A blistering letter written last week by a group of organizers for the Florida Democratic Party listing several grievances, including claims that the campaign is “suppressing the Hispanic vote,” has raised concerns among activists that Democrats are not doing enough to engage Puerto Rican voters.
The internal letter, first reported by The Miami Herald, makes multiple allegations including how organizers have been moved to handle areas they are not familiar with, often with little notice, after spending months organizing in their own communities.
According to one of the organizers who signed the letter, the problems began when the Florida Coordinated Campaign moved in. The campaign includes previous staff members of former New York city mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg.
“Everything has gone downhill since the Coordinated Campaign came in,” said an organizer who asked not to be named since he’s not authorized to talk to the media. “You have people from other states that don’t understand Florida politics.”
The organizer said they were trained by the Democratic National Committee to organize within their communities through personal experiences and in their native languages, but now people are being brought in from states like New York who have no connection to the community.
“I don’t think there is bad intention,” the organizer said. “I just think there is a disconnect between leadership and our communities.”
The letter, viewed by NBC News, states that the Florida Coordinated Campaign is suppressing the Hispanic vote by removing Spanish-speaking organizers from Central Florida, an area with a large concentration of Puerto Ricans, without explanation.
The organizer said most Puerto Ricans support former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, but “the problem is talking to them and communicating with them so they vote.”
The Florida Coordinated Campaign and the field organizers’ union, IBEW Local 824, are currently in talks to address the issue, according to a Democratic operative familiar with the talks. Keep Reading>>
