miami will support conservative candidates whether their running for President, Senate, Govenor, or the House of Reprensatitives.(3) The Cuban community's strong anti-communism; the formation of a viable ethnic enclave community; the economic incorporation of the expansive Cuban middle and upper classes; the opportunity to use the previously underutilized state Republican machinery as a vehicle for political mobilization; and the emergence of other institutional bases of influence such as the Cuban American National Foundation; all serve to explain this remarkable level of Cuban support for the Republican party (Moreno and Warren: 1989). The election of Ros-Lehtinen also continued a process which began in 1982 of Cuban enpowerment in Dade county which has witnessed Cubans win seven seats in the State House of Representatives, three seats in the State Senate, plus the mayorship of Miami, West Miami, North Miami, Sweetwater, and Hialeah Gardens. This enpowerment by Dade Cubans has come almost exclusively under the Republican banner.
The electorate in Miami became divided along ethnic lines not because Cubans changed their voting behavior, but because other groups rallied around the Democratic candidate in a futile attempt to "stop the Cubans." The tragedy of the 1989 Special election was that Richman's coded call to U.S.-born voters ("this is an American seat") to stop the Cuban candidate, which included Kennedy in the Democratic primary and Ros-Lehtinen in the general election, worked. In the general election Richman carried all the non-Cuban groups in the district (Anglos, Blacks and Jews) according to one exit poll he even won among Republican Anglos 55 to 45 percent (Miami Herald, August 30, 1989).
(Table Three about Here)
Table Three reflects the wide difference in support that non-hispanic whites gave to conservative candidates. Ros-Lehtinen while not differing in any significant policy issue with Bush, Mack or Martinez did very poorly among their non-hispanic supporter in the Eighteenth District. The Cuban Republican candidate ran nearly twenty percent behind Anglo Republics in the non-hispanic white precincts of Dade county. Two communities reflect just how effective Richman's "American seat" slogan was among non-Hispanic groups. Bal-Harbour an affluent Jewish city which gave President Bush 50 percent, Mack 44 percent, and Martinez 52 percent of the vote gave Ros only 16 percent. Similarly in the heavily Republican island of Key Biscayne, Ros received barely 48 percent of the vote, while Bush received 70 percent, Mack 59 percent and Martinez 68 percent.
The anti-Latin nature of the Richman's support is reflected in its close correlation to the yes vote on Amendment Eleven in the 1988 election. Proposition Eleven was the "English as official language" amendment to the Florida state constitution. Hispanics were the only group that consistently opposed the amendment, voting over 80 percent against the measure.
(Table four about here)
A district-wide analysis shows that the Ros votes correlates more closely with the no vote on Amendment 11 than with that of any other Republican candidate. This trend is even more pronouced in the non-hispanic preceints, in those areas Ros-Lehniten votes only corralated with the no on Eleven vote (.8132) compared with very low corralation between her vote and the votes of other recent GOP hopefuls: Bush (.2659), Mack (.5810), and Martinez (.0355).(4) In order to further illustrate the point Table five provides a comparison between Ros supports and the no vote on Amendment 11 among the districts ethnic groups.
(Table five about here)
Richman was able to mobilize the districts non-hispanic groups in a campaign to stop the Cubans. In so doing he was able to turned what had looked like a walkover for the Republicans into a very close race. However, in turning the election into a referendum on Cuban enpowerment, Richman also guaranteed that he would eventually lose the election. Hispanic voters, while estimated to comprised only 43% of the district's registered voters, actually comprised a majority of the electorate. Dade county only counts those Hispanics born outside of the U.S. and in Puerto Rico in their registration figures. The growing number of native born Latins in Miami, especially the children of Cubans who came during the 1960's, who are now able to vote, are not included in these figures, resulting in an underestimation of approximately 10 percent in the size of the Hispanic bloc. This combined with the traditional five percent higher voter turnout among Cuban-Americans helped to guaranteed the election of the first Cuban-American to Congress. Richman's "American seat" slogan made it an election about power and at the end as salsa-singer Celia Cruz yelled into the microphone at the Ros-Lehtinen victory party: "The Cubans Won!"
Conclusion
Recent elections in Dade County have largely confirmed Wolfinger's moblization theory with regard to ethnic voting. In the case of the Dade Cubans all the important criteria for ethnic voting according to Wolfinger's model are met: Dade's Cubans have an intense level of ethnic identification; ethnicity has been a salient issue in elections; and in the 18th district's 1989 special election, there was a Cuban at the head of one party's ticket with a real chance of becoming the first Cuban elected to Congress.
Instead of becoming throughly assimilated, middle-class, suburban Americans, Miami's Cubans have aligned themselves even more strongly with the Republican party as their socioeconomic status has improved, and the second generation of Cuban Americans appears to be even more Republican in their voting behaviour than the first. The election of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to Congress, and the context in which she got elected will undoubtedly consolidate even further the Cubans' overwhelming and passionate identification with the Republican party.
The Wolfinger theory is further confirmed by the fact that in the 18th District special election, Cuban were not the only group voting ethnically. The Cubans had already become overwhelmingly Republican, and the most dramative shifts in voting patterns occurred not among them, but among Jewish and non-Jewish Anglos whose level of support for the Republican candidate dropped dramatically from the 1980s norm. For these voters it seems clear that the criteria for ethnic voting were also met (particularly for the Jewish voters): there was a high level of ethnic identity and ethnic salience in the race, and the Democratic candidate was Jewish. Anglos - appear to have been voting ethnically to an even greater degree than the Cubans.
The longer-term consequences for politics in Miami are potentially serious; particularly as the party labels in Dade county have been virtuallly appropriated by different ethnic groups, with Republican Cubans opposing Democratic blacks and Anglos. Although the Democrats appeared to make significant gains among Anglo voters in the special election, longer term demographic trends in Dade are not on their side. The Anglo population of the county is gradually diminishing as Anglos move North to Broward (Fort Lauderdale) and Palm Beach counties (citation)*. The Latino electorate of Dade county is likely to continue to grow, and although much of this growth will be among non-Cuban Latins, by far the largest of these groups - the Nicaraguans - are likely to adopt an equally strong Republican idenfication. Dade county might well be left with a economically powerful Republican, Latino, majority facing an economically deprived and politically weak, black, Democratic minority which has already expressed its frustration in civil violence four times in this decade.
Ethnicity thus remains as a potent force in American electoral politics whose power should never be underestimated. The continuing immigration of new ethnic groups into the US from East and South Asia and Latin America - is likely to open up further dimensions of ethnic voting and ethnic conflict in the 21st century.
Table One
Voter Registration by Ethnic and Party Breakdown
1983 1988
Hispanic Republicans 26,778 43,190
Hispanic Democrats 24,916 14,696
Total Hispanic(5) 57,913 63,009
Democrats 137,731 92,730
Republicans 46,841 63,486
Source: Metropolitan Dade County Department of Elections
Table Two
Hispanic Support for GOP
(in precincts with over 70% Hispanic registration)
Candidate % of Vote Standard Deviation
Bush 83.0% 3.6
Mack 79.0% 2.9
Martinez 77.0% 5.6
Ros 87.6% 3.8
Source: Metropolitan Dade County Department of Elections
Table Three
Support for GOP Among Non Hispanic Whites
(in precincts with over 70% Non-Hispanic White registration)
Candidate Overall Anglo Jewish
Bush 49.5% 65.1% 41.4%
Mack 41.3% 51.6% 34.0%
Martinez 45.8% 60.4% 37.7%
Ros 33.8% 42.0% 21.8%
Source: Metropolitan Dade County Department of Elections
Table Four
Correlations of Voting Behavior
(District wide)
NoAmnd11 Ros Bush Mack Martinez
NoAmnd11 1.0000 .9553 .8358 .9145 .8430
(146) (146) (146) (146) (146)
Ros .9553 1.0000 .9218 .9733 .9171
(146) (146) (146) (146) (146) Bush .8358 .9218 1.0000 .9742 .9756 (146) (146) (146) (146) (146)
Mack .9145 .9733 .9742 1.0000 .9658 (146) (146) (146) (146) (146)
Martinez .8230 .9171 .9756 .9658 1.0000
(146) (146) (146) (146) (146)
Source: Metropolitan Dade County Department of Elections
Table Five
Comparison of Ros and No on Amendment Eleven
(in Precincts that are at least 70% Uniform)
Ros No
Blacks 6.3% 22.8%
Jewish 21.8% 26.2%
Anglos 42.0% 34.2%
Hispanics 87.6% 80.7%
Source: Metropolitan Dade County Department of Elections
Return to Table of Contents
1. Florida law compels holders of legislative and local government seats to surrender their seats when running for other elective offices.
2. Heavy hispanic is described as precincts where over seventy precent of the registered voters are hispanics. It should also be noted that the Hispanic category only contains those Hispanics born outside of the U.S. or in Puerto Rico.
3. It should be noted that non-Cuban Hispanics in Dade do not support Republican candidates to the same extent as Cuban-Americans. However, their numbers are not politically significant.
4. The corralation is taken from the 43 preceints in the district which are over 70 percent non-Latin White.
5. The Hispanic category only contains those Hispanics born outside of the U.S. or in Puerto Rico.