Rubio challenger hires former Obama strategist for Hispanic outreach

U.S. Senate hopeful Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.) on Thursday hired President Obama’s former Hispanic communications strategist, Freddy Balsera, in an attempt to improve his support among Hispanic voters.

{mosads}Recent polls have shown Murphy losing to GOP incumbent Marco Rubio with Hispanics, according to a report by the Miami Herald.

“Patrick Murphy is not going to automatically assume that Marco Rubio is going to run away with the Hispanic vote simply because of his heritage and because he speaks Spanish,” Balsera said in an interview with the Herald.

“Hispanic voters are quite sophisticated and informed. They’ve been paying attention to Marco Rubio for the past six years.”

A Univision survey of Hispanics last week found Murphy trailing Rubio by 7 percentage points. Almost 60 percent of the respondents also said that they did not know who Murphy was, compared to 94 percent who knew Rubio.

Murphy’s campaign said that Balsera will advise the candidate on media, outreach and communications.

Balsera praised Murphy’s effort to develop “great friendships with Hispanic leaders across the state” and said he plans to make “a very aggressive push at both the mass-media level and the communities level.”

The latest survey of likely Florida voters released on Tuesday found Rubio with a 2-point lead over Murphy, 47 percent to 45 percent.