More on Cuban Americans and the election

The Weekly Standard reports on the Republican party’s problem with Latino voters. In Florida, it seems that the GOP advantage among Cuban Americans is of diminishing value, as Cuban Americans account for a steadily diminishing share of the state’s Latino vote. The full article (“Hispanic Panic”) is here; an excerpt:

According to the exit polls, Bush won Florida Hispanics by 12 percentage points (56-44) in 2004, while John McCain lost Florida Hispanics by 15 percentage points (57-42) in 2008. In other words, between 2004 and 2008, the Hispanic presidential vote in Florida swung by 27 percentage points.

What explains that? Among other things, a decline in the relative strength of the Cuban vote, which remains heavily Republican. An increasingly large share of Florida's Hispanic population is made up of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Colombians, -Venezuelans, Argentines, and other non-Cubans. Indeed, according to Bendixen & Associates, non-Cubans now account for a majority of Latino voters in the Sunshine State. (Just 20 years ago, says Amandi, Cubans represented around 90 percent of Florida's Hispanic voters.) It appears that Obama also did noticeably better among Florida Cubans than John Kerry did four years ago, thanks to the younger generation of Cuban Americans, though McCain still received a huge majority of the Cuban vote.

Cuban Americans and the election

The most salient fact about last week’s election and the Cuba issue may be that Senator Obama won Florida without engaging in a bidding war about who would have the most hard-line policy toward Cuba. Indeed, ever since the primary election he made a conscious play to the part of the Cuban American community that dislikes U.S. regulations that limit family visits to Cuba.

Data from exit polls show that Senator McCain won a clear majority of Cuban Americans. At Babalu, they are doing a zip code-by-zip code demonstration of McCain’s majority in Cuban American areas of Miami-Dade. The exit polls themselves, cited in this Herald article, show that Obama won 35 percent of Cuban Americans:

According to Bendixen’s exit polls, Obama won 35 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Miami-Dade County, nearly 10 points higher than Kerry’s showing in 2004. Within that community, the generational difference was stark. For example, 84 percent of Miami-Dade Cuban-American voters 65 or older backed McCain, while 55 percent of those 29 or younger backed Obama.

Then there’s this from a LA Times story on the Obama victory and the Latino vote:

There were signs that a strong finish Tuesday by Obama did not necessarily help other Democrats down the ballot -- suggesting that this new ethnic coalition could have more to do with Obama himself than an overall shift toward Democrats.

Obama, for example, scored a dramatic win in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, beating McCain by 140,000 votes after an aggressive campaign to register minorities and get them to the polls.

But the GOP’s three Cuban American members of Congress in Miami-Dade all won reelection, beating well-financed Democrats who had hoped to ride Obama’s coattails. Two of those Democratic campaigns had even coordinated with Obama’s team on the ground.

A more perfect Union

There’s plenty of time to discuss the election’s impact on the subject of this blog. For now, here’s something off topic.

I had the opportunity to attend Senator Obama’s last campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia. We followed my son’s sense of when to hit the road, an as a result we arrived early and found a spot about 100 yards from the podium.

Manassas is in Prince William County, an area that divides the northern Virginia region from the rest of the state, or what a McCain spokeswoman called “the real Virginia” in one of the campaign’s most unfortunate, and self-damaging turns of phrase.

The event was held at an agricultural fairgrounds, in a field that stretched way up a hillside. The place eventually filled in with about 90,000 nice people, incredibly packing the entire hillside. The crowd was diverse and skewed toward younger Americans, probably because of the challenges of parking, walking to the site, and standing in an open field with no seating late into the night.

Long before the program began, I turned to a black man standing next to me and made an attempt at light humor, telling him that in about three and a half hours, the program would be starting right up.

“I’ve been waiting my whole life,” he responded.

I got the point.

We were in the Old Dominion, a former slave state that housed the seat of the 19^th century Confederacy and that met 20^th century integration with “massive resistance.” Two fine candidates were ending campaigns that were fundamentally about their own qualities and ideas, and about the country’s challenges. We witnessed the end of one candidacy that was not about race, but that in itself marked a milestone in our nation’s history, and would have done so regardless of which candidate won.

“A more perfect union” were the words that came to mind.

My friend in that field had been waiting his whole life, he said. So too, I suppose, had been Virginia, and the whole country.

[Washington Post photo]

CNN on the Miami Congressional race

A look at the Diaz-Balart/Martinez House race:

Odds and ends

• The Voice of America: “Democratic Support Growing Among Cuban-American Voters.” The Herald looks at high-dollar contributions to the Miami House races, and reports that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee “has spent $1.1 million against the Diaz-Balarts.”

• A new blog, “In the Americas,” from the commander of the U.S. Southern Command, Admiral James Stavridis.

• Comcast offers a 79-cent/minute rate for phone calls to Cuba, but apparently only for customers who sign up for a certain combination of services. That’s exorbitant compared to rates to other countries, but from what I know, it’s a bargain compared to other rates to Cuba. AT&T starts at 92 cents per minute, the Herald reports. A more skeptical view is found here.

• The President of Brazil is in Cuba, reportedly to sign a deal to allow Petrobras to explore for oil in Cuban waters, and to advance cooperation in soy farming.

Odds and ends

• Miami New Times reporter Francisco Alvarado predicts that both Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart will lose their seats – you can take the prediction or leave it, but the article is a good, detailed look at the campaign.

• Cuban American National Foundation Chairman Jorge Mas Santos, writing in the Washington Post, on the keys to winning the Cuban American vote. One key: repealing President Bush’s 2004 regulations that added restrictions on Cuban Americans’ travel to Cuba.

• A Russian military delegation is due in Havana this week, and Reuters reports from Moscow that assistance in air defense will be on the agenda.

• Fidel Castro on “Economic Illiteracy.”

• Venezuela’s El Universal looks at the difference between Brazil’s economic reations with Cuba, and Venezuela’s. Brazil’s president plas a visit to Cuba in January.

Musing about Obama

Even with election day ten days away, people are speculating about the impact of an Obama win, and in the case of two professors cited here, they’re speculating about the impact on Cuba.

Here’s a very original take from an American professor, Jose Buscaglia, who says of an Obama victory, “Nothing could be more threatening to the long-held views of the Cuban ‘comandantes’ and generals, as well as to the institutions they have carefully developed over the last half century to keep their country under the tightest control.”

And from Havana, a specialist in U.S. relations speculates about a possible dialogue between the two governments. His remarks (or at least the remarks quoted in this article) seem to assume that the talks would focus on trade issues. My guess is that that would be the least likely possibility.

Odds and ends

• Foreign Minister Perez Roque on the Cuba-Mexico migration agreement, and the prospect of returning Cubans who “try to use Mexico to get to the United States.”

• AP has an interesting account of a Florida man whose boat was stolen by alien smugglers. He tracked its movement by GPS (to western Cuba, then to Mexico’s Isla Mujeres) and recovered it with the help pf Mexican police.

• A new Russian Orthodox church was consecrated in Havana; it’s on the Avenida del Puerto, facing the bay. BBC coverage here.

• The embargo turns 48 years old. A Cuban media view of who went first, here.

• “When I am president, we are going to pressure the Cuban government to free their people.” --Senator McCain in Miami last Friday.

• Miami New Times’ blog on reporters’ conflicting readings of the Cuban American vote this year.

• Tracey Eaton’s photos and description of a Havana curiosity: the Interior Ministry’s museum on Fifth Avenue in Miramar.

Odds and ends

• The Herald profiles candidates in Miami House races: Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and challenger Annette Taddeo, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and challenger Raul Martinez, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and challenger Joe Garcia. The Herald’s endorsements: Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Martinez.

• AP: Consumers are facing limits in the amount of produce they are allowed to buy at farmers markets in Havana, “ensuring there's enough – barely – to go around.”

• Via Cubaencuentro, a Channel 41 (Miami) report that remittances to Cuba are up in the wake of the hurricanes, even as U.S. economic troubles have caused a drop in remittances to other Latin American countries.

Odds and ends

• Reuters reports on the shrinking supply of fresh produce across Cuba; EFE on conditions in Pinar del Rio, and Juventud Rebelde on Isla de la Juventud.

• A University of Miami study on Cuban American voters finds that only one in eight registered voters emigrated after 1980; coverage in El Nuevo Herald here, Herald column here.

GOP platform draft released

Here’s the section on Cuba in the draft GOP platform (it’s on page 9 of this 48-page pdf):

The other malignant element in hemispheric affairs is the anachronistic regime in Havana, a mummified relic from the age of totalitarianism, and its buffoonish imitators. We call on the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean to join us in laying the groundwork for a democratic Cuba. Looking to the inevitable day of liberation, we support restrictions on trade with, and travel to, Cuba as a measure of solidarity with the political prisoners and all the oppressed Cuban people. We call for a dedicated platform for transmission of Radio and Television Marti into Cuba and, to prepare for the day when Cuba is free, we support the work of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. We affirm the principles of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, recognizing the rights of Cubans fleeing Communist tyranny, and support efforts to admit more of them through a safe, legal, orderly process.

My guess is that the “dedicated platform” for Radio/TV Marti means another plane full of transmitters that will fly figure 8’s in the U.S. airspace just south of the Florida Keys, beaming its signals southward. Didn’t we buy one of those babies already, and isn’t it called “Aero Marti?” Do they mean a ship? The S.S. Marti?

As for the statement about the “principles of the Cuban Adjustment Act,” which is fanciful at its core, I wonder why something this obscure would be included in a platform. It could be that there’s a worry that those in the party who want to restrict immigration might want to end the “dry foot” policy, i.e. stop admitting Cubans who arrive without visas and with no claim to refugee/asylee status. As best as I can tell, that would be an unfounded worry.

Then there’s the call to admit more Cuban immigrants through “a safe, legal, and orderly process.” We now admit about 20,000 per year that way, plus about half that amount by other means. I wonder how many immigrant visas a McCain administration would want to grant each year. (The effect would be stabilizing for the “anachronistic regime.”) This is the only call for increased immigration in a platform that mainly treats the subject with seal-the-borders, anti-amnesty language.

Finally, it took me a while to notice through the gonzo rhetoric that this platform language says nothing, in terms of goals or actual policies, about acually bringing democracy to Cuba. There’s no mention of Cuba’s opposition. It anticipates Cuba’s “inevitable day of liberation,” as if that will just come about, dialectically I suppose. The embargo is described as an act of solidarity, not a tool of pressure. Talks with our Latin American and Caribbean neighbors is a nice idea, but the talks would be short because we disagree fundamentally, and they treat Cuba as we do China and Vietnam.

Not much new here.

At Cuaderno de Cuba, some comments from Alejandro Armengol.

Democratic platform draft released

The draft of the 2008 Democratic Party platform has been released, and includes the following section on Latin America and the Caribbean:

Recommit to an Alliance of the Americas

We recognize that the security and prosperity of the United States is fundamentally tied to the future of the Americas. We believe that in the 21st century, the U.S. must treat Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean as full partners, just as our neighbors to the south should reject the bombast of authoritarian bullies. An alliance of the Americas will only succeed if it is founded on the bedrock of mutual respect and works to advance democracy, opportunity and security from the bottom- up. We must turn the page on the arrogance in Washington and the anti-Americanism across the region that stands in the way of progress. We must work with close partners like Mexico, Brazil and Colombia on issues like ending the drug trade, fighting poverty and inequality, and immigration. And we must build ties to the people of Cuba and help advance their liberty by allowing unlimited family visits and remittances to the island, while presenting the Cuban regime with a clear choice: if it takes significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the unconditional release of all political prisoners, we will be prepared to take steps to begin normalizing relations.

Embargo follies

A senior McCain campaign official has lobbied Congress to ease Cuba sanctions, the liberal blog TPM reports.

John Green, the campaign’s liaison to Congress, was a registered lobbyist for the French firm (and Bacardi nemesis) Pernod Ricard. Green’s registration forms show that he lobbied for a bill that would solve a trademark dispute in Pernod Ricard’s favor, and he also supported bills to end the travel ban, and to end the overall embargo.

Well, at least someone is giving the Senator good advice.

Moving toward the absurd, the InBev/Anheuser-Busch story continues to kick around.

This story of a simple corporate acquisition took on a Cuba angle because InBev, which is acquiring A-B, runs a brewery in Holguin that produces Cristal beer.

This story on Miami’s Channel 41 asks whether the Senator has a “conflict of interest” in the deal. His wife Cindy owns an Arizona Anheuser-Busch distributorship and lots of A-B stock, and as a stockholder would stand to gain from a payout if the deal goes through. (Channel 41 says she would make $2 million, the Wall Street Journal says it’s less.)

The “conflict” is that Senator McCain supports the embargo, and his family income might soon be boosted by a company that does business in Cuba.

So, in the Channel 41 story, a Florida Democratic spokesman enters stage left to needle Senator McCain – he’ll restrict what you send to your abuelita, but he’ll profit from a communist brewery. And from stage right, pitbull lawyer Nick Gutierrez piles on, representing the former owners of the Holguin brewery, raising the issue of “trafficking” in his clients’ property.

Press reports say the Cristal operation accounts for 0.5 percent of InBev’s business.

Odds and ends

• The New York Times on the amazing variety of offerings left prayerfully by Cubans at the chapel at El Cobre, near Santiago. It’s the only place I have seen in Cuba with public displays calling for freedom for political prisoners.

• Last week the Arco Progresista held a meeting with the purpose of uniting the center-left segment of Cuba’s opposition. Some long documents came out of the event; a speech by Manuel Cuesta Morua, and a political statement that outlines eight tasks, including creation of a “pressure group” in Washington, regardless of who wins the U.S. presidential election.

• Russia’s deputy prime minister is headed to Cuba, reportedly to discuss energy projects including on-shore oil production, and refining.

• Will the InBev deal to purchase Anheuser-Busch be a problem for Senator McCain’s campaign because of InBev’s Cuba business unit? sYou might think so, reading this article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, or this one from an online journal of Marxist thought. Then there was this warning from Congressmen Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, issued before A-B agreed to the deal.

"Cuban-American glasnost"

David Rieff’s article in the New York Times Magazine, “Will Little Havana Go Blue?,” sketches the politics of the Cuba issue in Miami this year. As an example of what he calls the “Cuban-American glasnost,” he includes this quote from Giancarlo Sopo, a Democratic campaign staffer:

“My father was a Bay of Pigs veteran. He was in one of the first infiltration teams to go into Cuba before the landing. Later, he was Jorge Mas’s right-hand man at the foundation, a Ronald Reagan supporter to his core. My father died in 1999. He died frustrated because his dreams of returning to Cuba never came true. But I don’t believe my father died so that my generation could make the same mistakes. There has to be another way.”

But this quote from Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, where he discusses the Bush Administration’s 2004 restrictions on Cuban American family visits, really caught my eye:

“First of all, in 2004, we had realized that unrestricted remittances had become a cash cow for the Castro regime. As for the travel limitations, I would never criticize anyone for visiting family members. But that wasn’t the problem. What you had was a situation where people would come to Miami from Cuba, stay for a year and a day and then go back. And what this was doing was threatening the sustainability of the Cuban Adjustment Act itself, the U.S. law that gives Cubans who come to this country a special status as political exiles rather than immigrants.

“What makes Cubans different from Haitians who come here or anyone else,” Rubio went on, “if they go back and forth, that is to say, if they’re not exiles at all? In that case, why should Cubans be any different? The whole structure would have unraveled had something not been done.”

I get Mr. Rubio’s point, but I have to say that the only threat that I have seen to that “structure” of immigration policies – the Cuban Adjustment Act, the policy of admitting Cubans who arrive with no visa and no claim to asylum, the government benefits given to Cuban immigrants – was in the Senate twelve years ago, and it went nowhere.

To Mr. Rubio, if Cubans come to America and exercise their freedom to travel back to Cuba, that is a problem. Not because, as the Administration argues, it results in excessive flows of hard currency to Cuba.

The real problem is that it puts in question whether Cubans are “exiles” to begin with, and it threatens “the whole structure” of immigration policies toward Cubans. So rather than accept that some Cuban Americans view themselves as exiles and others as immigrants, and rather than contemplate a (highly unlikely) debate over those immigration policies, Mr. Rubio opts for limiting the freedom of Cuban Americans in order to force conformity.

Of course, it’s a false conformity, as anyone who has seen the Cuban American traffic in the Cancun and Nassau airports can attest.

The message seems to be, “I won’t criticize you for visiting your family, but I will use the law to stop you from doing so, because we’re exiles and we all have to act that way.”

[Photo of people waiting for arriving passengers at Havana’s Terminal 2]

Odds and ends

• The Herald writes about Senator McCain refusing a meeting with the Cuban American National Foundation that the Foundation tried to arrange alongside a fundraiser in New Orleans. Judging from the article, the action resulted in lost donations, and the McCain camp went on to attack the Foundation; it’s a “fairly irrelevant” group, according to a McCain spokeswoman.

• The number of joint ventures with foreign investors in Cuba has dropped from 258 to 234 since the end of 2005, Reuters reports, citing testimony given in Cuba’s legislature. Officials say that investment flows have increased as the number of businesses has dropped, but no figures on that were released. There are 24 joint ventures with Venezuela.

• El “nuevo huevo grande:” China’s news agency reports that a gallina guantanamera has hatched the biggest egg in the world, 171 grams. She survived.

• The historic center of the city of Camaguey, founded 1528, has been designated a world heritage site by UNESCO.

• The U.S. Interests Section hosted a videoconference on Monday between Willy Chirino and fans; they talked music and politics. El Nuevo Herald report here, Sun-Sentinel report here.

• Al-Jazeera’s English service did a long piece on the politics of Miami in the presidential election (YouTube here). The anchor seemed frustrated that he couldn’t just make a speech into the camera to link the plight of the Palestinians to the Cuba debate. So he took it out on his interviewees, Joe Garcia and Ramon Saul Sanchez, both very patient guys.

New poll on Miami Congressional races

A new poll from Bendixen and Associates shows tight races in two Miami Congressional districts: Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart leads challenger Raul Martinez by a 41-37 margin, and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart leads challenger Joe Garcia 44-39. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is comfortably ahead of challenger Annette Taddeo, 58-31. McClatchy report here.

Odds and ends

• A gay pride march in Havana didn’t get off the ground, as activists were detained in advance. McClatchy’s report says the event was “organized with Florida’s Unity Coalition” and did not have the approval of Mariela Castro’s organization.

• The blog of Rui Ferreira and Helena Poleo, both of the Nuevo Herald, is now Elblogaldia.com. And while you’ll have to go elsewhere to read about the intrigue regarding Los Miquis de Miami, it seems that anonymous, acerbic, informative blog has bitten the dust. Too bad.

• The LA Times’ sports blog on the Cuban national baseball team, ready for the Olympics.

• It’s not exactly the Lincoln-Douglas debates, but this video is part of how campaigning is done these days, in this case in the Miami-Dade Congressional races, from the Democratic perspective.

Odds and ends

• Cuba’s Olympic baseball team, preparing for Beijing, hosts a weekend series with the Santa Barbara Foresters of the California Collegiate league.

• Bring back “the Miami relatives” – Delfin Gonzalez, great-uncle of Elian, holds a press conference today to “denounce,” as the Herald puts it, two Obama advisors who were involved in the saga, one as attorney for Elian’s father, the other as Deputy Attorney General.

• “Senator Barack Obama made history…” – the U.S. Interests Section’s big electronic signboard’s June 4 message, announcing the results of the Democratic primaries and two other news items.

• Interested in taking stock of 50 years of Cuban socialism? Queen’s University in Ontario is announcing a conference on that theme next spring, and issued a call for academic papers.

New poll in Miami Congressional districts

A new poll covered in today’s Herald shows that in the Congressional districts represented by Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, a nearly two-to-one majority of voters favors ending restrictions on Cuban American travel to Cuba and family remittances, and slightly narrower majorities favor ending restrictions on all Americans’ travel to Cuba.

Older voters strongly favor current policy and younger voters support these changes, the pollster says – although in the summary materials (pdf) available on the Herald’s website, there are no numbers to illustrate this generational split.

The poll was sponsored by the Foundation for Normalization of US/Cuba Relations.