Florida Senator Mel Martinez has left the US Senate amid intra-party conflict over immigration. As he leaves politics, his fellow Cuban Americans leave the GOP.
“Forty-two years ago, I arrived in this great country,” Martinez said during an impassioned 2004 campaign speech. “I was fifteen…I arrived alone, but with faith in God and the hope to be able to live in freedom.” Now, Martinez has resigned before fulfilling his six-year term perhaps ironically due to his lack of freedom within his party.
Martinez, an Orlando injury lawyer, rose from an obscure non-partisan county-level administrator to national politics. He co-chaired George W. Bush’s 2000 Florida campaign, then served as Bush’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In 2004, he became the first Cuban American to serve in the Senate, with the help of loyal Cuban-American Republicans in Florida.
During his brief tenure, he clashed with his party’s base while the GOP grappled with losing Hispanic voters, especially over the immigration issue. Martinez has sided with the pragmatic wing of his party on immigration, favoring the McCain-Kennedy proposals—offering a pathway to citizenship that the Bush White House also embraced. After Republicans suffered losses in 2006, President Bush recommended him as national party chairman. Martinez took that position after a half-hearted reception by the RNC and resigned about a year later. The White House recommendation was intended to reach Hispanics and to retain the Cuban-American following that many feared slipping away.
“The Republican Party is of two minds when it comes to Hispanics,” says George Gonzalez, a political scientist at Miami University. “There’s the Martinez, Bush, and Rove Republicans who want to make inroads into the Hispanic community. Then there’s those who demonize Hispanics, using jargon that targets illegal immigrants, who hope to secure working class white votes.”
The 2008 exit polls show Hispanics gravitating further towards the Democratic Party. Florida, had been the anomaly in this trend--Bush carried 56% of the Latino vote in Florida in 2004 and 78 percent of the state’s Cuban Americans—but 2008 registration records show Democrats outpacing Republicans (513,252 to 445,526) and Obama was the first Democrat to win Florida’s Hispanic vote since 1980.
Martinez addressed his concern for both immigration and the flight of Hispanics from his party on his final day in the Senate chamber. Speaking to the divisive language within the GOP, he warned “we’re going to be relegated to minority status.”
Governor Charlie Crist, a candidate himself for this same office in 2010, has named George LeMieux, a “secure our borders first” Republican.
For many, his departure represents a declining voice in the party’s big tent wing. “People can’t help but think with Martinez’s leaving that the more inclusive wing is losing,” stated Professor Gonzalez. “Cuban-Americans are going to be put off by his departure, whether it’s perceived or real, Martinez is a casualty of this battle.”