currently airing on Florida radio<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n“Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in panic mode. Full panic mode,” said Leslie Wimes, a South Florida-based president of the Democratic African-American Women Caucus.<\/p>\n
“They have a big problem because they thought Obama and Michelle saying, ‘Hey, go vote for Hillary’ would do it. But it’s not enough,” Wimes said, explaining that too much of the black vote in Florida is anti-Trump, rather than pro-Clinton. “In the end, we don’t vote against somebody. We vote for somebody.”<\/p>\n
Part of the problem Clinton faces is that Obama, the actual black president, is the toughest of acts to follow. Obama enjoyed support from 95 percent of Florida\u2019s black voters in both 2012 and 2008, according to exit polls.<\/p>\n
Clinton isn\u2019t polling quite that well in a state that has nearly 1.7 million black voters. An average of the last three Florida polls that provided racial breakdowns shows she\u2019s polling less than 85 percent among African-American voters in Florida, while Trump polls around 5 percent.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just Clinton\u2019s margins with black voters that concerns Democrats. It\u2019s whether African-American voters turn out in force for her in a pivotal state whose 29 electoral votes are essential to the GOP nominee’s path to an Electoral College victory. A loss in Florida all but guarantees a Trump defeat on Election Day.<\/p>\n
Clinton faces a similar potential problem with Hispanic voters. Though Florida Hispanics back her by double-digit margins similar to the level of support Obama enjoyed, activists fear their turnout rate will be lower. Hispanics account for more than 15 percent of the Florida voter rolls and African-Americans are more than 13 percent. About 65 percent of registered voters are non-Hispanic white, and they heavily favor Trump.<\/p>\n
In the heavily African-American city of Miami Gardens, where Trayvon Martin hailed from, Mayor Oliver Gilbert said he\u2019s hopeful that Clinton\u2019s strong debate performance will generate more excitement for the candidate. He also said Trump\u2019s position on police stop-and-frisk policies, and his suggestion that all blacks live in ghettos, could motivate minority voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s this presumption that we\u2019re all under-educated and uneducated and living with all of this crime \u2014 it\u2019s insulting,\u201d Gilbert said. \u201cAnd when Trump says \u2018what do you have to lose if you vote for me,\u2019 we see how he and his crowd cheered once when a black man got punched in the face at one of his rallies. That\u2019s what we have to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Trump and Clinton are making moves to reach out to Florida\u2019s black community, which is more diverse than in many other states because some of Florida\u2019s black population originates from Caribbean countries like Haiti and Jamaica. Clinton\u2019s ad strategy reflects that, launching an ad this month narrated in Creole and running on Haitian radio stations in South Florida. And Trump met with a group of Haitian-American leaders in Miami two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, one of Clinton\u2019s highest-profile black leaders in the state, acknowledged that he saw \u201cvarying levels of enthusiasm\u201d for Clinton at a recent event. Though he said \u201cit\u2019s hard to recapture that level of enthusiasm\u201d Obama enjoyed in 2008, he\u2019s confident young black voters will show up to the polls for Clinton.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile I\u2019d love for them to be excited when they show up to the polls,\u201d citing his own excitement about what Clinton\u2019s policy agenda can offer the black community, \u201cmy first job is to make sure they get there,\u201d Gillum said.<\/p>\n
Clinton\u2019s campaign says it also has been holding events in Orlando and South Florida, partnering with African-American owned small businesses and churches to recruit leaders for its volunteer efforts. Clinton volunteers, they say, have also been organizing on the campuses of Florida’s historically black colleges and universities, like Florida A&M University, Edward Waters College and Bethune-Cookman.<\/p>\n
Among those efforts were a rally late last month at FAMU headlined by Clinton\u2019s running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, in which he praised the value of HBCUs and hammered Trump for pushing the \u201cbigoted notion that President Obama wasn\u2019t even born in this country\u201d and tying the Republican to \u201cKu Klux Klan values.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaine\u2019s rhetoric wasn\u2019t enough to inspire Tyresha McClenney and Bryan Anderson, two first-time voters and FAMU students who attended the Democrat\u2019s rally. McLenney noted that she doesn\u2019t believe Clinton has spoken enough about racial inequality and police brutality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not something that she continuously says, it\u2019s only like when the media gets a video of a black person getting shot,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen the media dies down on that, and she\u2019s still saying it \u2026 that would help have more trust in her and believe in what she says.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Anderson: \u201cA lot of her attempts to reach out come across as pandering.\u201d<\/p>\n
That lack of excitement worries Henry Crespo, president of the Miami-based Florida Democratic Black Caucus.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one is writing songs for Hillary. Obama had will.i.am. Hillary has nobody like that,\u201d said Crespo. \u201cRight now, the vote is against Trump. It\u2019s not for Hillary. I still think she\u2019s going to win. But you want your people to be for your candidate, not just against the other guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
___
\nhttp:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2016\/09\/hillary-clinton-florida-black-voters-228822#ixzz4LYTgWRyz<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democrats are sweating over turnout in one of the most important states on the electoral map.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Democrats](\"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/static2.politico-6.jpg\")
<\/a>