Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Trump’s support among Cubans still going strong
Exiles delighted by his hard line with regime
MIAMI — On the spur of the moment, a singer in a Cuban salsa band had an idea for a lyric to please fellow Trump supporters at a Miami birthday party.
Tirso Luis Paez flicked his hand so his band mates would let him take over during a crowd favorite, “Cuba is Me,” and instead of singing the usual chorus, he belted out: “Yo voy a votar, por Donald Trump!”
The seemingly spontaneous moment with Los 3 de la Habana was livestreamed and soon viewed by tens of thousands. The Trump campaign quickly featured it in a national ad projecting Miami Cuban enthusiasm for the Republican leader to Latino markets across the country. An English language version, “Oh, my God, I will vote, I will vote for Donald Trump,” spread online as well.
Florida’s Cuban American voters remain a bright spot in Trump’s effort to retain his winning coalition from 2016. Polls show that his strong support from these key voters may even be growing to include the younger Cuban Americans that Democrats once considered their best hope of breaking the GOP’s hold.
For Trump, that support could prove essential in a tight race in a state he must win to beat Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
In the past four years, Trump has courted these voters by undoing former President Barack Obama’s Cuba engagement policy, sanctioning Latin American socialist governments and misleadingly casting all Democrats as leftists and anti-capitalists.
Miami-Dade is where more than 40 percent of Cuban Americans live, and while the population includes more than 1.5 million Hispanics of voting age, they have an outsized influence over other Latino groups in the city.
Caravans have become a common sight in Miami, with hundreds of cars in Hispanic neighborhoods blasting horns, blaring Latin music and cheering for Trump.
They offer a stark contrast to pandemic gloom, often looking like victory parades, and the band has joined in, sharing a stage with Ivanka Trump and a boat ride with Eric Trump.
Their song has been kept on a loop outside an early voting station in the Cuban American stronghold of Hialeah, where supporters waved American and Blue Lives Matter flags alongside a cardboard cutout of the president.
Democrats had been banking on younger Cuban Americans to be more open to warming ties with the island, even if older exiles remain staunchly opposed. Obama’s appeal to young voters helped him carry Florida in both 2008 and 2012.
Four years later, Democrat Hillary Clinton found some support among Cuban Americans put off by Trump’s unpredictable style, especially after he thwarted Cuban American Sen. Marco Rubio in the GOP primary. She won Miami-Dade County by 30 percentage points. Still, she narrowly lost the state to Trump.
A Florida International University poll of Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County released this month shows Trump leading Biden 59 percent to 25 percent. The same poll showed Trump leading among young Cubans.