Annette Taddeo: Florida’s First Latina Governor?

Her name is Annette Taddeo, and although to many it may sound unfamiliar, she is already beginning to make history in American politics. The 54-year-old woman of Colombian origin recently made her campaign official for governor of the state of the Sun.

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She is currently a Florida state senator for the Democratic party and will have as her first opponents Representative Charlie Crist and Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried within her same party. Later, she will seek to defeat the current president, Ron DeSantis of the Republican party, and recapture the Florida governorship for the Blues.

Taddeo is a trump card for Democrats. Being Latina in a state with more than 27% of the population and being a senator for Miami, the area with the highest population density, she could seduce the electorate and win back a seat that has been in Republican hands for more than 20 years.

Born in Barrancabermeja, Santander, Colombia, she also stands out as the only "non-white" candidate for the position. Crist, Fried, and DeSantis all fit into the same "Caucasian" box, so Taddeo can also win over sympathies within African-Americans or other diverse demographics.

However, she will have strong competition, as the polls have favored Charlie Crist. The latest SEA Polling query gives Crist 28%, Nikkie Fried 26% and Taddeo only 13%. However, the Latina has just entered the race and there are still more than 34% undecided.

Although she is often branded a "communist", Taddeo is one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the war in Colombia. Her father, an Italian-American, was kidnapped in the South American country by the FARC guerrillas, which is why the Taddeo family fled to the United States, according to the Tampa Bay Times . Clearly a non-irrelevant issue in a state full of Latin American migrants coming (largely) from Cuba and Venezuela, fleeing socialist dictatorships.

What are the pillars of the Taddeo campaign?

The Colombian has focused her speech on three thematic axes. Mainly, it seeks the unity of minorities, to be the candidate of Hispanics and African Americans. In his first message after confirming his candidacy, Taddeo insisted on the strength of the union and that it is not only to use Hispanic women (or women of color) as formulas on the cards, but to trust them to occupy the positions.

Next, the state senator also focused her candidacy on counterbalancing the anti-vaccine stance of the current Republican Governor. She stands as a polar opposite to the visions of the current state government.

Finally, Annette Taddeo also seeks to attract voters with an environmental speech.

What's behind the Taddeo campaign?

The Democrats have not managed to win the support of Latinos in Florida. The state (one of the most populous and with the most polling stations in the union) is a strong bastion of the Republicans. A Hispanic Democratic Governor could pave the way for Biden's re-election, where he will surely need allies. 

3 years ago, DeSantis defeated Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum by a small margin of 0.4%. For this reason, despite the fact that the Republican points in the polls for now, his electoral base is not huge and in a panorama of the Democratic presidency, something may happen that has not happened in 20 years: the peninsula could become blue.