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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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091189
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09118900.040
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1990-09-17
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NATION, Page 31American NotesMIAMIEnd of a Bitter Race
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.
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.