As the Haitian-American population has grown to more than 300,000 in South Florida, so too has its political influence.
People with Haitian ancestry now hold office in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. Major candidates court the region’s Haitian-American voters. And non-Haitians from both political parties are analyzing and attempting to engage with the community’s voters, hoping to reap long-term political gains.
“There are a lot of Haitian voters. The population is growing,” said Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party and vice chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. “And there is power in that vote.”
Ronald Surin, a vice president of the Haitian-American Democratic Club of Broward, said his community’s influence is increasing.
“The last couple of years have been very, very good to our community in terms of political presence,” Surin said. “We have gathered a lot of strength in local communities.”
To be sure, the number of elected officials isn’t large. The Haitian-American community doesn’t enjoy the clout of other long-established voting blocs in South Florida: African-American, Cuban-American, Jewish and Hispanic voters. And the Haitian community suffered a political setback last month when the Trump administration rejected calls for an 18-month extension of special immigration status for Haitians citizens living in the U.S.
Months of rallies, news conferences, Twitter storms and pleas from politicians — Democrats and Republicans — failed. The Trump administration authorized a six-month extension of temporary protected status, with the secretary of homeland security explaining that the 58,000 people living and working legally in the U.S. since a devastating 2010 earthquake should use the time to put their affairs in order and prepare to leave the country.
After the decision, leaders in the Haitian-American community, non-Haitian allies, and Democratic and Republican elected officials said they’d continue to push for a longer-term extension, with some professing optimism at the prospects of a reprieve from the Trump administration.
Notwithstanding the TPS decision, the political landscape has changed dramatically — for the better, in the view of Haitian community leaders — during the last 20 years:
Electoral prospects have improved.
In 1998, Claude P. Louissaint, now a Boca Raton business consultant, ran for a Broward-Palm Beach county state Senate seat in a district with mostly black voters. He was crushed in the Democratic primary.
Louissaint said he was part of the first generation of would-be elected officials from South Florida’s Haitian community. They all lost that year, he said, but that soon started to change. North Miami elected a Haitian-American to the City Council in 1999, and a district that includes Miami’s Little Haiti community sent a Haitian-American to the state House of Representatives in 2000.
Now, each of the three South Florida counties has Haitian-American elected officials.
The importance of having even a small number of elected officials of Haitian ancestry, even though they represent a broader constituency than just the Haitian community, can’t be overstated, said Marc Lafalaise, president of the United Haitian-American Democratic Club in Palm Beach County.
“We have someone there who can advocate there for us,” he said.
Major political figures are courting Haitian-American voters.
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump visited Miami’s Little Haiti last year, calling those he met “unbelievable people” and promising to champion Haiti and its people. Barnett pushed for and helped orchestrate the visit. He said the campaign took pains to make sure the visit received extensive coverage in Haitian community media outlets.
Democrat Hillary Clinton also stopped in Little Haiti. She was a constant visitor to South Florida during the general election campaign, but her Little Haiti appearance wasn’t until seven weeks after Trump’s.
In 2014, Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who was engaged in a neck-and-neck campaign for re-election (he ultimately won by just 1 percentage point) courted Haitian-American church pastors in Palm Beach County and met with others in the community, something Barnett said Scott has continued. The governor can’t run for re-election next year because of term limits but is widely expected to run for U.S. Senate.
The population is increasing.
The number of people with Haitian ancestry has increased much more than the growth of the overall population in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties in the past decade.
The Census Bureau estimated Broward was home to 116,818 people of Haitian ancestry in 2015, the most recent year for which numbers are available. That’s an increase of 24 percent since 2007. Broward’s total population increased 4 percent during that same time.
An estimated 77,785 people of Haitian ancestry lived in Palm Beach County, an increase of 43 percent from 2007 to 2015. Palm Beach County’s total population increased 9 percent during that time.
An estimated 127,189 people of Haitian ancestry lived in Miami-Dade County in 2015. That’s an increase of 18 percent, compared with the county’s overall population increase of 11 percent.
Population growth is one reason for influence. “The voter base is large. We are involved. We are beginning to get more and more involved,” said state Rep. Al Jacquet, D-Lantana. “This is a very valuable group of voters.”
Kevin Hill, a political scientist at Florida International University, said a critical mass of population is crucial to create political influence. That doesn’t just mean numbers.
“At the end, political power — at least getting elected to office — comes down to concentrations of people. Are you concentrated in an area?” Hill said, explaining that’s why Broward and Palm Beach counties haven’t elected large numbers of Hispanics. “They’re not concentrated. Haitians kind of are, certainly more than the different Hispanic groups in Broward and Palm Beach.”
Surin and Lucdwin Luck, a Republican committeeman from Oakland Park, said they sense more interest in getting politically involved as people of Haitian ancestry who have grown up in the U.S. feel more integrated in the fabric of society. Luck’s parents emigrated from Haiti; he was born in Fort Lauderdale.
That younger generation doesn’t have the same kind of desire to return to Haiti, which has had decades of political turmoil and natural disasters. Many have interests that extend beyond Haiti and immigration policy.
Louissaint and Barnett said the Haitian community’s voters are largely Democratic. If both parties think there’s benefit from working in the Haitian community, that gives voters the kind of clout they might not enjoy if they’re automatically seen as reflexively voting all of the time for only one party.
Louissaint said many Haitian-Americans, though registered as Democrats, are philosophically conservative, and church leaders who he said tend to be conservative have lots of influence. Voter registration records don’t break down voters’ ancestries.
Hill said he thinks it’s unlikely that Republicans can ultimately win large percentages of the vote in the Haitian community. But, even a relatively small percentage can make the difference between winning and losing in a close election.
Louissaint said the Cuban-American community provides a model for Haitian-Americans.
“People can’t wait to see how far the Haitian community is going to go,” Louissaint said. “It can be done. We can cross over. I’m very confident. You have a generation of Haitian leaders growing up that pretty soon I am quite certain we are going to make a difference, not just in South Florida, but throughout the country.”
Haitian-American elected officials
South Florida voters have elected Haitian-Americans to different offices, including local governments, the judiciary and the state Legislature. The list includes:
Broward County: County Judge Florence Taylor Barner; Miramar Commissioner Darline B. Riggs; North Lauderdale Commissioner Samson Borgelin.
Palm Beach County: County Commissioner Mack Bernard; state Rep. Al Jacquet of Lantana; Boynton Beach Commissioner Christina Romelus.
Miami-Dade County: State Sen. Daphne Campbell; County Commissioner Jean Monestime, who served two years as board chairman; several municipal governments.
Database editor John Maines contributed to this report.
aman@sunsentinel.com, 954-356-4550
