MIAMI BEACH, Fla., June 3, 2009..........After an election year that produced the first African-American president, a South Florida congressional seat that will be vacant in the next cycle could see yet another barrier broken.
With U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek vacating his seat in a district with a large bloc of Haitian-American voters to run for the U.S. Senate, the race to replace him has drawn several candidates, including a few who are Haitian themselves, including state Rep. Yolly Roberson and former Rep. Phillip Brutus.
A third Haitian-American, Rep. Ronald Brise, has been mentioned as a potential candidate as well. The trio would be joined in the race by a crowded field that also includes Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami. The race is also expected to be joined by two members of the Miami Gardens City Council - Mayor Shirley Gibson and Commissioner Andre Williams.
But even with such a crowded field and a diverse electorate, one of the Haitian candidates thinks 2010 could easily be the year the first Haitian-American is elected to Congress.
"Obviously ethnic breakdowns being what they are, you have a large Haitian-American voting bloc, you have a large African-American voting bloc, you have a large Caribbean-American bloc," Brutus told the News Service last week. "I think the Haitian bloc is the largest one and whoever gets the majority of that will win, so it behooves us in the Haitian-American community to find a consensus and have only one candidate who can win."
U.S. Census data on congressional districts in 2000 did not include nationalities. The survey only divided residents into White, Black or African-American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, some other race, or two other races.
Respondents who picked African-American, some of whom were likely Haiti natives, were 56.9 percent of the 639,296 residents of the district. The respondents who picked "some other race" or "two other races," a category which could have also included Haitians, were 3.6 percent and 4.7 percent respectively.
Additionally, 34 percent of the district's residents were foreign born and 41percent speak another language other than English primarily, the same Census found. That's why a Haitian-American in Congress is long overdue, Brutus said.
"I hate to sound so originalistic...or even (like) an ethnicist in a way because we're all Americans, but the reality is the Haitian population being so large deserves a shot at a seat in Congress," Brutus said. "We've lost races here in 2005, 2006, 2007 that we shouldn't have lost, in communities where we are the majority, because of division and because of economic difficulties. We've lost races because people got paid to just lie and spread rumors and propaganda, knowing that you're not raising the money to counter it because the community is poor."
However, Brutus said times are changing. Citing three local elections this year in which Haitian candidates prevailed or ended up in a run-off, Brutus said that the Haitian-American community in South Florida may be ready now to fully assert itself politically. Brutus said elections for seats that Haitian-Americans have been previously unable to win are not as steep a climb because "even though the same folks tried to spread the same mud," the Haitian community has smartened up.
"What we've learned is that we've got to be united, we've got to just not listen to the garbage," he said. "Being divided, specifically being divided by folks who are brokering time on radio to pay their bills and live their lives, does not really do anything for the suffering masses who are facing unemployment and mortgage meltdowns, foreclosure, crime, HIV, bad schools, you name it. They realize 'look, we voted against the Haitian candidates because you guys told us so, and four year later, we're still where we were or worse.' And the person they told us to vote for didn't do diddly-squat for us."
One of Brutus' primary opponents - and his former wife - disagreed that the Haitian community needed to focus on just one of its candidates to elect a U.S. representative.
"This is America," said Rep. Yolly Roberson, D-Miami. "America doesn't hand anything to you on a silver platter. Anyone in this race is going to have to work hard to make sure that the voters of district 17 know their positions and that they present themselves as the best person for the job."
But electing a Haitian-American to Congress would have immediate and long-term positive impacts for the community, Brutus said. A Haitian-American member of Congress would be able to push for more engagement with the country and the entire Caribbean region, he said.
The easiest way for any of that to happen, Brutus said, was if the Haitian community eventually united behind a single candidate. But it has to be one who can win more than just Haitian votes, he said.
"Obviously the Haitian vote is big, but you're not a Haitian running in a Haitian election," he said. "You're a Haitian-American who has a base of voters who are thirsty for representation, but you always have to have an appeal to other folks. The Haitian community is your base. It's a trampoline from which to jump. But as you jump, you need to fire your engine and fly higher and to do that, you need to grab the other communities and clear the hurdle."
Roberson said she did not plan to make her ethnicity central to her campaign for Congress.
"I have a different view on it," Roberson said. "Despite my accent, I don't think of myself just as a Haitian. I think of myself as a black woman running for Congress who happens to have been born in Haiti."
The Haitian community may not think of the campaign through a purely ethnic lens, Roberson added.
"The Haitian-American doesn't only support Haitian-Americans," she said. "The community has grown and made friends with other communities. People are not going to support Sen. Wilson because she's African-American and I was born in Haiti and vice versa."
Roberson added that her previous marriage to Brutus would not have as big an impact on the race as some observers have said. They served together in the Florida House from 2002 to 2006, she said, and both are lawyers who have been on opposites sides of each other in court..
"I truly believe when we got divorced, we got divorced," Roberson said. "The people don't care about that. You shouldn't be asking me what I think of Mr. Brutus, you should be asking the people what they think of us as candidates. This is a serious race. It's not everyday you have an open congressional seat. That may not happen again for 20 years."
Perhaps the most well-known non-Haitian in the race, Sen. Wilson, agreed, saying that the focus on the Haitian community's impact on the race is "kind of overblown."
"It's a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural district that has a lot of foreign-born residents," Wilson told the News Service. "Some happen to be Caribbean, some happen to be Bahamian. We have people from the Virgin Islands, a Haitian population, a Jewish population and a huge African-American population."
Wilson, who would give up a seat in the Legislature she would not be term-limited out of until 2012 if she is elected to Congress, said she was confident that she could appeal to all of the district's ethnic communities, not just her own.
"I've dedicated many years to speaking on their behalf and fighting for them," said Wilson, who is African-American. "You can't say I'm just running from the Haitian-American community. We've got too many groups for that. You've got to have a crossover candidate who can go out and make their case to all ethnicities."
Running for the seat as a state senator instead of a representative like Roberson or Brutus or a city council member like others in the race will help her cause too, Wilson added.
"It's basically my Senate district, except for the part in Broward," she said. "It's a carbon copy, a smaller version of my Senate district."
But Brutus is just as confident that the Haitian-Americans will seize the opportunity to send one of its own to Washington, D.C.
"I could see it in the horizon," he said. "It's like a rising sun. It's like 6 a.m. now and I can see the sun. But it's going to shine bright come August next year.."
--END--
06/03/2009
Full audio of the News Service's sit-down interview with Phillip Brutus is available on the News Service Florida website at http://www.newsserviceflorida.com/audio/06-03-09BRUTUSINTERVIEW.mp3
By KEITH LAING
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
Independent and Indispensable
http://www.newsserviceflorida.com
