Florida’s senate candidate Val Demings shifted her campaign focus to South Florida over the past week as she courts the strong South Florida Caribbean community to unseat incumbent Marco Rubio in November.
Last Monday, the Congresswomen met with the Haitian community in North Miami before heading north to Broward, where she met with other Caribbean nationals on Tuesday. In Broward, she made stops at Donna’s and Dutchpot restaurants, two of the popular Caribbean eateries in South Florida. She then took a tour of Island SPACE, the only Caribbean Museum in the region.
Making her case to unseat Marco Rubio, Demings made it clear to the gathering at Island Space that she was “running to win!”
“I am on a mission to make sure every man, every woman, every boy, and every girl, regardless of who you are, where you’re from, the color of your skin, where you live, how much money you have, will have an opportunity to succeed in a country that we say is the greatest country in the world,” she told supporters.
Referring to her opponent Marco Rubio, Demings berated him for the state’s housing challenges, saying Florida has an affordable housing crisis with “less affordable housing available than New York and California. “
On health care, she spoke about her belief that: “Every person living in the greatest country in the world should have access to affordable healthcare.”
Moving to social security, she pointed out that: “When we are all ready to retire, I want to be able to retire with dignity and respect, which means we have to do everything in our powers to protect social security and Medicare.”
Representative Demings also touched on gunned violence in the country and the right to choose, saying, “We can do better than that” and “we need a senator who can do better.”
Last month a poll from Center Street showed that Rubio (50%) was leading Demings by eight points among likely voters. But pollsters cautioned that there is still room for change before election day in November.
Center Street co-founder Jacob Perry was quoted as saying: “Marco’s still the favorite, but what’s interesting is that he’s sort of stalled out. He has a motivated base of voters locked in, but he’s not making any new pitch to draw in new voters.”
And even though Demings “demonstrates real strength in candidate favorability” according to Center Street, she still has gaps in “name awareness.” One plus for Demings is that she leads Rubio 37 to 29 percent among unaffiliated voters.
In underscoring her commitment and chances of winning, Demings told her Florida audience on Tuesday that she has outraised her opponent every quarter since putting her hat in the race. She said she took in $700,000 more in the first quarter, $2 million more in the second, and $2.5 million in the third. In the fourth quarter, Demings said she got $5 million more than Rubio, and in the last period, while Rubio raised a sizable $4 million, donors increased her coffers by $12.2 million.
According to federal reports Rubio raised $34,709,264.14 and Demings pulled in $43,014,889.63 up to June 30, 2022.
