Taddeo Comes Closer Than Expected

In an underdog challenge to a veteran member of Congress, Democrat Annette Taddeo fell seven points short of ousting Republican U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, in a district where Republican voters hold a bare majority.

Taddeo, 41, born in Columbia and founder and CEO of translation and interpretation company LanguageSpeak, was a first-time candidate. Ros-Lehtinen has represented the 18^th district since 1989. The district includes Miami Beach, Little Havana, Pinecrest and the Florida Keys.

Ros-Lehtinen became the first Hispanic female in Congress when she was elected 19 years ago. Taddeo, who converted to Judaism in her 20s, hoped to become the first Hispanic Jewish female to do the same thing.

While Ros-Lehtinen was ahead in the polls by a large margin from the beginning of the race, more recent polls showed Taddeo closing in.

"We have a feeling that we're going to surprise a lot of people and have a huge upset," Taddeo said the morning of the election.

Some of this was due to the significant drop in Republican voters over the past two years in District 18, where the Republican edge dropped from 23,202 voters to 1,730.

Taddeo hoped her belief that the U.S. government should encourage Cuban families to visit Cuba and allow them to help their island relatives financially would sway older Cuban voters, a largely Republican demographic.

But it's the newly-registered Cuban youths that make up the greatest difference in the political divide of the Cuban community.

"I think this whole election is a generational change election," Taddeo said before the vote.

Taddeo's campaign was confident the district was ready for a Democrat representative, calling Ros-Lehtinen "a Bush rubber-stamp" who has voted in support of President George W. Bush's policies 86 percent of the time. In television ads, she referred to Ros-Lehtinen and Bush "two peas in a pod."

Taddeo said her first priority in office would be to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, as nearly one in six children in Florida lack health insurance.

"When I got into the race we had 700,000 kids in Florida without health insurance, now it's 800,000," Taddeo said. "So the problem has gotten worse. It's going to get worse if the economy worsens."

Taddeo supporters gathered at Soyka's Restaurant Café and Bar in the Miami Design District to watch election results on a large flat screen television, enjoying hors d'oeuvres and signature "Taddeotinis," a concoction made of vodka, passion fruit nectar and lemon juice.

Even with Ros-Lehtinen leading in the polls, Taddeo supporters appeared peaceful and confident.

"I worked at South Miami Senior High School," said Charlotte Plinden, 45, a campaign volunteer, "And most of the votes that came in were for Annette Taddeo. I am confident that she will succeed."

Despite the loss, Taddeo said she's proud of her effort.

"I ran a clean and fair race and that I talked about the issues," she said. "I worked extremely hard."

Gustavo Bolanos