If Florida voters come out in support of Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, 53, on November 5, she will be the first Latina immigrant to hold a seat in the US Senate. Born in Ecuador, she arrived in her adopted country at the age of 14 and her first job was working in a donut store.
With the Democratic Party, she sat in Congress between 2019 and 2021 but failed to be reelected. Now, after winning the Democratic primary with a big lead on August 20, she will square up against Republican millionaire Rick Scott, senator and former governor of the Sunshine State. He has been a favorite in the polls until now, but Mucarsel-Powell is closing the gap.
The murder of Mucarsel-Powell’s father in Ecuador shaped her career, and fighting for gun control is one of her main campaign promises. Women’s reproductive rights, the extension of Medicare and lower insurance rates are other issues close to her heart.
Question. What is the Kamala Harris effect on your campaign?
Answer. The vice president’s nomination has greatly energized voters in the State of Florida and across the country. People are rejecting the extreme politics that we got during the Donald Trump Administration. Senator Rick Scott has used the same type of extremist tactics to bombard and confuse voters, specifically Latino voters, with misinformation.
Q. Trump won in Florida in 2016 and in 2020. The governor, Ron DeSantis, is also a Republican, and Senator Rick Scott is ahead in the polls. The Democratic Party has a challenge on its hands.
TO. We won in 2008 and in 2012 with Obama. In 2016, the state started moving in the other direction. When you have a swing state, it swings back, and that’s what I’ve been seeing in every county I’ve traveled through, both Democratic and Republican. People are rejecting the Republicans because they’ve crossed the line into extremism, and the people who live here are much more centrist and independent.
Q. Since the Supreme Court’s rulings on Roe v. Wade, there has been a succession of states passing anti-abortion laws. The legislation passed by DeSantis is among the most restrictive. What role do reproductive rights play in your campaign?
TO. Abortion is central not only to my campaign, but to all the people of Florida. It is central to making sure that women have their rights and freedoms protected, and it is central to protecting democracy in this country. I am a woman. I have three children, two of them girls, and reproductive rights are central to their health and dignity. Latin American countries like Colombia, Mexico and Argentina have already lost the right to choose. When we have extreme laws, like the one in Florida, there are higher rates of violence against women and higher rates of maternal mortality. That is why those countries passed those laws, because they are more conservative. In Florida we are already hearing stories of women who are being told by doctors that they cannot help them even though the fetus is not developing and the pregnancy is putting their health at risk. A few weeks ago, a woman in Miami lost a lot of blood and almost died because of that law.
Q. One of your initiatives as a congresswoman was to extend the eligibility of the Medicare public health program. What are the challenges facing public health today and what policies are you proposing?
TO. My mother lives with me. I watched her work 12 hours a day, in two jobs, to be able to pay for the benefits that are included in Medicare – Social Security. And what the Republicans, including Rick Scott, are proposing is its elimination. In Congress, I put forward a bill to expand Medicare coverage for seniors. We need to look at how to expand that coverage and lower drug prices. In Congress, we worked hard to allow Medicare to negotiate with the drug companies. Rick Scott wants to eliminate negotiation, which would mean that people who have diabetes, instead of paying $35 a month would pay up to $500. The challenge is to stand up to those companies and facilitate access to these important medicines, especially for Latinos, who have higher rates of diabetes than other groups.
Q. The budget is a determining factor in a campaign. In your case, you are facing a candidate who is a millionaire and self-financing while you depend on donations. Does that give him the upper hand?
TO. It becomes more difficult. To win races in this country you have to have a lot of money. And there are no limits here. I am up against a politician who has a lot of money and in the United States, money dictates political communication. That includes a lot of misinformation and unfounded attacks. So those are the challenges I face. But voters have been supporting me with contributions of $5, $10, $20 and I’ve raised almost $15 million. Florida knows Rick Scott. He’s been here 15 years, and no amount of funding is going to help him at this point because his record is so toxic to the people of Florida.
Q. Your father was shot and killed so it’s no surprise that the issue of gun control is especially important to you.
TO. I was 24 and getting my master’s degree when I got a call to tell me that my father had been shot dead in Ecuador. That call changed my life and also that of my family. I changed direction and wanted to work to protect our communities from violence and to get more justice. In countries in Latin America, you lose loved ones and nothing happens. There is no justice. We don’t have a strong judicial system like in the United States. I have met too many families who have lost loved ones to guns.
I worked at the Gifford Foundation to educate our communities and attract investment to reduce violence. There is a law that we have not yet passed that does not prevent people from buying their own gun, but requires background checks. In this country, the leading cause of death for Latino youth between the ages of 14 and 19 is gun violence. We have taken steps to reduce the level of cancer in children, why not take steps to reduce violence?
Q. Venezuela is experiencing an institutional crisis and you have called for an international coalition to force Nicolás Maduro out of power. What can the United States do?
TO. The US has taken the correct steps by supporting Maria Corina Machado, who has been at the head of the opposition movement, and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, recognizing that he won the July 28 elections. Venezuela’s opposition needs to lead that international coalition to help it take office and return Venezuela to the kind of democracy it had many years ago. We must include Spain and Mexico in that coalition as they are critical to what is happening. They have to get Maduro out of there. His is a narco-regime. There are many ways to put pressure on him. We have Russia and Iran helping Maduro. We have to put pressure on Russia to get back out of there.
Q. You came to the United States from Ecuador when you were 14. Adolescence is not an easy age for such a big cultural change. Did you suffer discrimination?
TO. Forks. When I first arrived in the US, I would hear people speaking with a Spanish accent and wanted to speak to them in Spanish, but many of them didn’t want to. They didn’t want to have anything to do with Latinos or recognize the Hispanic language or be proud of their culture and race. That was a shock. I didn’t understand why people would be ashamed to be who they were.
I had an accent too and it was made fun of. That happens to many [Latino] people who live here. But that is to underestimate us. If you get to know us you can see that we are a people who never stop fighting, we work hard, we want to contribute to the economy and we’re not looking for a free lunch. We want to have the sa
me opportunities as the other people who are living in this country. Now Latinos are the largest ethnic group and can determine the election outcome and I remind them not to forget that power.
Q. What strategy are you employing to win the Latino vote?
TO. Family is the most important thing for us. Protecting our children, giving them a better future. Having economic opportunities is extremely important. I am talking about a bill I want to take to the Senate that would lower the cost of insurance by 25%. I talk about education and the environment. I touch on the issues that are important to Latinos. We are not going to have everyone’s vote, because it is a diverse community and each person has their political affiliation, but if you talk to them about the issues that are important to them, they will come to us.
Q. The immigration crisis has been at the center of the Republican election campaign and there has been a succession of anti-immigrant measures, such as the pause of the Parole in Place program. Anti-immigrant sentiment seems to be growing.
TO. Obviously it has grown because extremists like Rick Scott have been using language that criminalizes immigrants. They’ve been blaming them for every problem we have. And that’s not the reality. Everybody agrees that we have to invest in homeland security at the border and support the patrol officers. But we also have to take legal steps so that people can come in and continue to contribute to the American economy.
We have to go back to the moment we had with Ronald Reagan, who was a Republican president who understood the contribution immigrants make. There are also immigrants who are fleeing violence and we have a law to give them asylum.
Q. The presence of Latinos in the upper echelons of politics and business does not match their numbers.
TO. We don’t have as much representation as we should have. That’s why I remind Latino communities that no one is going to advocate for them like I will, as someone who was born in Latin America and lived under a military dictatorship. I want to be on the foreign relations committee to give us a voice that we don’t have right now. I shouldn’t be the first Latina from the State of Florida running for the Senate: it’s 2024. But I definitely don’t want to be the last.
Q. Your first job was selling donuts. Your rival in the election also had a business relationship with the same product.
TO. I worked in a donut store for minimum wage and Rick Scott bought donut stores to give his mom something to do. That’s the difference between us. I understand what it’s like to have to count every dollar to buy your first car. It’s unacceptable that we live in a country that is still the most significant economic and military power in the world, and the largest democracy, and yet there are families that can’t pay their bills, or their education, or their medicine.
Q. After Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance campaigned in a donut store, you posted on X that you didn’t think he had ever walked into one because he didn’t even know the name of the types of donut. Did you?
TO. Of course I did. Devil’s food, my favorite, is chocolate fudge. Then there’s blaze, sprinkles and bear claw, all of which I loved.
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