A few weeks back I had the unique experience of a non-baseball conversation with Tampa Bay Rays’ manager Joe Maddon. We talked immigration and its volatile impact on Hazleton, Pa., his hardscrabble home town of 25,000 whose roots are anthracite coal and European immigrants. And we talked about the Hazleton Integration Project that he created to foster dialogue across a cultural chasm between newly arrived Hispanics and wary incumbents. We also touched on the political hot-button issue that is immigration reform. (He’s hardly averse.) And, yes, the fact that his team of Hispanics, Anglos and African-Americans was a diversity microcosm did come up.
What surprised him was a diversity issue in this place he’s been calling his in-season home for the last eight years. A place with roots in Asturias, Spain and Havana, Cuba. A city with an appropriately referenced Boliche Boulevard. With City Council members named Yolie Capín and Charlie Miranda. With a soul that is Ybor City. With a legacy that is Al Lopez.
And yet.
It’s easy to take for granted, whether you pivot out of your South Tampa home during baseball season or you’ve been embedded in the community for decades, that diversity is more than a heritage and demographic given. It’s also a representative-government issue at the county level.
This Thursday (Oct. 3) there will be a Hillsborough County Commission workshop to discuss a new district system, one that would add another single-member district to the current four, leaving only two districts voted on at-large. There will be a public hearing November 6. Then it will be determined if a redistricting change will be on the 2014 ballot. The key catalyst is County Commissioner Les Miller, who has been making the case, one that didn’t get enough traction last year, that commissioners representing fewer constituents–about 70,000 fewer–would make for more responsive government. It’s a case with obvious merit.
But no less important, it would increase chances for an Hispanic commissioner. And, no, this is not some pandering ploy to gin up Democratic votes or put the token card in play. This is a concession to reality and more meaningful representative government.
Currently, there are no Hispanic commissioners–in a county that is one quarter Hispanic, which amounts to 300,000 residents. Nearly a third of the 200,000 Hillsborough County School District students are Hispanic. About half of the Catholic churches in the diocese that includes Hillsborough provide Mass in Spanish. Approximately 15 percent of registered voters are Hispanic.
Census figures further underscore the ongoing pattern. The number of Hispanics immigrating to this county increased more than 200 percent from 1990 to 2010. More than 20,000 Cubans alone have moved into Hillsborough within the past decade. The future, manifestly, is now.
Ironically, we are an area that annually celebrates the mythical pillaging of José Gaspar, glories in the historic visitation of José Martí , venerates the memory of Cuban lectors and cigar rollers and routinely sponsors Hispanic Heritage galas, festivals, leadership classes and even essay-and-poster contests. But we are also an area that is still challenged by the very concept of elected Hispanic political leaders at the county level. In 2013, in Hillsborough County, Florida, that is not acceptable. That has to change. Joe Maddon would agree. We need to keep hearing more from Les on district changes.
Buena suerte, Sr. Miller.