Election 2008: What’s At Stake?

When News21 producers Don Duncan and Elizabeth Mendez-Berry traveled to to Miami in order to investigate shifts in the Latino community, what they found was that Cuban voices are no longer the only Hispanic ones in Miami politics.

As part of the upcoming elections there, local politicians are focused on campaigning in Colombian and Nicaraguan communities, as well as getting the requisite cafecito at the Cuban clubhouse, the Versailles restaurant.

They also learned non-Cuban Hispanic communities are more likely to vote Democratic than the Cubans - but they’re also much less likely to vote. The question is whether those communities will get motivated in time for November.

The two producers have put together an extensive multimedia story package, “Exiles and Immigrants” detailing their findings of the changing Miami political landscape. In addition to a comprehensive text report, the package features a video report, “New Voters, New Power,” that deals with motivating new citizens to vote. Also included are video reports of Miami’s increasingly diverse Cuban voters, as well as video snapshots of the city’s Nicaraguan and Colombian voters, and interviews with prominent Republican Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his Democratic rival and former Hileah Mayor Raul Martinez.