On the trail in Florida

Odds and ends from the Florida campaign:

• Republicans, each working hard for a slice of the Cuban American community.

• Huckabee: Raul Castro should be indicted for the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown, and Los Miquis reports that in a visit to Miami’s Channel 41, he promises to allow Helms-Burton’s Title III to go into effect. That’s the provision of the law that would allow Cuban Americans to sue foreign investors in Cuba in U.S. courts if their investments touch properties in Cuba to which they have a claim. Presidents Clinton and Bush have acted every six months to prevent it from going into effect.

• McCain, with a late endorsement from Senator Martinez: Let’s go to Cuba “when Cuba is free” and find “that Cuban that came to the prison camps of North Vietnam and tortured and killed my friends. We’ll get him and bring him to justice, too.”

• Giuliani, apparently slipping, citing his mayoral record on Cuba as he works Little Havana.

• Romney’s son Craig speaks great Spanish, and uses it in a web video and radio ad in Florida.

Readers overseas might wonder why nearly all the election news from Florida is about Republicans. Florida changed the date of its election to make the state more important in the primary campaign. The national Democratic party responded by deciding that it will not seat Florida delegates at its national nominating convention this summer, and by telling its candidates not to campaign there – and they have indeed stayed away from the state.