Crist, Garcia challenge old order on Cuba politics in Florida

By John McAuliff

Florida politics have consistently crippled hopes for a rational U.S. policy on Cuba. The swing state mystique confounds Presidential candidates and PAC money from the Miami area is a major influence on Democrats and Republicans from districts and states with negligible Cuban-American population.

Governor Charlie Crist’s decision to run as an independent candidate for the Senate and Joe Garcia’s second effort to gain a House seat sets up a direct challenge to the old order.

Neither would be the chosen champion for advocates of normal U.S.-Cuba relations.  But they are going against exponents holding the most extreme positions against change in U.S. policy. Both can find it electorally advantageous to offer a more positive alternative.

Crist has the most to gain in his three way race with Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek. Cuba will be a wedge issue that separates his candidacy from ultra hard line rivals. Rubio has reiterated his opposition to even President Obama’s very popular opening of Cuban American travel in a new interview with Human Events where he states: “It threatens the exile status of the Cuban community. And it also provides a source of hard currency for the Castro regime. They use the dollars from remittances and from travel to fund their repressive operation. I think it was wrong to lift those travel restrictions.”

Of all the candidates Meek has actually been the favorite of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC. He has close family ties with Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, strong opponents of the liberalization of family travel.

A story in the National Journal about last December’s PAC luncheon with all the candidates reported: “Democrat Meek pointed out that he has consistently voted against relaxing travel and trade with Cuba, followed the advice of his three Cuban-American congressional colleagues and has the president’s ear.”

An account by Miami journalist Michael Putney of that annual gathering of “nearly 400 of the biggest movers and shakers in the Cuban-American community” gave a drubbing to Crist because he made only perfunctory obeisance to his audience’s prejudices, noting, “Inexplicably, the governor didn’t refer to a set of talking points on Cuba that had been carefully prepared for him. ‘He decided to ad lib for some reason,’ says one of the people who prepared the talking points for Crist. I don’t know why.”

Maybe the reason was that the Governor did not want to be trapped in the same dead end policy box and was already leaving space to be an alternative far more in touch with the public sentiment of most Floridians, including Cuban Americans.

Another reason for Crist to chart a new course in Florida politics is his experience with the nastiness of the Diaz-Balart’s, who in December withdrew their endorsement of his candidacy giving only the cryptic explanation, “the governor knows why we withdrew and he left us with no alternative.”

Putney had his own theory: “The Diaz-Balart brothers have a close relationship with Kendrick Meek, who has followed their lead and that of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on Cuba. The brothers were evidently feeling that by endorsing Crist they’d betrayed Meek, who sat on the sidelines instead of endorsing their Democratic opponents last year. So, the Diaz-Balarts met privately with Meek and his mother, former Congresswoman Carrie Meek, before the PAC luncheon and said they’ll be sitting on the sidelines during the 2010 Senate race.”

This sets up an interesting conundrum for national Democrats. The Democratic Senate  Campaign Committee led by Bob Menendez had already received, by the last quarter of 2009, $73,800 from board members of the US-Cuba Democracy PAC. They had given $31,200 to Crist (which they no doubt want back) and $14,950 to Meek but just $8,150 to Rubio. Menendez will be fiercely loyal to his alter ego Meek, but Senate Democratic leaders and the White House will note that Meek is running third and is a singularly unimpressive candidate. They might calculate that quietly making nice with Crist is a better bet for defeating the Republicans and increases the likelihood that he will choose to caucus with the Democrats.

Joe Garcia’s situation is not quite as byzantine. He is running for the seat vacated by Mario Diaz-Balart in order to take over his brother Lincoln’s presumably safer seat, thus avoiding another contest with Joe. However, Joe’s most likely Republican opponent is David Rivera, an ally of the Diaz-Balart’s, whose record on Cuba in Florida’s legislature is even more outrageous than Rubio’s. Rivera was the author of bills thrown out by courts which tried to block academic research in Cuba and charter flights favored by Cuban Americans. Joe is well-respected in the White House and certainly can’t harbor a lot of love for Meek who, as noted above, did not support a fellow-Democrat against Mario in 2008.

Monitor both the http://charliecrist.com and http://joegarcia2010.com/ web sites to see how they address U.S. policy on Cuba. People who donate to their campaigns should not hesitate to express their expectation that the candidate in office will support at least a real change on travel to Cuba.

John McAuliff is executive director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development. He was involved in re-establishing ties between the U.S. and Vietnam. He is a fierce advocate of the right of U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba.

**  For an updated version of this post, please visit the Havana Note blog by clicking here.