Let the CHANGE begin!
19 Aug 2009
Sun Sentinel Broward Edition
By Anthony Man
POLITICAL WRITER
Fewer Jewish voters means political change
Moving households and deaths shrink Broward population
Jewish residents, who became Broward’s dominant political force in the last quarter of the 20th century and turned the county into a Democratic stronghold so powerful that even presidential candidates came courting, are dying and moving.
The resulting decrease in the Jewish population — down 23 percent, to 206,700, from 1997 to 2008 — along with an increase in the number of residents with Hispanic and Caribbean backgrounds augurs big political change in coming years. And the transition, said Florida International University political science professor Kevin Hill, “will not be pretty. People do not just go quietly into the night in politics.”
Today in Broward, half the members of Congress, state legislators and county commissioners are Jewish, as are most of the county Democratic Party’s top officers. The demographic makeup of the county’s political leadership undoubtedly will change, Hill and other experts said, but the big question is how fast.
“The 2012 elections are really going to be watershed elections when it comes to the political makeup of this county,” said state Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale. “When the census numbers come out and it shows us as a majority-minority county, then you’re going to see the minority communities — and not just black, but Hispanic and others — really start to flex their political muscle.”
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