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Politics
Black and Hispanic women running for office are shaking up Florida's political landscape
One of the nation's most diverse and divided states sees an uptick in female candidates.
Solving problems
For roughly 25 years, Susan Plasencia has worked for her family’s special events business in Central Florida, planning and staging large concerts and festivals, including Festival Calle Orange, which she describes as the “biggest Hispanic Party you’ve ever seen” along 10 blocks of downtown Orlando. Her brother, Rene Plasencia, a former high school teacher and track coach, served four terms in the state House.
Plasencia, who is of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent, says her work made her a de facto leader in the local Hispanic community: “People come to you and ask for help: ‘Can you help translate this for me? Can you help maneuver the application for a permit in the City of Orlando? Can you help me find out which representative that I should speak to on an immigration issue?’ ” she explains.
At age 51, she decided to run for the state House, aiming to flip from blue to red the seat held by Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith. Education issues are at the forefront of Plasencia’s agenda. She describes herself as a strong supporter of the state’s new Parental Rights in Education law, which restricts classroom discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade, and she’s been a longtime proponent of school choice.
Her Hispanic roots figured into her campaign narrative. A video on her website opens with her father, who, she says, “fought against Castro and communism” and immigrated to the United States with nothing but the clothing on his back. He started his own business, married her mother (who was from Puerto Rico) and raised a family in Orlando.
“I see America through the lens of my father’s eyes — a country of freedom, equality, opportunity and security,” Plasencia tells viewers, sharing concerns about record-high inflation, gas prices and shortages of products such as baby formula.
In the end, though, Plasencia says she wants her campaign to be about solving problems. “When I see that something is wrong in our community or I don’t like the way that it’s working because it’s not benefiting the people here locally, I tend to just go ahead and jump in to see what I can do to fix it.”
Campaign challenges
According to news site Politico, every U.S. congressional seat that Republicans flipped from blue to red in the last election cycle was won by a woman or a person of color — and the party is spearheading initiatives to build a more diverse bench of candidates. In 2021, the Republican State Leadership Committee — which recruits, trains and supports Republicans running for state office — launched the Right Leaders Network, aimed at recruiting and electing more women and minority candidates nationwide.
Former U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen — a Republican from Miami who was the first Hispanic woman to hold a seat in the Florida Legislature and the first Hispanic woman and Cuban American to serve in the U.S. Congress — lauded the presence of more diverse Republican candidates.
“The GOP has finally got the message, especially here in Congress, that we can’t be the party of angry white guys anymore. That was the model 20 years go, but America is changing, and everybody wants to be part of the solution,” she says. “They’re recruiting candidates. They’re holding campaign schools in minority pockets of communities. They’ll teach you how to go door to door, how to ask people for money, how to have a campaign plan, because often women of color have been shut out of these forums and campaign schools.”
Fundraising remains the “biggest stumbling block” for women of color candidates, Ros-Lehtinen says. “We are so used to, as women, to trying to raise funds for the Red Cross, for our kid’s school or the school band, but we’re not used to asking for money for ourselves, and so that’s been a problem,” Ros-Lehtinen says. The party’s aversion to taking sides in primaries also hurts women who are usually up against better-funded male opponents, she adds.
Candidates who spoke with Florida Trend say mentors also are important. Michael, the GOP state House candidate in Jacksonville, credits former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Florida, with helping her through the process. “She was the one that took me by the hand and was like you can do this,” Michael says. “We need one another as women; we need that encouragement.”
Looking ahead, Michael hopes to serve as an example to other conservative Black women that they also can run for office. “There are still some barriers to be broken because there are mindsets that have to change, but I believe that hopefully I will be a catalyst of changing that by allowing people to know that they can do it and to inspire other women of color — you can run as a conservative and you’ll be OK,” she says.
Motivating Factors
Patricia Russo, executive director of The Campaign School at Yale, says the initial increase in minority candidates came during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. “All of a sudden, all these women of color were excited about the prospect of the first African-American president of the United States and were taking time off from work and school to work on the campaign. They kind of caught the bug. That’s really when we started seeing this phenomenal influx of women of color applying to our school, being accepted to our school, our five-day intensive program, and it has just grown since then,” Russo says.
Another surge came after Donald Trump’s election in 2016. “We were getting all these calls from women who could not believe that Donald Trump just got elected,” says Russo.
Alex Sink, the former Florida CFO who ran for governor in 2010, is the founder of Ruth’s List Florida, which helps to recruit, train and support pro-choice women who are Democrats to run at the state and local level. She says the group also has witnessed a surge of women (and women of color) running for office since 2016. “We went from endorsing 41 women in the 2016 cycle to doubling (to 87) in the 2018 cycle, and what was driving that? I’d have to say it was Donald Trump. After that 2016 election, it was a huge wakeup call for voters all over the country,” Sink says.
In the 2020 cycle, Ruth’s List endorsed 107 women. Sixty-five of those candidates — including 31 women of color — went on to win their races. This year, Sink says she’s seeing the debate over abortion motivating a new generation of Democratic women. “Roe is going to be on the ballot this fall,” Sink predicts.
In response to the demand, Yale launched a one-day basic training program in 2019. “We wanted to create a whole new pipeline for these women who were new to politics. They weren’t ready for the five-day program, but everybody’s ready for the one-day seminar,” Russo says.
