PINECREST, Fla. — The only Latina running for U.S. Senate in November is emphasizing moderate positions on a number of issues, including Latino policy, in an effort to defeat a Republican incumbent in an increasingly Republican state.
Former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat, said families in her state are struggling, and she knows it all from personal experience: Her mother lives with her, and until recently, her 24-year-old daughter lived under the same roof. Mucarsel-Powell attributes this to soaring housing prices in Florida.
She said those daily struggles are what motivate her to challenge Sen. Rick Scott, a well-funded Republican seeking a second term in a state that has grown increasingly Republican in recent years.
A recent poll by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Institute showed Scott leading Mucarsel-Powell by four points, within the poll’s margin of error and consistent with other polls showing Scott with single-digit leads.
Early voting is underway in Florida for the Aug. 20 primary election, with Mucarsel-Powell and Scott facing a nominal race for the party’s nomination.
Governor Mucarsel Powell visited a cafe in an upscale Miami-Dade County neighborhood in June to explain how she plans to help lower the cost of living for Floridians, including by lowering prescription drug prices, lowering property insurance rates and promoting the expansion of solar panels.
“Seniors have to go back to work because they can’t afford property insurance premiums, and students can’t get the education they want because of the rising cost of living,” she said.
Former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell with Area Cafe owner Dimitris Herbalis and their daughter on June 24. Carmen Sesin/NBC News
Mucarsel-Powell, 53, who made history as the first Ecuadorian-American and South American-born member of Congress, emigrated from Ecuador when she was 14. When she arrived, her mother was cleaning houses and Mucarsel-Powell said she helped out. Her father was killed in a mass shooting in Ecuador.
Mucarsel-Powell served one term before losing her seat to Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez in 2020. She then joined Giffords, a gun violence prevention organization founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).
Currently, the only Latina woman elected to the U.S. Senate is Nevada Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.
Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor and pollster at Florida International University, said Mucarsel-Powell is behind and faces a tough election campaign.
Gamarra said the majority of registered voters in Florida are Republican, “which alone makes the fight between Mucarsel and Powell tough.”
Scott, 71, is fairly well known in the state and served as governor for eight years. He won both gubernatorial elections with less than 50% of the vote, and barely won a majority in the 2018 senate election by about 10,000 votes. Scott is the wealthiest incumbent senator and has the ability to raise campaign funds on his own. By July, he had loaned or donated about $14 million of his own money to election campaigns. In 2018, Scott spent about $63 million to defeat Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson.
Mucarsel-Powell has described herself as bipartisan at campaign events and on Zoom calls, and GovTrack considers her voting record to be “purple,” meaning she has voted for both Democrats and Republicans.
The Scott campaign disputed that assessment.
“Debbie Mucarsel-Powell served one term in Congress and voted 100% for Nancy Pelosi, 94% for Ilhan Omar, and 93% for AOC before being fired by the voters,” Scott campaign spokesman Will Hampson said in an emailed statement. “She has been silent on open borders and the massive inflationary spending that has hurt Floridians. … She is a socialist who has no electoral leverage so has no choice but to lie about Rick Scott. This is a shame. Even if she wins the primary, Florida voters will reject her in November.”
Debbie Mucarsel Powell at Hillsborough Community College’s Dale Mabry campus in Tampa on April 23. Thomas Simonetti/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Republicans have long accused state and federal Democrats of being “socialists” similar to the left-wing authoritarian leaders of countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, as part of their appeal to the state’s large Latino voters.
Mucarsel-Powell disagrees with the label and has distanced herself from some of President Joe Biden’s Latin America policies. She said the administration should not have removed Cuba from the list of countries that don’t fully cooperate in counterterrorism efforts.
Once a battleground state, Florida has moved further to the right in recent years. Two recent polls show former President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by an average of 8.5 points in Florida, a state President Joe Biden won by about 3 percentage points in 2020.
The November election will test Florida Democrats’ standing after devastating defeats in the midterm elections. Governor Ron DeSantis won reelection in a landslide victory, becoming the first Republican governor to win heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade County since 2002. Republican Senator Marco Rubio also won reelection in 2022 with more than 16% of the vote.
Focus on abortion rights
Mucarsel-Powell has made abortion rights a key issue in her campaign.
“This is a medical issue and a civil rights issue,” she said, adding that it should be a decision made privately between a woman and her doctor.
Florida recently enacted a six-week abortion ban. Neighboring states have also passed similar bans, so the closest state to allow abortion beyond six weeks is North Carolina, where it is legal up to 12 weeks. The next closest is Virginia, where abortion is legal up to 26 weeks. Scott has said he supports replacing the six-week ban with a 15-week ban.
Floridians can vote in November on whether to include a right to abortion in their state constitution. The ballot measure calls for an amendment to ban abortions before the fetus’s viability, which is considered to be around 24 weeks into pregnancy, and would include exceptions after that point “based on the patient’s health condition, as determined by the patient’s health care provider.”
In Florida, the bill needs 60% support and the backing of both Democrats and Republicans to pass, and some abortion rights advocates have spoken out against politicizing the issue.
“This is not a political issue. It shouldn’t be political. But there is one party that is politicizing this by taking away that right and that freedom,” Mucarsel-Powell said, adding that the six-week ban was “implemented by a Republican supermajority in the state legislature. That’s a fact. This is not politicization.”
She also noted that Scott voted against a bill that would have prohibited states from placing limits on IVF treatments and their costs, while running ads in support of IVF. Scott responded to criticism at the time by saying he supported stronger state, not federal, protections for IVF.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, are vocal supporters of abortion rights and access to IVF and fertility treatments, and have made the issues a priority in their campaigns.
According to FIU’s Professor Gamarra, there is a general perception that Harris has influenced lower-level elections across the country.
“It will give Mucarsel-Powell a boost,” he said, “but it won’t give Democrats the momentum they really need in a state where Republicans hold a decisive advantage.”
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