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 "Hey, beautiful, I got a lot of votes for you today," called out
Rosa Peralta, a retired Cuban immigrant with accented English
sitting by a phone bank with a plate of Cuban pastries.
Scott's campaign is making an unprecedented push for Hispanic votes
in this year's gubernatorial race in the nation's largest swing
state. The failure to pay enough attention to the fastest-growing
segment of the state's electorate may have cost the party victory in
Florida in the 2012 presidential election, Republican leaders
acknowledge.
"We made a point from Day One to make a Hispanic component part of
everything we do on the campaign. Not just in Miami but all across
the state," said Tim Saler, Scott's deputy campaign manager.
If the Republican strategy succeeds, it will signal a major turning
back of a trend, with Hispanics favoring Democrats in recent years -
and will likely spell defeat for Scott's Democratic rival, former
Governor Charlie Crist.
Republicans have always been able to count on older Cuban voters
like Peralta, 73, who fled the Fidel Castro-led revolution in 1960.
But analysts question whether they have done enough to woo non-Cuban
Hispanics, including a large influx of Democrat-leaning Puerto
Ricans, as well as half a million lower-income Cuban immigrants over
the past decade.
 "Hispanics are really coming into the Florida electorate at a very
fast rate, and they are much more likely to register Democrat," said
Matt Barreto, a political scientist at the University of Washington
and co-founder of the polling and research firm Latino Decisions.
Since Scott squeaked out a 60,000-vote victory in 2010 over Democrat
Alex Sink, the former state chief financial officer, some 714,000
voters had been added to the electorate, according to the Florida
Division of Elections.
Of those, 310,000, or about 44 percent, are Hispanic, even though
they make up only 17 percent of the state's 12 million voters.
Whites accounted for less than 25 percent of new registrations,
though they represent more than 65 percent of the voting population.
Among Hispanic registered voters, 471,000 are Republicans and
662,000 are Democrats, a wider gap - more than 11 percent - than in
2010, according to a report by the Pew Hispanic Trust.
That may explain why Scott mounted the biggest and earliest
Spanish-language TV ad campaign in Florida history, starting in
April. He even took some language classes and regularly breaks into
halting Spanish at campaign stops.
This week his campaign began running ads in which former Governor
Jeb Bush, a fluent Spanish speaker with a Mexican-born wife, urges
people to vote for the Republican who produces "resultados."
Both Scott and Crist have Hispanic running mates, another Florida
first, each drawing from their strengths in South Florida's Hispanic
community.
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Scott picked a Cuban American, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a state
legislator from Miami well known in conservative Cuban circles,
while Crist chose a Colombian-Jewish businesswoman, Annette Taddeo,
also from Miami.
Crist holds a 53-29 percent lead over Scott among Hispanics,
according to a recent poll by Latino Decisions, suggesting Scott's
campaign has made few inroads.
Democrats are counting on new Hispanic neighborhoods in central
Florida such as Buenaventura Lakes, a fast-growing community of
middle-class Puerto Ricans.
Miguel Fontanez, 26, owner of Pioco’s Chicken Deli & Bakery, said
Scott’s budget cuts have hurt needy kids in Buenaventura Lakes.
“Back when Charlie Crist was running it, there was more money for
kids,” he said.
In this region, the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, is far
more popular than with white voters, and the Republican-dominated
state legislature's decision to reject federally subsidized Medicaid
expansion does not sit well.
Democrats say Republicans have failed to tailor their message to
Hispanics, focusing on economic issues such as economic growth, job
creation and more affordable college tuition.
"Our message doesn't change depending on what demographic we are
talking to," said Lopez-Cantera during a morning of campaign stops
in Miami visiting Medicare health centers. "I just say it in
Spanish."
Democrats take the opposite tack and say the state's lower-income
Hispanics have different priorities, highlighting Scott's slashing
of funding for education in his first year in office.
"I speak the language, but in the end if you don’t believe in
certain things like public education you aren’t going to appeal to
the (Hispanic) community," said Taddeo.
(Addtional reporting by Barbara Liston. Editing by Douglas Royalty)
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