In political move with risks and rewards, Charlie Crist explores visit to Cuba

Posted on Wednesday, 05.07.14

In political move with risks and rewards, Charlie Crist explores visit
to Cuba
BY MARC CAPUTO AND ADAM C. SMITH
HERALD/TIMES WRITERS

In a move that would have been unthinkable for any statewide Florida
candidate just a few years ago, Charlie Crist is planning to visit Cuba
this summer.

Nothing is final, but the Democratic candidate for governor is eager to
learn more about Cuba as he calls for normalizing relations with the
island 90 miles south of Key West.

"We ought to think big. We ought to lift the embargo on Cuba and work
with the president and get things done," Crist said earlier this week
during a visit to the Versailles Restaurant in Miami, where he didn't
disclose that he's considering a visit to the island.

The Little Havana landmark, a frequent Republican campaign spot and
exile gathering place, is the last place where you would expect to hear
soft-on-embargo positions.

Crist, too, used to support the embargo and backed it as late as 2010 in
his failed U.S. Senate bid as a Republican.

Crist's new position — the latest in a string of reversals — was
instantly panned by Republican Gov. Rick Scott and his newly appointed
lieutenant governor, Carlos Lopez-Cantera.

"He's been a Republican. He has been an independent and a Democrat,"
Lopez-Cantera said at a campaign stop Wednesday in Miami. "There's one
party left in Cuba that maybe he's considering switching to: the
Communist Party."

"It just shows Charlie's ignorance on the issue of Cuba," Lopez-Cantera
said, adding that that his "family lost everything" and that his
grandmother's brothers were imprisoned by the Castro regime.

Scott said Crist would be a "puppet" of the Castro regime and would help
enrich it simply by traveling there.

Florida's governor has no authority to lift or modify the decades-old
embargo, which would take an act of Congress, but he can influence
public opinion and the issue is considered a political litmus test for
many hardline Castro opponents.

Scott's campaign has been actively reaching out to Cuban-American voters
— who comprise more than 70 percent of GOP voters in Miami-Dade County —
by making them aware of Crist's stance on the embargo ever since he
voiced the position earlier this year.

Attitudes, however, are changing toward Cuba across Florida and in
Miami. Recent polls show a majority of Floridians, including
Cuban-Americans, support normalizing relations and lifting travel with
the communist island.

Still, Crist's position carries potential political risk as well as
rewards. No one's quite sure.

"According to electoral politics, it's a risk," said Sebastián Arcos,
associate director of Florida International University's Cuban Research
Institute, which annually polls attitudes about Cuba.

"Politicians look at polls and say 'oh, 60 percent are against the
embargo,' but they forget that many of the people polled don't vote and
that most of the Cubans who vote are supportive of the embargo," Arcos said.

Yet the Cuban-American vote is proportionately shrinking in Miami-Dade
and Florida, while Hispanics from Puerto Rico and Central and South
America increase in numbers. And polls show non-Cuban Hispanics are far
less likely to support the embargo.

Despite the embargo, more Cuban-Americans and other U.S. citizens are
traveling to Cuba. And more U.S. money than ever before is being sent to
the island by relatives who live in the United States.

But embargo hardliners are still more likely to vote and base their vote
on that issue, said Dario Moreno, an FIU pollster and political science
professor. "This is poking the bear," he said.

Still, Cuban-Americans older than 65 were already backing Scott, so
there's a chance Crist's new position isn't damaging, said Moreno,
pointing to a recent poll of 1,000 Miami-Dade voters he conducted for a
private client that showed the Republican earning about 59 percent of
their vote compared to 22 percent for Crist.

Yet among non-Cuban Hispanics, Crist led Scott 43-29 percent.

Moreno said another growing segment of Hispanic voters, Venezuelans,
could be antagonized against Crist if it appears he's sidling up to the
Castro regime, which is supporting Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and his
administration's violent repression of protesters in the South American
country.

Overall, Crist is beating Scott in Miami-Dade 49-33 percent. And that's
an improvement for Crist of 4 percentage points since a previous March
poll Moreno conducted. The numbers surprised Moreno because, he said,
Scott has spent so much — about $8 million statewide — on television ads
in the past two months.

"This shows the first round of Scott's ads weren't effective," Moreno said.

Moreno also said he suspected that the Scott campaign's shoddy treatment
of fundraiser and Coral Gables billionaire Mike Fernandez hurt its
standing in Miami-Dade — especially after Fernandez told the Miami
Herald that a business partner of his was offended that he heard Scott
staffers joke around in mock Mexican accents on the way to a Chipotle
restaurant.

That issue is fading, though, and he said Scott should derive some
benefit from appointing Lopez-Cantera, advertising in Spanish and
supporting a bill giving in-state college tuition rates to undocumented
immigrants.

As for Crist, Moreno said, the candidate has to decide how he'll
campaign on Cuba as an issue. If Crist calls for more Democratic reforms
on the island and doesn't appear to be a tool of the Castros, it could
earn him votes — even from Republicans.

Meantime, Crist's stance puts him at odds with Florida's Democratic
standard-bearers: U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic
National Committee chair who supports the embargo along with the state's
only statewide elected Democrat, Sen. Bill Nelson, who has toyed with
running for governor against Crist.

Obama's administration has not called for an end to the embargo, though
he has allowed for more travel and cash remittances. Also, his
administration has kept Cuba on the state-sponsor of terror list.

But Moreno said Crist's new position won't really hurt him with
Democratic voters.

At the least, it shows Crist is ready to take risks and campaign hard —
and unpredictably — in South Florida, a Democratic stronghold where
Crist needs a big turnout to win in November, Moreno said. Crist still
needs to win the Democratic primary in August against former state Sen.
Nan Rich.

Outside Miami-Dade, support for the embargo is even weaker. Politicians
from Tampa Bay, Crist's home base, have called for more normalized
relations.

Kathy Castor, a Democratic congresswoman from Tampa, lauded Crist's
move. She recently joined a business group on a trip to Cuba, which
would be the likely way Crist would be able to go there.

Those from Miami-Dade, however, tend to be more supportive of the
embargo or say nothing of lifting it.

At Wednesday's Scott campaign event, state Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami,
said Crist had betrayed Cuban-Americans and that he had "no backbone."

When Crist visited Miami a few days before, he suggested that the real
bold move was to oppose the embargo, not support it. He also made it
clear that he's thinking not just of Cuban-American exiles, but of
Hispanics who hail from other countries and of South Florida businesses
who want more trade relations with Cuba.

"We're the gateway to Latin America. We're the gateway to South
America," Crist said. "We've got to be doing more and doing better."

Marc Caputo is the Miami Herald political writer. Reach him at
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com. Adam C. Smith is the Tampa Bay Times Political
Editor. Reach him at asmith@tampabay.com

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