KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) - Heriberto Ferrer doesn't want to vote for Donald Trump - but he said he can't rule it out, his open-mindedness forced by his low opinion of Hillary Clinton.
"I don't want Trump to win. Period," he tells a Republican volunteer standing in his doorway on a recent Saturday morning. What about Clinton? "Hillary no sirve," he said in his native Spanish, a phrase roughly translated as "Hillary is useless."
The 56-year-old construction worker is among many Puerto Ricans living in this working-class neighborhood just south of Orlando along central Florida's Interstate-4 corridor - perhaps the most valuable political real estate in the nation.
The recent explosion in Central Florida's Puerto Rican population should have benefited Clinton, whose party has been the overwhelming preference of Hispanic Americans in Florida and across the nation in recent elections. An estimated 1,000 Puerto Rican families are moving to Florida from the U.S. territory each month. Unlike other immigrant groups, they arrive as American citizens and become eligible to vote almost immediately in the nation's premiere battleground state.
Yet there are signs Clinton's popularity among this key demographic isn't dramatically better than that of Trump, whose campaign regularly embraces and promotes xenophobic rhetoric.
Just down the street from Ferrer's house, Amparo Vargas takes a break from weeding her garden to share concerns about both White House contenders.
"She's a liar," Vargas said of Clinton in Spanish. "I have no trust in Hillary. And I think Trump is a crazy man."
Clinton's allies concede she has work to do with Florida's Puerto Rican community, despite signs her campaign is dominating Trump's organization on the ground. She and her allies have invested more in political advertising along the I-4 corridor than any other media market in the nation.