For decades, Democrats and Republicans with sights on the
White House have trekked to the heart of the Cuban-American community in
Florida to declare their support for the U.S. trade embargo against the island.
No candidate has won the state otherwise. This staple of presidential politics
in the nation’s largest swing state is taking on heightened importance as the
2016 presidential field takes shape.
Democrat Hillary Clinton, who backed the trade ban in
her 2008 campaign, reversed her position earlier this year, calling for an end
to the sanctions. Her potential GOP opponents include Sens. Marco Rubio of
Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, both sons of Cuban immigrants for whom
maintaining sanctions against the Castro regime is not just political, but
personal.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, once dubbed the state’s first
Cuban-American governor because of his kinship with the community and fluency
in Spanish, is expected to defend the embargo in a speech on Tuesday, marking a
contrast with Mrs. Clinton as he nears a decision on a 2016 campaign.
While Cuba policy is unlikely to be a major issue in the
presidential contest, it has the potential to resonate in Florida in a way not
seen since Ronald Reagan’s anti-communist fervor rallied Cuban-Americans in the
1980s.
Some allies of Mrs. Clinton are already expressing qualms
about how a presidential bid by Mr. Bush would make it harder to lock down the
state’s bounty of 29 electoral votes. Those who hoped Democratic gubernatorial
candidate Charlie Crist could offer Mrs. Clinton some political cover
among Cuban-Americans—he came out in favor of lifting the embargo in
February—were disappointed when he lost to Republican Gov. Rick Scott in the Nov.
4 election.
To embargo proponents such as Mr. Martinez, who fled Cuba as
a child and rose to become the first Cuban-American senator, lifting sanctions
would reward a repressive regime that denies basic human rights and civil
liberties. Critics of the trade ban say that after half a century, it’s time to
try a different approach. In a June appearance at the Council on Foreign
Relations, Ms. Clinton called the embargo “Castro’s best friend,” because, she
said, the regime uses it as a scapegoat for the island’s problems.
The state is home to three-quarters of the nation’s
estimated 2 million Cuban-Americans. A Pew Research Center analysis of 2013
survey data found that less than half of Cuban voters nationwide lean
Republican, down from 64% a decade ago. Over the same period, the share of
Cubans who favor the Democratic Party doubled from 22% to 44%. Exit polling in
2012 showed President Obama winning 49 percent of the Cuban vote, a high-water
mark for a Democrat.
No major Republican presidential candidate has yet to come
out in favor of lifting the embargo. One
possible wild card in the nascent GOP field on Cuba policy is Kentucky Sen. Rand
Paul, who shares many of the libertarian views espoused by his father, former
Texas Rep. Ron Paul. The elder Paul spoke out against the embargo during his
2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. Sen. Paul’s office said he had not
recently taken a public position on the embargo, a policy void unlikely to last
if he were to visit Florida as a presidential candidate.
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