Fox News
Op-Ed: Sen. Rick Scott
June 7, 2021

Democrat politicians, consultants and their defenders in the liberal media have pushed the narrative for decades that Democrats were building a permanent majority coalition. They’ve argued that demography is destiny and the expanding share of minority and young voters would create a coalition of Democrat voters that shuts out the Republican Party for a generation or more.  

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said "the Hispanic community is going to stay with the Democratic Party … to the Republicans, I say, you have no shot."  

Well, here’s an inconvenient truth that Democrats don’t want to admit: it was a myth. And it was a myth born from the Democratic Party’s hubris. It didn’t happen. 

Here’s another inconvenient truth: as the Hispanic share of the electorate has increased over the last three presidential election cycles, Democrats’ margin of victory among Hispanic voters has decreased, significantly.

And It’s happening everywhere. It’s not just Hispanic voters in South Florida uniting behind the Republican message and against the increasingly socialist platform of the Democrat Party, as many Democrats would have you believe. It’s all Hispanic voters, from all walks of life.  

Hispanic voters are becoming Republican. It’s happening right now, and there is no stopping it. This isn’t something we are hoping for, this is something that is in process. This train is moving. 

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Democratic Party misread the so-called "coalition of the ascendent" and new polling conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) proves it.  

Democrat leaders have taken their party in a direction that increasingly reflects the views of wealthy, urban, coastal elites, while failing to truly understand working-class Americans and the values and aspirations of Hispanic voters. Democrats are out of touch, and assumed that all Hispanic voters just hate Republicans, as they do.  

Here’s the reality that the NRSC’s new polling proves: Hispanic voters are aspirational. They want to live in a society with a government that values work, faith, family, a quality education, strong borders, independence and self-determination. They increasingly see the Democratic Party as out of touch with those values.  

*63% of Hispanic voters in battleground states see capitalism as the best form of government versus 17% who choose socialism. The Democrats are increasingly becoming the Socialist Party.  

*72% of Hispanic voters believe we should do more to secure the southern border and stop the surge of illegal immigration. The Democrats are the open borders party.  

*67% of Hispanic voters believe that our country, particularly younger Americans, are losing our traditional values of faith, freedom and family. The Democrats have become increasingly antagonistic toward these values.  

*58% of Hispanic voters believe that too many people no longer want to work and are happy living off government assistance. The Democrats have put forward an agenda to massively increase the welfare state to make more people dependent on government.  

*80%  – four-fifths of all Hispanic voters – believe that public school systems in America are failing and our children are falling behind the rest of the world. Democrats have become the party of the unions rather than the students and oppose school choice almost unanimously. They own the failures of the public school systems.  

Our polling shows that Hispanic voters believe Big Tech has too much power, they support voter ID, they oppose cancel culture, they oppose allowing biological men to play in women’s sports, they oppose court packing.  

On all of these issues, the Democratic Party in Washington is wildly out of touch with where Hispanic voters are. And there’s a simple reason why.  

Democrat policies hold back people who want to live the American Dream. They are anti-aspiration. They are pro-government dependency. Democrat policies are meant to limit individual success. They want unemployment benefits to be higher than wages. 

Let me give you a case study from Florida. More than twice as many Florida voters cast ballots in 2020 than did in 2000 and over that period, the electorate has gotten significantly more diverse, with White voters making up a smaller percentage of the whole. And yet, the state has become MORE Republican than it was 20 years ago.  

Both Sen. Marco Rubio, in his 2016 race, and I, in my 2018 race, received almost 50% of the Hispanic vote. Republicans also picked up two competitive congressional seats in Miami-Dade County in the 2020 election while Donald Trump won the state by more than three points due in large part to significant gains among Hispanic voters.  

It’s because Republicans in Florida have promoted an aspirational message. We want every Floridian to be able to live the American Dream – to get a good job, live in a safe community, be able to choose which school their children go to, to have a government that lives within its means and is responsive to the needs of its citizens. We fight socialism; we don’t let it become a central plank in our party’s message as the Democrats have.  

Republicans can win the Hispanic vote. Sen. Rubio and I are examples that if you fight for good policy, genuinely engage the community and do the right thing for families, you will earn their support. And this can be done all across the country. As chair of the NRSC, I’m going to make sure we do this in our Senate races. 

The American Dream for today’s Democratic Party is for the government to pay for everything and take care of you. They make up other words for it, but there is already a word for it – Socialism. I call it Systemic Socialism. It’s the new agenda of the Democratic Party.  

Many Hispanic voters understand the dangers of socialism from first-hand experiences. This is bad news for Democrats and great news for Republicans. We don’t see Hispanic voters as a "voting bloc," we see them simply as our fellow Republicans.  

Republican Rick Scott represents Florida in the United States Senate. He is a former Florida governor.