A look at Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist's call to end the US/Cuba trade embargo

A look at Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist's call to end

the US/Cuba trade embargo

Posted: July 5, 2014 - 12:41pm | Updated: July 5, 2014 - 12:46pm

By The Associated Press



MIAMI | When Charlie Crist went to Miami's Little Havana recently, the

Democratic candidate for governor stood before a crowd and said what few

politicians have in decades of scrounging for votes in the

Cuban-American neighborhood: End the trade embargo against Cuba.



"If you really care about people on the island, we need to get rid of

the embargo and let freedom reign," he said, shouting above a small band

of protesters who responded with chants of "Shame on you!"



Crist's supporters cheered louder.



It was a scene inconceivable just a few years ago, when politicians were

careful about what they said on the issue, for fear of alienating

Cuban-American voters, many of whom fled Fidel Castro's Cuba in the 1960s.



But Democrats now sense an opening with newer Cuban arrivals and

second-generation Cuban-Americans who favor resuming diplomatic

relations with the communist island.



In a sign of just how much the climate has shifted, Democrat Hillary

Rodham Clinton, who backed trade limits when she ran for president in

2008, is now calling for the embargo to be lifted. She described it as

"Castro's best friend" and said it hampers "our broader agenda across

Latin America."



Her words mark the first time a leading presidential contender from

either political party has suggested reversing the 52-year-old policy.



The efforts represent the largest challenge to Cuban-American orthodoxy

in decades and could help reshape American foreign policy.



It also could alter the political landscape in the largest swing-voting

state, where Republicans long have dominated the Cuban vote by taking a

hard line on the embargo.



Crist's campaign will be the first statewide test of whether the trade

restrictions are still a live wire for politicians in Florida, home to

70 percent of the nation's Cubans.



Crist is a former Republican governor who once said he would only visit

Cuba "when it's free." Now that he's a Democrat and trying to regain his

old job, he has floated the idea of going to Havana "to learn from the

people of Cuba and help find opportunities for Florida businesses."



He argues that the embargo has failed because it has not toppled the

Castro government but has hurt the Cuban people. "The definition of

insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a

different result," he told reporters at the opening of a campaign office

in Little Havana.



Florida Republicans are outraged, casting Crist's position as a betrayal

of the Cuban-American community.



"I'm going to stand with Cuban-Americans that believe in freedom,

believe in democracy, believe in freedom of speech and oppose the

oppression of Cuba," said GOP Gov. Rick Scott. Crist, he added, will "be

standing with Castro."



U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential GOP presidential candidate whose

parents left Cuba in the 1950s, said the embargo is "the last tool we

have remaining to ensure that democracy returns to Cuba one day."



Lifting the embargo, he said, would "further entrench the regime in

power by giving them more money to carry out their violent repression of

people's fundamental rights and dignity."



Nationwide, the share of Cuban registered voters who identify with or

lean toward the Democratic Party has doubled in the past decade, from 22

percent to 44 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. Less than

half of Cuban voters now affiliate with the Republican Party, down from

64 percent over the same time period.



President Barack Obama won Florida twice, campaigning on easing travel

restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit their families on the

island and allowing them to send more money to their relatives. In 2012,

he captured nearly half the Cuban-American vote, a record for a Democrat.



The shift is driven in part by changing demographics.



Cuban-Americans, once the dominant bloc of Florida's Hispanic vote, have

seen their political clout diminished by a huge influx of Puerto Ricans,

Mexicans and people from Central and South America, who lean Democratic.

In the 2012 election, 42 percent of Hispanic voters in the state were

Cuban, an 11 percentage point drop from 2000, according to the Census

Bureau's Current Population Survey.



The exiles who arrived in the decade and a half following Cuba's 1959

revolution have been dying off while their children and fresh waves of

immigrants hold a different view of Cuba. More than one-third of the

Cubans residing in Miami-Dade County arrived after 1995, with many

supporting travel and trade policies that strengthen ties between the

U.S. and Cuba, said Guillermo Grenier, a lead researcher for the Cuban

Research Institute at Florida International University.



Even some of South Florida's most prominent Cuban-American business

leaders, long among the most strident defenders of the embargo, are

publicly talking about investing in Cuba.



"The politics are way behind public opinion on this one," said Steve

Schale, a Democratic consultant and Crist adviser who managed Obama's

Florida campaign in 2008.



Overall, polls of the community have confirmed a tilt toward engagement,

with the most recent survey by Florida International University finding

Cuban-Americans in Miami split over the embargo, which was a near

record, and 71 percent saying it had not worked either very well or at all.



"The embargo! It's so screwed up!" said Caridad Novo, as she sipped

espresso at a cafe in Doral, a Miami suburb.



The 52-year-old Cuban, who came to Florida during the 1980 Mariel boat

crisis, said U.S. trade restrictions drive up the cost of sending goods

to her family in Cuba. Shipping a 4-pound can of milk to her 3-year-old

grandson in Havana costs $55, she said.



But some scholars and political operatives say Crist risks energizing

Republicans in the conservative exile community while attracting little

support from younger Cuban-Americans and newer arrivals, who tend to be

less politically active.



The recent Florida International University poll found that less than

one-third of those who have arrived since 1995 are U.S. citizens. Voter

registration rates among newer arrivals lag their older counterparts by

double digits.



"What is changing is opinions" on the embargo, Grenier said. "But for

the opinions to become relevant to policymakers, they have to translate

into more than just opinions. They have to be votes."



Associated Press



Source: Analysis: A look at Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie

Crist's call to end the US/Cuba trade embargo | jacksonville.com -

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