Wednesday, March 16, 2016

In Florida, Donald Trump finds some support among Hispanic Republicans - Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"


JB note: [According to the USG Census (in its almighty wisdom) "white" is a racial category, but "hispanic" is an ethnic category. So, not all "hispanics" are "whites," and not all "whites" are "hispanics." The absurdity of the Census's racial/ethnic categories is further in evidence by the fact it uses "asians" as a way to categorize people whose diverse origins are from that so-called "continent," a cartographic construction if there ever was one; thus, a geographical label. And the Census categorizes another segment of the USA population as "black" (racial) or african-american (geographical/cartographic). Needless to say how these categories should be capitalized is open to question.] 

The below from: http://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html:

The U.S. Census Bureau must adhere to the 1997 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards on race and ethnicity which guide the Census Bureau in classifying written responses to the race question:
White – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.
Black or African American – A person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.
American Indian or Alaska Native – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America) and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment.
Asian – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander – A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.
The 1997 OMB standards permit the reporting of more than one race. An individual’s response to the race question is based upon self-identification. 
An individual’s response to the race question is based upon self-identification. The Census Bureau does not tell individuals which boxes to mark or what heritage to write in. For the first time in Census 2000, individuals were presented with the option to self-identify with more than one race and this continued with the 2010 Census. People who identify with more than one race may choose to provide multiple races in response to the race question. For example, if a respondent identifies as "Asian" and "White," they may respond to the question on race by checking the appropriate boxes that describe their racial identities and/or writing in these identities on the spaces provided.
What is Race?
The data on race were derived from answers to the question on race that was asked of individuals in the United States. The Census Bureau collects racial data in accordance with guidelines provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and these data are based on self-identification.
The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian” and “White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race.
OMB requires five minimum categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.
Reasons for collecting information on race
Information on race is required for many Federal programs and is critical in making policy decisions, particularly for civil rights. States use these data to meet legislative redistricting principles. Race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks.
Contact Us
For assistance, please contact the Census Call Center at 1-800-923-8282 (toll free) or visit ask.census.gov for further information.

See a scholarly evaluation of the Census's racial/ethnic categories at.

By Lesley Clark and Patricia Mazzei, Miami Herald
HIALEAH — Cuban-Americans here have the rare opportunity to vote for two of their own for the presidency of the United States. Yet, some are making a different choice: They're backing Donald Trump.
The controversial frontrunner has insisted he'll draw Hispanic voters despite launching his campaign last June with inflammatory remarks about Mexicans and rapists. And as he competes in Florida, the biggest state yet to test his boast, there is anecdotal evidence of support among Miami-Dade's staunchly Republican Cuban-American voters even as most back Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, whom many Cuban-American voters helped elect to the U.S. Senate in 2010.
For Trump backers, ethnicity plays no factor.
"I don't think Cuban, I think American," said former Hialeah Mayor Julio Martinez, who, for two weeks, has held a Trump campaign sign outside an early voting site just blocks from where Rubio last week implored Hispanics to vote for him in Tuesday's presidential primary.
Perched in a lawn chair outside the John F. Kennedy Library, holding a "The Silent Majority Stands with Trump" sign, Martinez said he was backing Trump because there was "nobody better suited" to fixing the economy.
"The worst problem the United States has today is the economy," he said.
Trump's pledge to force Mexico to pay for construction of a wall at the U.S. border and his call to deport the nation's estimated 11 million immigrants who are here illegally have infuriated Hispanic advocacy groups and led to heated protests at his rallies. But for backers, they play no role. Even Trump's support for closer ties with Cuba's government makes no waves.
Martinez said he'd even persuaded his wife, Xiomara, to back Trump. She's been a citizen for two decades, though she was in the United States illegally for a time with a lapsed Nicaraguan visa.
"She said at the beginning, 'What are you doing? He's too rough on immigration,' " Martinez said. "I told her, 'You walk into the house and someone is sitting on your couch, what do you do? You call the police. That is what he is saying.' She voted for Donald Trump three days ago."
Martinez, who is occasionally joined by friends at the site, said he'd received mostly positive reviews. As if on cue, Luis Tejera, 51, walked over and asked to pose for a picture with Martinez and his sign.
"I just want a change. I'm tired of the politicians promising everything and nothing happens," said Tejera, a police officer. Though Cuban-American, he said the Cuban ties of Rubio and GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas meant little to him.
"I vote for the person and their ideas, not their race or ethnicity," he said.
Still, Trump's candidacy has set off panic among establishment Republicans, who acknowledged after Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's 2012 loss that the party needed to broaden its appeal among Hispanic voters, who make up considerable voting blocs in several key swing states, including Florida, Colorado and New Mexico.
Romney won an estimated 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012, exit polls found. When George W. Bush, the last Republican to win the White House, won in 2004, he got an estimated 40 percent.
Some advocacy groups estimate that the Republican nominee in 2016 will need to draw at least 40 percent of the Hispanic vote to secure the White House.
Trump, however, drew just 19 percent of Florida's Hispanic vote in a March Washington Post-Univision News poll conducted by the Miami-based Bendixen & Amandi International and the Tarrance Group, a Republican firm.
And Trump had the highest negative rating of any of the candidates, with six in 10 having a somewhat or very unfavorable impression of him. That's more than twice as high as Cruz's or Rubio's negative rating.
Pressed on the negative impressions of him among Hispanics at a recent debate in Houston, Trump said he would do "really well with Hispanics."
He said he had employed "tens of thousands of Hispanics" and pointed to his victory in Nevada, where entrance polls suggested he won with Hispanic voters.
"Nobody else was close," he said. "Because they know I'm going to bring jobs back from China, from Japan, from so many other places."
Indeed, nearly 40 percent of Hispanics in the Florida poll cited Trump as the candidate they think can best handle the economy.
Florida Hispanics, though, are not representative of Latinos nationally. Puerto Ricans in Central Florida, near Orlando, tend to vote Democratic, while the vast majority of Hispanics in South Florida are Cuban-Americans who lean Republican. And neither group is much invested in the immigration debate that inflames Latinos elsewhere: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and Cubans have a special immigration status that gives them a fast track to residency and citizenship.
Mario Rodriguez, 52, who became a U.S. citizen Feb. 16, arrived at the library in Hialeah eager to vote for Trump, "the best for America today."
The Cuban native thinks Trump has the best chance to defeat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders — "he's tougher than the others" — and defeating the Democrats is Rodriguez's priority.
He also respects Trump's hard line on immigration: "I'm an immigrant in this country and I came legally. In Cuba, they will put you in jail if you come illegally; in Mexico, too. You don't have a country if you don't respect the laws of the country."
A few miles away, at the West Dade Regional Library, Diana Granda, 48, was so happy to see a band of Trump supporters manning a tent at her early voting site that she marched across the lawn after casting her ballot to shake hands. She said she was backing Trump because she thought mainstream politicians had done little to boost the economy.
"The middle class is just going to disappear," said Granda, an unemployed paralegal. "It's bad out here. Wages are lower, hours are longer — and that's if you can find a job."
She is unruffled by Trump's support for deportation, saying she's tired of paying taxes to support "people just coming here to collect benefits." Immigrants who are in the country illegally, however, don't qualify for most public benefits, including welfare or Medicaid.
Nearly half of all Florida voters have cast ballots already and the Republican numbers suggest an energized electorate, said Daniel Smith, a University of Florida professor who has crunched the numbers. Of the more than 850,000 Republicans who have already voted, 42 percent didn't vote in at least the last presidential primary, Smith said.
That includes Granda, who hadn't voted in the presidential race since George W. Bush was last on the ticket.
"For me, this is something very different," she said of Trump. "He's inspired me."
Miami Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who touted Rubio to television cameras at a tent across from the Trump supporters, said the businessman's support among Hispanic voters was not surprising.
"It's an anger and frustration of people making an irrational choice," he said. "You're seeing it all over the country, where for 33 percent of the Republican primary, Donald Trump is their outlet."

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