Carline Paul keeps an honest-to-goodness Florida voting machine -- an iVotronic touch-screen model -- in the cluttered space that was once her living room. Gray-haired Haitian American men speaking lyric Kreyol and wearing baffled expressions let Paul hold their hands as she guided them through sample ballots.
"When you see D-E-M," she said urgently, mixing English and Kreyol, "Baton!" Hit it!
A few miles away, men waited in North Miami's City Hall for an audience with Josaphat "Joe" Celestin, the city's first Haitian American mayor. The credenza in Celestin's wood-paneled office -- displaying pictures of him with such Republican luminaries as President Bush and former senator Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) -- speaks as loudly as his rival's baton.
"We've got five new Republican clubs in the Haitian community in North Miami in just the last year," Celestin boasted. [...]
| Continue Manuel Roig-Franzia's registration-required Washington Post article "Shifting Loyalties Among Ethnic Groups a Factor"
posted in articles on October 12, 2004 5:36 AM | t (0)
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