Races to Watch '08: Florida Republicans Have to Fight (Down and Dirty) for the Cuban Vote
It's a wonder the television crime series CSI Miami hasn't used the battle for Florida's 21st congressional district as fodder for an episode. Few Miamians can recall election advertising more vicious, dishonest or vacuous than the grainy manipulation of facts and images put out by U.S. Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his Democratic challenger, Raul Martinez.
Diaz-Balart, the panicked eight-term incumbent, got the negative attack sludge flying with spots that leave the impression that Martinez is a drug mafioso—just because he's briefly pictured as a local political boss in a 2006 documentary on Miami's cocaine cowboys. Martinez has responded by depicting Diaz-Balart being led away in handcuffs in 1995 because, the viewer is misled to believe, he took illegal cash—when in fact he was arrested for protesting outside the White House against President Clinton's Cuba policy. "As a Cuban-American, I thought this kind of ugly machismo had passed in our community," says Rafael Lima, a University of Miami communications professor. "The prospect of either one of these guys winning has begun to scare people here."
It's a sad denouement to what was supposed to be a watershed civic exercise for the Magic City. The close Diaz-Balart/Martinez contest—and the equally tight race in the adjoining 25th district between Diaz-Balart's GOP incumbent brother, U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, and Democratic challenger Joe Garcia—are two of this year's most hotly contested elections.
In large part, that's because they're testing one of the more enduring assumptions of U.S. politics. Since the Reagan era, Beltway Republicans have believed that as long as they presented their congressional candidates in Miami as Fidel Castro-hating freedom lovers, and painted opponents as Fidel Castro-loving freedom haters, the city would be their political beach resort. And until now they have been proven right: the Diaz-Balarts, as well as 10-term GOP incumbent U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, of the 18th district, have usually run unopposed. Meanwhile, Miami's hardline Cuban exiles became the most important voters in the nation's largest swing state; and catering to them has been rule numero uno for both parties.
But the Republicans failed to grasp Miami's changing demographics, including growing numbers of younger, more moderate Cuban-Americans and non-Cuban Latinos. Those voters care about issues besides Cuba, especially now as Florida confronts one of the nation's worst home foreclosure rates and the middle class struggles with Miami's low-wage economy. Since 2006, new voter registration is up 21% for Democrats in the 21st district, but only 2.5% for Republicans; it has lept 24% for Democrats in the 25th district versus 6% for the GOP. Just as important, independent voter registration has expanded 16% in the 21st and 18% in the 25th. As a result, Miami's three Cuban-American GOP incumbents are facing unusual competition, and the Diaz-Balart dynasty is under siege. If just one of the brothers loses on November 4, pundits suggest, it could alter the way both parties approach Florida. That in turn could even potentially lead to a revision of Cuba policy and the 46-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the communist island.
(See a video about Young Cuban American Voters here.
(See Pictures of the Week here.
(See the Top Races to Watch '08.)
The Cuban-born Martinez, who trails Lincoln Diaz-Balart by an average of fewer than five points in polls but has kept the incumbent under 50%, is a shrewd but controversial choice to take on Miami's GOP machine. From 1981 to 2005, Martinez, 59, was the popular mayor of Hialeah, a Cuban exile enclave adjoining Miami that is the heart of the 21st district. Hialeah, despite re-electing the Democratic Martinez five times, usually votes about 80% GOP in national elections. But Martinez's claim that Lincoln Diaz-Balart, 54, "wants to be President of Cuba" more than he wants to tackle South Florida's problems has struck a chord. "We have to start paying attention to other concerns," says Martinez, who won the Miami Herald's endorsement, "like the fact that almost a quarter of Miamians have no health insurance."
Lincoln Diaz-Balart notes that he sponsored a pending federal health care benefits bill for legal immigrant children. "If I was only concerned about Cuba," he says, "I would have been voted out of office long before now." And he insists his foe "was a flawed candidate from the start" because of Martinez's 1991 conviction on racketeering and extortion charges. The convictions were overturned because of jury misconduct, and Martinez later won an acquittal.
Ironically, a Cuba issue has given Martinez and Garcia a big boost. In 2004, as a gift to exile hardliners, President Bush tightened restrictions on Cuban-Americans' travel to Cuba as well as on the amount of remittances they can send to relatives on the island. But polls show most Miami Cuban-Americans oppose the new rules, which the Diaz-Balarts and Ros-Lehtinen back, and the Democrats are reaping the fallout. "Bush and the Republicans turned the private urge to stay connected with family back in Cuba into a public sin," says Garcia, 45, a Miami political veteran who, like Martinez, opposes the travel rules. "It shows how out of time and touch they are with this community."
But Mario Diaz-Balart, like Lincoln, denies any schism in that voter bloc and he points to a Telemundo poll this month that shows him leading Garcia almost 2-to-1 among Cuban-Americans. "The Cuban-American community is as unified as ever behind us," insists Mario Diaz-Balart, 47. That survey, however, has him leading Garcia overall by only two points, 43% to 41%, largely because Garcia, who is also Cuban-American, is 13 points ahead of Mario Diaz-Balart among non-Cuban Latinos, whose numbers roughly equal that of Cubans in the 25th district. For his part, Martinez holds a 16-point lead among non-Cuban Latinos in the Telemundo poll.
The Miami GOP's most tried-and-true tactic—branding opponents as Castro-coddlers—has also hit a brick wall this year because Martinez and Garcia still back the embargo and are old hands at Castro-bashing themselves. When Garcia held an April fundraiser that included Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, an embargo opponent, Mario Diaz-Balart called it proof that Garcia "aligns himself with left-wing extremists" with a history of "appeasing our nation's enemies." Garcia, an ex-director of the once hardline Cuban-American National Foundation, hit back with an ad pointing out that Mario Diaz-Balart's campaign took $80,000 from U.S. firms whose foreign divisions do business with Cuba in apparent violation of the embargo.
(See Pictures of the Week here.
(See the Top Races to Watch '08.)
While Washington, D.C.-based election analysts like the Rothenberg Report and Cook Political Report call the Diaz-Balart races toss-ups, polls show Ros-Lehtinen, 46, with a lead ample enough to keep her seat in the GOP fold. Still, although her district remains two-thirds Latino, it is less than 30% Cuban today—and non-Cubans like her Colombian-American Democratic challenger, businesswoman Annette Taddeo, 41, are gaining political clout.
That trend looks likely to continue in Miami-Dade County, where new Democratic voter registration is significantly outpacing that of Republicans. Many Miami Cubans—including the Diaz-Balart brothers, who are the nephews of Fidel Castro's first wife—were once Democrats before joining the GOP during the more ardently anti-communist Reagan decade of the 1980s. If either Martinez, Garcia or both pull off upsets next month, it will be sweet for Democratic Cuban-Americans who held out all these years. But it may not be sweet enough to help Miami overcome the sour aftertaste of these congressional campaigns.