Bloomberg editors published an editorial Friday that highlighted Republicans' gains among Latino voters and the trouble that it can cause the Democratic Party if the trend continues.
The editorial titled "Democrats’ Florida Drubbing Is a Cautionary Tale", pointed to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio's sweeping victories in the sunshine state as evidence of Republican gains.
"As much as Democrats might want to exult over last week’s midterm-election results — one of the better recent outcomes for the party in power — they can’t ignore the drubbing they took in Florida, a longtime purple-colored battleground that has now turned solid red," the editors wrote.
"Without a prompt assessment of what went wrong, the party risks losing the country’s third most populous state for the foreseeable future," they added.
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The 2022 midterm elections saw Democrats lose the House of Representatives but keep control of the Senate, regardless of the outcome of the Georgia Senate election runoff. However, Republicans nationwide are hoping GOP candidate Herschel Walker will secure a Georgia Senate seat in order to keep the Democratic majority slim and empower moderate Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin, W. Va., and Kyrsten Sinema as a bulwark against the Biden administration's most extreme agenda items.
However, in Florida, which saw former President Trump increase his margin of victory from 1.2 percent in 2016 to 3.3% in 2020, Republicans did well across the board. DeSantis, who won his 2018 gubernatorial election by just 0.4%, expanded his margin of victory in 2022 to a whopping 19.4%.
The Bloomberg editors pointed out that DeSantis and Rubio even won Miami-Daide county in Florida, a typical stronghold for Democrats.
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"Not only did Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio handily win reelection, both trounced their opponents in Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county, with 2.7 million people, more than two-thirds of whom are Hispanic," they wrote. "In doing so, they underlined an awkward trend: Democrats’ brand with Latino voters is collapsing in Florida — and shows worrisome signs nationwide."
The editors pointed to Republican voter-registration drives that among immigrants from places like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua as part of a winning strategy for the GOP.
They also bemoaned the reactions to DeSantis flying illegal immigrants into other states as a reminder to the Democratic Party that Latinos are not a monolithic voting block.
"Even DeSantis’s most egregious stunt — sending a plane full of Venezuelan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts — drew solid Latino support," the editors wrote. "That should be a reminder for Democrats that Hispanics aren’t a monolith and immigration isn’t their defining issue. In fact, one recent survey found immigration ranked ninth among Latinos’ concerns, trailing behind the economy, education, violent crime and so on."
They continued, "In trying to reverse these trends, Democrats need to stop taking Latinos for granted and start focusing on what they actually care about."
The editors also criticized the Democratic Party's continued use of the term "LatinX" - and its unpopularity among Latinos - as an example of the party being out of touch.
