Dems’ chances in Florida doomed?
Biden’s policies on Cuba, Venezuela could have effect
President Joe Biden’s changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba and Venezuela could have a big impact on those nations — but also on elections in Florida.
The policies in question — an opening up of economic and travel exchange with Cuba and a possible easing of sanctions on Venezuela — have riled many Florida politics in a way that few issues can.
As the nuances of the policies are debated over cafecito at coffee counters, parsed by academics and denounced on Spanish-language radio, the political reverberations are alarming some Democrats.
Writing on Twitter shortly after the Venezuela policy news broke this week — which was less than 24 hours after the Biden administration outlined its Cuba policy changes — Fernand Amandi was unsparing of his assessment of the one-two punch: “In case you had any doubts that Florida is no longer a priority state for Democrats.”
Amandi is a Florida-based pollster and strategist who specializes in outreach to Hispanics. He was responsible for Florida Hispanic strategy for Barack Obama’s successful 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, both of which resulted in rare Democratic victories in the state.
“It’s explosive,” said another Democratic campaign strategist, who declined to be identified because they’re currently working on a campaign.
Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Miami-Dade County, said that for Democrats, it will “be very difficult to undo the damage.”
“It just closes the door to a constituency that Democrats had been experiencing growth with just a decade ago. Hispanics in Florida were trending more Democratic 10 years ago, and by taking this approach to such a personal issue to so many Florida Hispanics, they not only put the brakes on that but reversed the trend,” Curbelo said.
Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, agreed. ”Short term, certainly this upcoming midterm election, the announcements will probably push more people, more Cuban Americans, to vote against the Democratic Party, and anything having to do with Biden,” Duany said. “This is going to cost the Biden administration and the Democratic Party some votes in South Florida.”
The question, Duany said, is just how many votes will be swayed.
Rolando Chang Barrero, president of the Palm Beach County Democratic Caucus, said Biden’s policy moves wouldn’t have a significant political impact in Florida.
“There will be some fallout. It’s not going to change any position among Republicans or Democrats. They’re pretty much set in
stone,” Barrero said. Though the issue will get lots of attention in Florida, ultimately “it’s not going to change the positions of any of the party members or voters.”
If that’s true, it may be because Republicans have effectively communicated to South Florida’s Cubans, Venezuelans and
Nicaraguans — many of whom fled repressive regimes — the notion that Biden and other Democrats are socialists or communists.
Amandi rejected the idea that those labels have become so ingrained that they can’t be overcome. “That labeling of being soft on communism or quasi socialist can be overcome with proper messaging, proper engagement,” and, Amandi said, “the right policy positions.”
Republicans react
The responses from the state’s top Republican were predictable while those from Democratic were telling.
Republicans seized on what they regard not just as wrongheaded policies, but a gift from the Democratic president.
“I think it’s a slap in the face to everybody in South Florida that has experience with these Marxist dictators in our hemisphere,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday morning in Miami, hours after the Biden administration put out an outline of its Cuba changes. “I think that it really does a disservice to the oppression that so many people in Southern Florida have faced either first hand or through members of their family.”
He suggested that the Biden changes weren’t keeping faith with “people who were driven out of the island of Cuba’’ by a regime so repressive that its citizens ”would get on a raft and go 90 miles over shark-infested waters to be able to get to freedom.”
DeSantis said the same thing happened in Venezuela: “Used to be a very prosperous country. Then Chavez and Maduro. Now, it’s like a third world country, even though they have so many natural resources.”
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who like DeSantis, is running for re-election, condemned the Democratic president on the Fox News program “America’s Newsroom.”
“This has to do with the fact that we have far-left extremists inside of that White House who are sympathizers, not just of the Cuban regime, but the one in Nicaragua and the one in Venezuela. They sympathize with these people,” Rubio asserted.
As the week continued, Rubio’s campaign pushed out multiple messages seeking to tie his challenger, Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings, to Biden’s policies on Cuba and Venezuela.
“Val Demings has never cared about freedom in Cuba during her six years in Congress and never even said a word about the island until she decided to run for Senate,” one statement declared. “[S]he will never stand up against members of her own party who advocate for bowing down to the despotic Cuban dictatorship.”
Democrats shudder
Florida Democrats were in a vise, squeezed between policies of the president of their party and the imperative not to alienate a significant voting bloc.
Most leading Florida Democrats were at least somewhat supportive of the Cuba announcement. Two notable exceptions: Demings and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a South Florida Democrat.
Wasserman Schultz warned that the administration’s move to ease travel restrictions “may enrich” the Cuban dictatorship. “I remain unconvinced that easing group travel restrictions — even with new post-trip audits — will truly weaken this regime’s oppressive policies,” she said in a statement.
After the second policy shoe dropped, the tone from Demings and U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, a Democratic candidate for governor, was different. Crist said in a statement he was “encouraged by the Biden administration’s announcement” on Cuba. The next day, he was much more skeptical about any engagement with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “Dictators like Maduro only care about one thing — their own power,” he said in a statement. “The people of Venezuela have suffered long enough under the socialist dictatorship.”
Demings called Maduro “a tyrant and a thug” and said easing sanctions would hurt the Venezuelan people. “We don’t help anybody by appeasing socialist dictators.”
State Sen. Annette Taddeo, a Miami-Dade Democrat also running for her party’s gubernatorial nomination, was even stronger. “The Biden Administration needs to immediately reverse course,” she
said.
Gaines, then losses
Democrats had been seeing some gains among Hispanic voters, including Cuban Americans, in Florida, especially during the Obama presidency.
But that changed under former President Donald Trump. He catered to hardline views on Cuba and Venezuela, including reversing most of Obama policies that saw greater U.S. interaction with the island nation and its residents.
And, he was especially effective at communicating his views in a way that bolstered his support among Cuban American and Venezuelan
American voters in South Florida.
Leading up to the 2020 election, Trump and Republicans repeatedly targeted messages at South Florida Hispanic voters, hammering home the idea that Biden and Democrats are socialists. Democrats scoffed at the notion as preposterous — but they never came up with an effective way to counter the message, and they suffered politically.
Angelo Castillo, a Pembroke Pines city commissioner who is a Cuban American Democrat, said it was inflammatory and inaccurate, but there is “no question” the messaging worked.
November 2020 proved disastrous for Florida Democrats. Trump won Florida by a greater margin than in 2016. And Democrats lost two Miami-Dade County-based congressional districts; both seats are now held by Cuban American Republicans.
Trump didn’t win Miami-Dade County, where six in 10 registered voters are Hispanic. But he performed far better in 2020 against Biden than he did in 2016, and Biden did much worse than Hillary Clinton did four years earlier.
In 2020, Biden received 53% of the vote in Miami-Dade County to 46% for Trump. In 2016, Clinton captured 63% of the vote, compared to 34% for Trump.
In Broward, Trump also performed better than in 2016. In 2020, Biden had a 20.3 percentage point advantage over Trump in the 25 precincts with the largest percentages of Hispanic registered voters. In 2016, Clinton enjoyed a 38.5 point advantage over Trump in the 20 precincts with the largest share of Hispanic voters.
And in two Broward cities with large Hispanic populations, Trump performed much better in 2020. In Weston he was 8.7 points higher than in 2016, and in Pembroke Pines he was 5.8 points higher. Countywide, he improved by 3.6 points.
South Florida’s members of Congress have long been aware of the politics and the policy views their constituents hold and want their elected officials to pursue. Curbelo said Democratic and Republicans were never divided on the issue. “The South Florida delegation was always fully united and even other colleagues from other parts of the state would usually vote in solidarity with the South Florida delegation.”