PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Mayor Bloomberg will become the first New York mayor to visit Haiti when his private jet touches down tomorrow in this Caribbean capital and he begins a daylong whirlwind tour.

While the mayor’s aides insist this is not about politics, Mr. Bloomberg has been careful from the moment he dipped his toe in the pool of politics to tend the city’s Caribbean community: He was still mayor-elect when he made his first foreign trip to the Dominican Republic.

Now he is keeping a promise he made in December to a Haitian church in East Flatbush called Croisade Evangelique des Pecheurs D’Hommes, or Evangelical Crusade of Fishers of Men, when he surprised the congregation by saying he was planning to visit Haiti. He got a sustained standing ovation. Some analysts say keeping that pledge could translate into votes next year.

“The Democrats can’t take the Haitian vote for granted, they are going to have to work for these votes or they’ll lose them, and that’s an opportunity for Bloomberg,” said the editor and publisher of the Brooklyn-based Haitian Times, Garry Pierre-Pierre. “It won’t be lost on the community that he is the first mayor to go to Haiti. Now Bloomberg will be able to say to them, ‘I see where you are from, and I can relate.’ That’s significant.”

There are some 500,000 Haitians in the five boroughs, according to figures from the mayor’s office; about 150,000 of them are eligible to vote and are probably watching the mayor’s Haitian overture with interest.

The Haitian community supported Mr. Bloomberg in the last election against Mark Green. It shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion that the Democrats will get their vote this time around, community leaders said.

“My impression is that the mayor is on top of things,” said the president of the Consortium for Haitian Empowerment in Brooklyn, Gina Cheron. “And his going to Haiti shows an interest in our well-being and it is, frankly, a nice gesture. He is trying to understand where we come from. I don’t want to say whether that will translate into votes, but it certainly can’t hurt the impression he makes in the community.”

Race in politics is certainly nothing new, though Mr. Bloomberg may be playing on a new phenomenon that shows ethnic divisions are increasingly following immigrant and native categories instead of traditional racial lines.

In New York the African-American population is declining while the African-Caribbean community grows. The groups vote similarly, but their concerns are different.

“African Caribbeans are more focused on immigration issues and how candidates related to their home countries,” said the director of the CUNY Center for Urban Research, John Mollenkopf. “African Americans are more in tune with what is going on in the city itself. Immigration is definitely having an impact on urban politics.”

When Mr. Bloomberg steps off the plane at Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince, he will set foot in a nation in transition. The violence that prevented him from coming as planned in January ended with the overthrow of President Aristide and the installation of a new government.

The streets he’ll drive will be as chaotic as ever. His motorcade will swerve around dusty dented jeeps and tap taps, small covered pickup trucks filled to bursting with passengers and painted with cheerful sayings about God and love and hope. But this July trip differs from a January one in a very basic way: Haitians are genuinely hopeful about the future now.

It isn’t just the end of Mr. Aristide that has them cheered; the international community has also stepped up to the plate. They just pledged $1.08 billion to help Haiti get back on its feet.

Prime Minister Latortue, who met with Mr. Bloomberg in New York earlier this year, said the money would be used to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, including beefing up a spotty electricity grid and poor roads.

“Obviously everyone is happier now that there is peace,” said Marcel Alphonse from behind the wheel of a tap. “The billion dollars is more than we expected. We have been having lots of visitors since Latortue replaced Aristide. We had the president of Chile last week and now the mayor of New York. It makes us think that maybe this time, if it isn’t unlucky to say, things will change.”

A knot of drivers and motorcyclists leaning against their vehicles in the Marche de Fer had also heard that the mayor of New York was coming, though none of them could say what, exactly, he would be doing in Port-au-Prince much less tell a foreigner his first or last name.

“It doesn’t matter, we welcome him,” said one laughing. “The more the merrier.”

Embassy officials here say Mr. Bloomberg will tour an elementary school, visit a hospital, and lay a wreath at the statue of former slave and rebel leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines – the man who created the Haitian flag by tearing the white out of the French colonists’ tricolor while declaring he was ripping the white man out of Haiti.

On a less ceremonial level, the mayor will meet with the president and prime minister and talk to officials about how to set up emergency systems in the wake of this spring’s devastating floods.

Deputy Mayor Dennis Wolcott, Jean Desravines of the education department, and the pastor at Croisade Evangelique, the Reverend Philius Nicolas, will accompany the mayor on the tour.

“It is clear the mayor is trying to connect with the Haitian community,” said the president of Brooklyn-based Radio Soleil, Ricot Dupuy. “He stands a chance to win some votes here.”