'The Blue Wave Came': Win for Non-Hispanic Democrat Signals Big Shift in Miami
By Patricia Mazzei June 30, 2018
MIAMI — Little Havana awoke recently to an unexpected new reality: The iconic neighborhood, the traditional heart of South Florida’s proud Cuban exile community, would no longer be represented on the county commission by a Cuban-American Republican.
Instead, voters elected a Democrat so clearly not Hispanic that the candidate herself playfully embraced the nickname of “La Gringa.”
Eileen Higgins’s surprise victory in a heavily Hispanic district has deeply unsettled Republicans in South Florida, where local elections have long been determined by ethnicity. Now, some Republicans worry that her win portends more losses for the party in November. Democrats have won three consecutive special elections in Miami-Dade County over the past nine months.
“The blue wave is not coming,” said Jesse Manzano-Plaza, a veteran Republican political consultant who said he had been doubted by many in his party when he warned that Ms. Higgins could pull off an upset. “The blue wave came.”
Ms. Higgins’s win cemented the belief held by Democrats — and, privately, by many Republicans — that the 27th Congressional District, a Republican-held seat that includes all of Ms. Higgins’s county commission district, is likely to flip. But strategists from both parties see a far more significant development: a fundamental realignment of South Florida politics, which could in turn have consequences for all of the state.
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