The August 24 Florida primary was an historic opportunity for Haitian-Americans to enter national level politics in the United States.  Representative Kendrick Meeks (D) vacated his Congressional seat in District 17, home to the biggest concentration of Haitian-Americans in the country, to run for the Senate.  Four Haitian-American candidates emerged as candidates for the District 17 Democratic primary.  While their enthusiasm was admirable, several analysts (myself included) warned that if four candidates stood for elections, they would split the Haitian vote, and undermine the chances of a Haitian-American victory.  There were calls for them to come together for the greater good, and coalesce around one candidate with the most support in the Haitian-American community and the best chance to win.  We noted that our countrymen in Haiti needed the Diaspora support more than ever.  Unfortunately, the candidates were unmoved by these calls, and insisted on proceeding with their campaign.  As predicted, Haitian-American candidates cumulatively won the race, but split the vote and squandered this rare opportunity.

The division of the Haitian-American vote resulted in the election of a popular African-American candidate, Fredrica Wilson (68).  Frederica won 34.5% of the vote and is expected to win the November election in this strongly Democratic district.  Haitian-American Rudy Moise came in second place with 16.12%, and the three other Haitian-American candidates received 10.21%, 8.45% and 5.99% respectively.  In other words, Haitian-American candidates earned 40.77% of the vote -- enough for a comfortable win.  If there were only one Haitian-American candidate, it is likely s/he would have won by an even larger percentage as we could have consolidated resources and mounted an even strong campaign.

Prior to the election, on my This blog , I conducted four informal polls asking which of the four candidates had the best chance to win.  To be sure, my polls were unscientific; however, they very accurately that Rudy Moise would get the most amount of support in the primary among the four candidates.