The presidential race could come down to this: To win in November, President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney needs the biggest swing state: Florida. For that, either man needs Florida's critical swing area: the I-4 corridor. For that, he needs the corridor's swing counties: Orange and Osceola. For that, he needs the emerging Hispanic base.
Which means winning over voters such as Ruben Perez, owner of several restaurants including YaYa's Cuban Cafe & Bakery on Semoran Boulevard.
"I don't know how I'm going to vote," said Perez, 45, who calls himself a fiscally conservative independent who was nonetheless once drawn to Obama and introduced the president at a Jan. 19 speech at Walt Disney World.
To get the vote of Perez, and enough of the other 180,000 registered Hispanic voters in Orange and Osceola, Democrats and Republicans are planning massive efforts this summer and fall with everything from Spanish-language TV ads to rallies to door-to-door canvassing in the heavily Hispanic neighborhoods off Semoran Boulevard in Orange and much of northern Osceola.
Democrats appear to have a yearlong head start. Obama's campaign, Obama For America, opened offices all over Florida and began a bilingual campaign last spring, while the Republican National Committee is just now gearing up, and the Romney campaign has not yet returned since running a primary campaign in the fall and January.
To Perez the matter comes down to two critical issues: the economy and immigration reform.
And those reflect the specific, very different strategies that Republicans and Democrats intend as leading edges in the battle for Hispanic votes.
"We have a unified message," said Pablo Pantoja, the RNC's Florida Hispanic outreach director. "It's the economy. It's what Hispanic voters want to hear."
Ruben Perez, who is half-Cuban and half-Puerto Rican, likes the Republicans' concerns over the economy, national debt, jobs and taxes.
"If you lower taxes, maybe it encourages Ruben to open more restaurants and hire more people," he said.
But to Perez and many of his customers, the Republican Party and Romney fumbled the immigration issue with hard-line, "kick-out-all-the-illegals" rhetoric last year.
Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith contends polls show the vast majority of Hispanics were unhappy with that rhetoric. "They [Republicans] know where they are: they are dramatically behind," Smith said.
Agreed Perez: "We've got to do something to improve immigration ... on that issue I don't agree with these ultras" [hard-line conservatives].
During a recent breakfast rush at YaYa's, those two issues clearly divided Perez's regular customers. Pedro Lopez, 74, a retiree, and Ceci Perez, 50, a marketing professional, are most concerned about the economy, though unhappy with Republicans' immigration talk.
"We need someone who doesn't just spend, spend, spend," said Ceci Perez (no relation to Ruben). "We need people to open markets, which will lead to new jobs."
They were outnumbered by customers including Eloy Cruz, 41, a barber; Lourdes Rivera, 57, a retired teacher; and Julian Perez, 18, a Colonial High School student, who expressed more concern for immigration. As Puerto Ricans, they are American citizens, so the immigration issue doesn't directly affect them. As Hispanics, they still take it personally.
"I know a lot of people who got deported," said Julian Perez (no relation). "They were good people, you know. And I guess that's what bothers me."
Exit polls showed that Obama won 57 percent of Florida's Hispanic vote in 2008 and 67 percent in the I-4 corridor, said Florida International University political scientist Dario V. Moreno.
He narrows down this year's race even further than just the I-4 corridor, to voters within Florida's 9th Congressional District, which covers much of the Puerto Rican-heavy areas of south Orange, and all of Osceola. YaYa's is in that district.
"I think it's going to be one of the 'ground zeros' of this presidential election," Moreno said.
Since the 2008 election, he said, Republicans may have put themselves into an even deeper hole, through several partisan battles, most notably over the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Puerto Rican U.S. Supreme Court justice; strong state enforcement laws against illegal immigration in Arizona and Alabama; and the DREAM Act -- Obama's proposal to create a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants.
A Jan. 24 Univision/ABC poll of 517 Hispanic voters in Florida showed 70 percent were more likely to support someone who supported the DREAM Act. Only 45 percent expressed confidence that Democrats could improve the economy, yet an even smaller percentage, 38 percent, expressed confidence in Republicans.
"I think the Republicans are entering Florida with a real, distinct disadvantage with the Hispanic community," Moreno said.
