María Elvira Salazar Republican nominee for Tuesday's elections

August 27, 2018

Maria Elvira Salazar says her Republican opponents could learn a few things about how to report events.

The veteran television journalist is the favorite to replace federal representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen as the Republican nominee in Tuesday's primary and, in response, her opponents launched coordinated attacks over an interview she conducted with Fidel Castro 23 years ago. "They have nothing, my record is very clean," Salazar said. "Otherwise they would have brought it out.

They had to go back 25 years. What about the last 15 when I've been on air at 8 p.m. Monday through Friday for 52 weeks a year? It's been 25 years, couldn't they come up with something?

Salazar has largely avoided appearing in public at the large Republican field while maintaining a double-digit lead in polls conducted by her campaign and her opponents.

She did not appear at a televised debate Tuesday night, saying that América TeVe did not have a defined criterion for who was invited to speak on the program.

During a campaign event Friday at Las Mercedes Adult Daycare, in southwest Miami-Dade, Salazar was a familiar face to a crowd of about 200 elderly people wearing red ribbons adorned with her name.

When Salazar asked how many of them were registered Republicans, about 75 percent raised their hand. "I've spent the last five months, since I ran, reaching the base, reaching the real base that is this," Salazar said, referring to older Cuban voters whom her opponents believe would abandon her if they perceive she is pro-Castro.

Ada Borees, a 75-year-old retiree registered as an independent, plans to vote for Salazar in the general election if she wins the primary. "She is talking about Cuba. People here appreciate that," Borees said. "I don't like [Donald] Trump, but I like María." Voters like Borees will be key for Salazar if she wants to flip a district that voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump by more than 19 percentage points.

For years, Ros-Lehtinen was able to win reelection comfortably by appealing to independent voters and some Democrats, although election forecasts have largely indicated that Democrats will lose the seat in November. But first Salazar must defeat a large Republican field full of underfunded candidates like Bettina Rodríguez Aguilera, former Doral councilwoman who has claimed she boarded a spacecraft with blonde extraterrestrials, and quixotic candidates like Stephen Marks, former Republican operative who spent thousands of dollars on ads attacking Salazar, only to abandon the race at the last minute and endorse Democrat Donna Shalala.

Salazar said she hasn't heard much about extraterrestrials in the campaign, but that anyone can freely vote for whoever they want. "My opponents? It's strange, but we are in a very free country, which is what I love," Salazar said. "You vote for whoever you want, you register in the party you want and if they want to band together against me, let the voters decide".

Besides the interview with Castro, in which her opponents say she was too effusive with the Cuban dictator, Salazar said the second opportunity in her television career was an on-camera interview with right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet that, she argued, demonstrates her journalistic independence and tenacity.

She said that older Cuban voters she speaks with about respecting the need for a free press came from a place where that doesn't exist. "I have interviewed the two most important dictators of the 20th century in America," Salazar said. "When I was able to get that interview with Fidel, I was praised, I was congratulated a lot for being able to sit in front of him and ask him difficult questions".

She said Marks's attack ads were edited in a "malicious manner" and that he misinterpreted her comments on Fox News after Castro's death, in which she praised President Barack Obama's efforts to restore relations with Cuba.

Her biggest rival, former Miami-Dade commissioner Bruno Barriero, has repeated Marks's attacks in campaign advertisements.