FL-SEN: In South Florida, a Democrat's pitch links abortion, immigration and freedom

HOMESTEAD and MIAMI BEACH, Florida — Debbie Mucarsel-Powell says her mother immigrated from Ecuador with young daughters in search of freedom and safety. The family was living on the heels of a military dictatorship, a period of instability and fear. Then and now, abortions remain largely banned in Ecuador, where an exception for cases of rape was instituted only in 2021.

Mucarsel-Powell is drawing on her own family’s own experience to reach voters in this state, home to a wide array of immigrants from Central and South America. The Democratic Senate candidate is urging voters to see Republican policies like the state’s new six-week abortion ban as undermining the freedom they sought in the United States.

Mucarsel-Powell has made reproductive rights a key focus of her campaign against Sen. Rick Scott, a powerful Republican who holds ambitions to lead the GOP in the Senate. Mucarsel-Powell is the first Latina to run statewide in Florida in a decade, and in a state where 1 in every 5 voters is Latinx, her success depends on her ability to stem GOP gains with that group here in South Florida.

Last month, Mucarsel-Powell held a meet-and-greet in Homestead, a more rural portion of Miami-Dade County where tree nurseries proudly fly flags from Latin American countries and where many voters swung for then-President Donald Trump in 2020. There, on a hot and humid afternoon, voters talked about abortion as an important but delicate issue for their circles of family and friends.



https://19thnews.org/2024/05/debbie-mucarsel-powell-florida-abortion-immigration-freedom/