ORLANDO, Fla. ― As Hillary Clinton visits a largely Republican Central Florida suburb on Tuesday, husband Bill Clinton heads to even more unlikely source of votes 200 miles to the south on the edge of the Everglades.
Collier County is among the most reliably Republican in the state. But one of its faster growing towns, Immokalee, is home to a bloc of support for the Democratic nominee: farm workers, many of them from Mexico.
Unfortunately for Democrats, there aren’t that many of them. Of the 17,000 adults of voting age who live in the town, which the census says is three-quarters Hispanic, only 4,348 are registered to vote.
“It’s good symbolism,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic consultant who led President Barack Obama’s two successful Florida campaigns.
Originally an outpost of the Seminole Indians, Immokalee sits near the northern edge of the Everglades, where vegetable farms employ thousands of agricultural workers. This has been a natural Democratic constituency, although the party has had a difficult time registering them and getting them to vote. Many are not citizens ― a large number are undocumented ― and those who have not historically been interested in voting.
Democrats’ task, though, has generally gotten easier with Latinos since Donald Trump began his campaign by calling undocumented Mexican immigrants “rapists,” made his promise to build a border wall a centerpiece of his campaign, and then managed to win the GOP nomination.
Still, at least for this election, the former president’s visit may be more about the message than a serious push for votes.
Schale said the 2012 Obama campaign actually opened an office in Immokalee, and sent former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson there. “Kind of proud to be the first presidential to have an office there,” Schale said. “But it was much symbolic as practical.”
Bill Clinton is to speak at 3:30 p.m. He is scheduled to start the day with a campaign stop in Florida City, in southern Miami-Dade, and finish with a visit to St. Petersburg.
HuffPost Pollster, which aggregates all available public polls, shows Clinton narrowly leading Trump in Florida.
