home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=89TT2364>
- <title>
- Sep. 11, 1989: American Notes:Miami
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Sep. 11, 1989 The Lonely War:Drugs
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 31
- American Notes
- MIAMI
- End of a Bitter Race
- </hdr><body>
- <p> When Claude Pepper died last May at 88, the tenuous harmony
- among Hispanics, Anglos and blacks in his Miami congressional
- district seemed to depart with him. Last week Republican State
- Senator Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban American, won Pepper's old
- seat, defeating Democrat Gerald Richman 53% to 47%, after a
- race marked by ethnic calumny.
- </p>
- <p> Republican Party chairman Lee Atwater set the tone last
- June by declaring that since Hispanics account for nearly 50%
- of the district's voters, electing a Cuban American to the seat
- was his "No. 1 goal." Shot back Richman, a former head of the
- state bar association: "This is an American seat." For the rest
- of the campaign, the opponents bickered over each other's
- alleged bigotry. Spanish radio stations added to the nastiness
- by charging that a vote for Richman was a vote for Fidel Castro.
- Although Richman won a majority of black and Anglo voters,
- Ros-Lehtinen's 90% support from Hispanic voters gave her the
- edge.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-