ELECTION/GOP/HURRICANE/PUERTO RICO/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “In just a few moments and two tweets, President Donald Trump roiled Florida’s crucial elections, upending his party’s ongoing efforts to make inroads to the battleground state’s growing Puerto Rican population. Trump’s tweets Thursday [9-14-18] claiming that ‘3,000 people did not die’ in the hurricanes that hit the island last year and falsely alleging that the official death toll was part of a plot by Democrats to make him look bad were immediately condemned by Puerto Rican leaders, Democratic opponents and, in a rare breach, fellow Republicans in the state…The direct and swift rebuke from Trump’s Florida allies demonstrated the significance of the Puerto Rican voters in a state where races are often decided by slim margins. Republican candidates for months have been carefully courting the Puerto Rican community, hoping to prove their concern about the island’s slow recovery and win over voters who tend to vote Democratic. But the episode shows how Trump, who has an outsized influence on races in Florida and beyond, may not make it easy for Republicans to reach out to swing voters.”
–The Associated Press, “Trump Complicates Florida GOP’s Play for Puerto Rican Voters,” The New York Times online, September 14, 2018