For McAuliffe, Cuba trip to promote Va. products was a bust

For McAuliffe, Cuba trip to promote Va. products was a bust

By Peter Wallsten and Carol D. Leonnig, Wednesday, October 30, 1:59 AM



Terry McAuliffe has always fashioned himself a master salesman. He could

pitch anything.



Then he went to Cuba.



McAuliffe said he journeyed to the island to sell Virginia wine and

apples. Yet the Cubans scoffed at his propositions during the April 2010

visit, unmoved by the full-frontal style of persuasion that has long

powered McAuliffe's success as an investor and political rainmaker.



Cuban officials not only rejected McAuliffe, but in meeting after

meeting lectured him about the supposed ill effects of the U.S. trade

embargo on the island nation.



In many ways, the three-day adventure was classic McAuliffe, offering a

taste of the freewheeling, even impulsive, style the Democratic

candidate for Virginia governor could bring to the executive mansion if

he is elected next week.



He was, in effect, winging it — relying largely on personal charm and

hoping for the best, even as many of those around him say they saw

little chance for success.



The trip had been intended, at least in part, to erase the sting of

McAuliffe's dismal showing in the gubernatorial race the previous year

while showcasing his deal-making skills and home-state advocacy in

advance of a second run for office. After it all fell apart, McAuliffe

stayed in his permanently upbeat sales mode even as his travel

companions privately lamented a journey that was more fiasco than triumph.



McAuliffe returned from Havana with a rosy report: "We got them to agree

to open up the market for Virginia wines," he told The Washington Post

at the time. "We are going to export Virginia wines to Cuba for the

first time ever."



In reality, the sales trip was a bust.



"It was like, 'What just happened?' Were we rolled?' " said Blaze

Wharton, a McAuliffe friend and Utah-based lobbyist who organized the

trip for McAuliffe and a handful of politically connected business friends.



"We were all under the impression that it would work out," Wharton said.

But, he added, "it went nowhere."



Why McAuliffe chose Cuba, a communist-led island with a moribund

economy, as the place to prove his mettle as a champion of Virginia

commerce is a curiosity. Any trip to Cuba, which is still designated a

state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. government, brings complications

— particularly for a figure with McAuliffe's deep ties to America's

political elite. He is a close friend and adviser to Hillary Rodham

Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the Cuba trip and,

should she run for president, would be courting Cuban-American voters

wary of contact with the regime there.



McAuliffe, now waging a campaign in which he presents himself as a

skilled deal-maker and cheerleader for Virginia businesses, rarely if

ever mentions his one venture since the 2009 campaign to sell Virginia

products abroad.



McAuliffe's campaign declined to make him available for an interview.

Neither his campaign nor the organizers of the trip could provide the

paperwork that McAuliffe was required to file with the U.S. Office of

Foreign Assets Control to obtain a license to travel to Cuba, saying

they no longer had copies. An OFAC spokesman said the office does not

comment on specific licenses.



Source: "For McAuliffe, Cuba trip to promote Va. products was a bust -

The Washington Post" -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-mcauliffe-cuba-trip-to-promote-va-products-was-a-bust/2013/10/29/6710f3de-3677-11e3-8a0e-4e2cf80831fc_story.html