Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell talks to a Miami Herald reporter just before her campaign event at Sanguich Coral Gables, on Sept. 22, 2024. Alexia Fodere for The Miami Herald Far from her home in Nevadafilibet, the first and only Latina to...
Far from her home in Nevadafilibet, the first and only Latina to serve in the U.S. Senate shuffled into a Cuban restaurant in Coral Gables on a recent Sunday to talk about finally finding some company.
As waiters passed around Cuban sandwiches and croquetas, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto made the case to a small crowd of Democrats that it was time for Florida to elect a second Latina to the upper chamber of Congress — and why that candidate should be Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
“If you’re not in the room where the policy is being made, you’re going to be left out,” Cortez Masto said. “And that’s why this is so important that we have that representation.”
If Mucarsel-Powell defeats U.S. Sen. Rick Scott in November — and Democrats say her odds are improving — she would become the first Latina from the Sunshine State to serve in the U.S. Senate. It’s a distinction that would add to Mucarsel-Powell’s already-notable list of firsts: in 2018, she became the first South American-born member of Congress, and she is now the first Latina to run on a major party’s Senate ticket in Florida.
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The race could have ramifications far beyond Florida. Democrats are trying to hold onto an ultra-narrow majority in the Senate in an already-difficult election cycle for the party, but Mucarsel-Powell is an underdog against the wealthiest member of the Senate, who has already put more than $13 million of his own money into winning an increasingly conservative-leaning Florida.
Born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Mucarsel-Powell immigrated to Miami as a teenager along with her mother and three sisters. Speaking with the Miami Herald on Sunday, she recalled those early years in the U.S. — going with her mother to clean houses, sharing a mattress on the floor of an apartment, working a minimum wage job when she was 15 years old.
It was hard, she said, but still better than life in Ecuador.
“I remember feeling secure and safe in the sense that we could make it — that if you worked here in the United States and you worked really hard, you could make it. And I started seeing that progress,” Mucarsel-Powell said.
“Freedom” is the central message of Mucarsel-Powell’s Senate bid. As she enters the final weeks of her campaign to defeat Scott, Mucarsel-Powell is telling voters that Republican policies, like Florida’s six-week abortion ban, are an affront to the fundamental liberties that immigrants like her came to the U.S. for in the first place.
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Mucarsel-Powell argues that decades of Republican control in Florida have created an affordability crisis in the state and denied a growing number of Floridians the chance to live with dignity and security. She says the GOP’s lax attitude on gun control has made the state and country less safe, recounting how her father was gunned down in Ecuador nearly 30 years ago. She hopes the message will resonate in Florida, where tragedies like the Pulse Club and Parkland massacres have forever scarred communities and torn families apart.
“When you come here and you see what you have, you are so patriotic,” she told the Herald. “Like, you’ll do anything to protect that freedom. You’ll do anything to make sure that people don’t lose sight of what we have and what’s at stake.”
Mucarsel-Powell has come a long way since her teenage years as a new arrival in Miami. Formerly associate dean at Florida International University — a job that involved a lot of fundraising — she won a South Florida congressional seat in 2018, defeating former two-term U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo by less than one percentage point in an election year that saw Democrats win back control of the U.S. House.
But her stint in Washington was short-lived. She lost reelection just two years later to former Miami-Dade County Mayor and current U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez — a defeat that Scott and his allies like to point to as evidence that voters have already rejected Mucarsel-Powell once before.
It’s unclear if she’ll fare much better this time around than she did four years ago. Florida’s shifting political dynamic has favored Republicans in recent years, GOP voters now vastly outnumber registered Democrats and Mucarsel-Powell has only raised a fraction of the money that former U.S. Rep. Val Demings had at this point in her unsuccessful bid against U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio in 2022.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — the party’s Senate campaign arm — has yet to make the kind of investment in Mucarsel-Powell’s race that would signal that the party is serious about unseating Scott.
A spokesperson for the DSCC did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment, though the committee’s chairman, U.S. Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, held out the possibility last week that the party could begin to pump more money into the race. Two national Democrats familiar with the party’s plans said they expect the DSCC to make a late investment in Florida in the coming weeks.
Democrats see in Mucarsel-Powell a chance to right the political ship after a rough run of elections in Florida. The 2018 midterms saw the ouster of longtime Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and the rise of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. In 2020, former President Donald Trump carried Florida for a second time in a row, while Democrats lost two key South Florida U.S. House seats — including the one held by Mucarsel-Powell.
The 2022 elections were even more alarming for Democrats, with DeSantis and Rubio winning reelection by double-digit margins and carrying Miami-Dade — a left-leaning, majority-Hispanic county of roughly 2.7 million people that Democrats have long relied on to help deliver statewide wins in Florida.
Joshua Karp, a Democratic consultant who has worked on campaigns in Florida for more than a decade, said that having Mucarsel-Powell — a Miamian and Latina — on the ballot could help Democrats bounce back in South Florida after their recent political drubbings in the state.
“Debbie represents a totally unique approach,” said Karp, who worked on Mucarsel-Powell’s losing reelection campaign in 2020. “The idea is: let’s go solve the problem with Latino voters in South Florida first and let’s have a South Florida-first campaign. This is a very different kind of candidacy and a different kind of campaign.”
American DreamSpeaking on Sunday at Sanguich in Coral Gables, Nevada Sen. Cortez Masto urged Democrats to run through the tape in the Senate election, telling them that they can “sleep after the election.”
“It’s much bigger than just your community,” she said.
Jose Parra, a Democratic strategist and former aide to the late-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said that Mucarsel-Powell “represents the new generation” of Florida Democrats — a Latina and an immigrant who understands the Hispanic electorate and can speak effectively to key issues like reproductive rights and gun control.
“She understands very well what it means to come to this country and forge her own future. Her story is that of the American Dream,” said Parra.
On paper, Scott looks to many Democrats like an easy opponent to beat. He only narrowly won his Senate seat six years ago, defeating Nelson by 10,033 votes. Public polls show his favorability among Floridians deep underwater, and he has managed to irk even members of his own party on multiple occasions.
Yet both Democrats and Republicans say that Scott is more likely than not to prevail. Some polls show Mucarsel-Powell coming within striking distance of Scott, though the former governor maintains a consistent lead.
While Mucarsel-Powell has outpaced Scott in fundraising, Scott has more than made up for it by either loaning or giving his own campaign more than $13.5 million since last year. He’s used that money to air months worth of TV and digital ads, in both English and Spanish, accusing Mucarsel-Powell of being a socialist and proclaiming that he is a bulwark against encroaching radical leftism.
While Mucarsel-Powell has repeatedly rejected the socialist moniker, it can be hard to shake off in South Florida, where many residents have fled left-wing governments in Latin America. And Democrats are aware of just how difficult Scott’s ability to blanket the airwaves can be to overcome.
“The Achilles’ heel for anyone running against Rick Scott is the almost-unlimited funds he can raise to finance his campaigns,” Parra said. “Scott has been spending a lot more on political advertisements.”
Democrats say there are still reasons for them to be optimistic. Unlike 2018, when Scott first won his Senate seat, this year’s contest aligns with a presidential election, which tends to mean higher Democratic voter turnout. Floridians are also poised to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would override the state’s six-week abortion ban and guarantee abortion access up until fetal viability or when deemed medically necessary.
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Democrats are hoping that proposal could help boost their candidates — including Mucarsel-Powell — in November. Scott has said that he would have signed Florida’s six-week abortion ban into law if he were still governor, though he has also expressed support for easing the state’s current restrictions and capping abortion access at 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Parra said that Scott’s position on abortion rights could work out in Mucarsel-Powell’s favor.
“When it comes to reproductive rights, she has much more credibility than Rick Scott,” he said.
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