The politics of division

Joe Garcia and his surrogates like to claim that its his opponent and the Republicans who are preaching the politics of divisiveness yet it's actually Garcia who needs to divide the exile community if he is to win.

As I've mentioned many times here, in a poll conducted in 2006 by Sergio Bendixen, a Democrat pollster, for Garcia's then employer the New Democrat Network showed that 72% of Cuban Americans voters are registered Republican vs. 11% Democrat. Even among voters that came to the U.S. after 1980, the margin was wide with 61% Republican vs. 21% Democrat.

Since the numbers for party affiliation aren't encouraging for Joe, he had to search really really hard to find an issue that might peel away some Cuban-Americans in an election. The same poll pointed to the issue Joe would come to differentiate himself on. In 2004, George W. Bush tightened the travel restrictions on Cuba. The poll shows that among Cuban-American voters 54% favor the 2004 restrictions while 40% oppose them. Surely in Joe's mind, within the difference between the 11% who are registered Democrat and the 40% who oppose the 2004 Bush restrictions lies a gold mine of votes. Joe has repeated several times over the past couple of years that "he's for the embargo but against the travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans." He obviously believes this is the winning strategy.

Now I'd like to point out that Garcia's own pollster advised against such a strategy in a 2004 Herald article that mentioned a similar poll that was fielded in that year:

At least one analyst and Democratic Party advisor thinks the candidates are treading dangerous waters.

Miami pollster Sergio Bendixen said trying to siphon Cuban-American votes by advertising against the new Bush policies could hurt Miami in the long run because it would pit generations of Cuban Americans against one another, and could end up backfiring by motivating hard-liners to work against Democrats even more.

``It would be a tremendous mistake,'' Bendixen said. ``I think there's a large group of people within the Democratic Party that would like to take advantage of that issue in a very direct way, but I'm going to continue advocating against it.''

Joe, thinking himself smarter than Bendixen has decided to do exactly what the pollster warned against and is trying to "pit generations of Cuban Americans against one another."

But Bendixen is no idiot. For one thing, one issue does not a voter's decision make. Even if one disagrees in principle with the travel restrictions it's a big stretch to assume that it will cause a voter to go against his own party. Besides, we've had two election cycles since the restrictions were beefed up and really nothing has happened that makes me think there will be a movement toward the Democrats in this one.

There's something else too. For most Cuban-American voters answering questions about travel to Cuba is a hypothetical exercise. The most recent of arrivals are not citizens and therefore not registered to vote. Beyond that the current restrictions allow travel to Cuba once every three years. While viewed as draconian by some, I wonder how many trips to Cuba the average person with family there would make in a three year period if not for the restrictions. Perhaps two. That's pure speculation on my part but I just don't think it's such a big number.

It should be noted that I have never read a single report of a Cuban-American being fined by OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control), the federal department that enforces the trade embargo, for making a family visit to Cuba outside of the present rules. In fact, OFAC has to periodically report who it fined and why and recently it fined some folks for buying Cuban stogies on the internet but nobody for visiting family in Cuba. Travel to Cuba through third countries is easy and relatively cheap. In practice, the idea that the beefed up travel restrictions cause pain and suffering on Cuban-Americans with family in Cuba is not supported by the facts. The argument is a canard.

But it's an appeal to fairness. Is it fair that the government tells who your family is and how often you can go see them? Positioned in that way, I could see the allure of such an argument. But most Cuban-American voters know that even if their trips are well-intentioned the regime benefits financially from them. They also know that it's probably not fair to continue with restrictions on non-Cuban Americans that Cuban-Americans are not willing to live with.

I'd like to point out that in 1994 Joe Garcia didn't feel the way he does now about travel to Cuba. While an employee of CANF, Joe obtained a fax from Maria Romeu an MTV Latino employee promoting a trip to Cuba for a Carlos Varela concert. The trip was not organized by MTV, the fax was personal in nature, but sent from an MTV fax machine. Joe called up MTV to complain and Romeu lost her job over it.

Either way, today Joe is trying to split hairs to split the vote. That's his idea of inclusiveness.

His strategy was made obvious in the invitation to the infamous Charles Rangel fund raiser (emphasis mine):

Joe Garcia's candidacy will have a significant spill-over effect on the Democratic presidential ticket by providing something we have not had for over a quarter century: a legitimate Cuban-American surrogate that will take the Cuba issue off the table. Joe's candidacy allows our presidential ticket to focus on all the other issues we win on. Joe will allow us to break the Republican's traditional stranglehold on Florida's Cuban-American voters and make it easier to win Florida and take back the White House.

In other words, "we're gonna confuse them by running this guy."

Sadly for Joe, he just doesn't command the kind of respect among Cuban-American voters that he thinks he does. In fact I'd say he brings a lot of negatives into this campaign. Many see his tenure as executive director at CANF as a dark period in which the Cuban-American point of view in Washington was deteriorated. And his newfound friendship with Charles Rangel doesn't help him much.

Posted by Henry Louis Gomez at April 14, 2008 06:00 AM

Comments

Posted by: Peter Perez at April 14, 2008 03:23 PM

Posted by: FreedomForCuba at April 14, 2008 10:57 PM