MIAMI - The hard-line immigration stances taken by the Republican presidential candidates this year have stoked so much anger among Hispanic voters that the candidates are focusing their appeals almost exclusively on the reliably Republican Cuban-American community.
The narrowing appeal to Cuban-Americans underscores how polarizing the immigration debate has become and how difficult it has been for the candidates to make the sort of inroads with other Latinos, who were key to President Bush's victory in 2004, when he won about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, the most for a Republican presidential candidate in nearly three decades.
A survey released Thursday by the Pew Hispanic Center showed a widespread exodus by Hispanic voters from the Republican Party, with 57 percent saying they are Democrats or favor the Democratic Party and 23 percent saying they are Republicans or favor the GOP. That 34 percentage point gap was just 21 percent in July 2006.
Facing that growing deficit, the Republican candidates have lavished most of their attention on Cuban-Americans - who make up 4 percent of the nation's estimated 46 million Hispanics but who register and vote at the highest rates among Latinos - and have paid relatively little attention to other Hispanic communities.
"The outreach hasn't been there to other Latino communities; I don't think it's been even as aggressive to Cubans," said Maria de los Angeles Torres, a scholar of Cuban-American politics who directs the Latin American and Latino studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "I think that they think the Latino vote doesn't really count unless it's a very close election, and that the cost of going after this vote is going to cost them more than it gives them, because they're calculating that there are more anti-immigrant feelings out there than pro-immigrant feelings."
The Republican candidates will address the broader Hispanic community tonight in a debate in suburban Miami sponsored by Univision, the first Spanish-language forum of the GOP campaign. The lone no-show will be Tom Tancredo, the Colorado congressman whose presidential bid is based on an anti-immigration stance and who has said he won't attend a Spanish-language debate.
In the Pew survey, Rudy Giuliani led among Hispanic Republicans, followed by Fred Thompson, John McCain, and Mitt Romney.
Despite the growing influence of Hispanic voters in the South and Midwest, most of the Spanish-language advertising in the campaign has targeted South Florida, home to the largest Cuban-American community. And most of it has come from Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who began airing a new Spanish-language radio ad in Florida on Friday and previously aired one featuring his son Craig.
Political analysts and Hispanic activists say the intense focus on Cuban-Americans is partly a reflection of the election calendar, which has Florida voting relatively early, on Jan. 29. They also say the candidates are aware that they could potentially face a chillier reception in other, less traditionally Republican Hispanic communities.
"If you are Mexican or Dominican or from 25 other nations and you get a call from the Romney campaign, it's going to be hard to respond to because of how he has used immigration - the same with Giuliani," said the Rev. Luis Cortés Jr., a Philadelphia pastor who is close to President Bush and heads a national group of Hispanic clergy. "As a party, they have dug a hole. And the only two that might be able to climb out are McCain and [Mike] Huckabee."
Louis DeSipio, a political scientist at University of California-Irvine, said whichever Republican candidate emerges as the nominee will struggle to come within 15 percentage points of Bush's showing among Hispanic voters in 2004.
"I think this is going to be a low year for the Republicans for non-Cuban Latinos," DeSipio said.
"By picking up the immigration beat the way they have, the far right of the Republican Party and the lead presidential candidates are alienating the voter base they had in the Hispanic community," Cortés said. "The word that has been used by the Republican clergy I talk to is betrayal by our party."
The result is a focus on Cuban issues and on Miami, where the candidates' aides say they have had a warm reception.
Most of the candidates have made pilgrimages to the city's Little Havana section and iconic locales such as the Bay of Pigs Museum and Library and the Versailles Restaurant.
"All the candidates, they promise freedom for Cuba - 'Cuba will will be free! Cuba will be free!' " said Manuel Martínez, 64, who was smoking a cigarette outside Versailles yesterday. Voters, he said, "get tired of it, but they don't have anything else to have hope."
Tony Cabrera, 65, a barber who was sipping a strong Cuban coffee from a styrofoam cup outside Versailles, said the neighborhood was leaning toward Giuliani. A block away, inside Sosa Family Cigars, owner Juan Sosa showed off photos he took when Giuliani visited his store in January and bought Dominican and housemade cigars.
"This is the heart of the Cuban community," he said, although it is rapidly diversifying with other Hispanic nationalities.
Giuliani has signed up a "Viva Rudy" team of supporters, which includes some prominent Cuban-American politicians in South Florida, and has released several statements blasting Castro.
Just Friday, Giuliani criticized a raid by the Cuban police of a church where dissidents had gathered.
"Unfortunately, this shows the true nature of the Castro regime," Giuliani said in a statement. "When churches are tear-gassed and teenagers arrested for wearing wristbands that say 'cambio' [change] the world should see clearly that the time for freedom has come for Cuba."
Romney has been among the most aggressive, releasing 21 statements on Cuba, many attacking Castro. He has run Spanish-language radio ads in Miami featuring Al Cardenas, the Cuban-American former chairman of the Florida GOP, who is heading his Hispanic outreach effort.
Thompson, who is being advised by a young Cuban-American political consultant in Miami named Carlos Curbelo, has appeared on Radio Mambi, a popular Spanish radio station in Miami. This morning, he plans to speak about his opposition to abortion at Iglesia El Rey De Jesus, which Curbelo called the largest Hispanic church in Florida.
McCain boasts that he has signed up the support of three Cuban-American members of Congress who represent Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and brothers Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart. And he says he has a good relationship with Hispanics because of his base in Arizona and his more moderate stance on immigration.
Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.
