GOP Lock on Cuban Exile Vote Challenged

Friday, March 21, 2008 9:00 AM

MIAMI -- For more than two decades, the Diaz-Balart brothers have represented South Florida, first in the Legislature and then in Congress, fighting to maintain the nation's hard-line stance toward Cuba.

The two come from a prestigious Cuban family with four generations in public service. Their father once frequented the exclusive American Club in Havana with his friend, then brother-in-law and later enemy, Fidel Castro.

In many ways, they have symbolized the face of Florida's Cuban-American exile community _ Republican and ferociously anti-Castro _ and have gone virtually unchallenged. Until now.

For the first time, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, 53, seeking a ninth term in the U.S. House, and his brother Mario, 46, seeking a fourth, face serious challenges from a different kind of Cuban-American, two Democrats from far less illustrious families.

In races that will be seen as a referendum on U.S. policy, the challengers want to ease restrictions on Cuban-Americans who seek to visit or send money to relatives on the island. But they also are campaigning on other issues that are priorities for most people in the United States: health care, Iraq and the economy.

Andy Gomez, a Cuba expert at the University of Miami, said the races signal the growing political maturity of the Cuban-Americans from exiles to Americans.

"It's less about legacy and more about who is the most qualified to represent our interests and to bring back the funds that are needed to support South Florida," Gomez said.

This year's election is in part the natural evolution of a community that has become increasingly diverse.

Newer immigrants who arrived on rafts or smugglers' boats and retain family ties to Cuba have less in common with the early wave of elites who fled Cuba by plane in the 1960s and have been stalwarts of the Republican Party. U.S.-born Cuban-Americans still virulently oppose the island's communist government, but many rank bringing it down below other domestic and foreign issues.

The personal histories of this year's challengers illustrate this shift.

Like the Diaz-Balarts, their families arrived in the first wave but from more modest circumstances.

Former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez, 59, who is seeking Lincoln Diaz-Balart's seat, is the son of a Cuban taxi union leader. Martinez is known for turning around his Miami suburb during his more than 20 years as mayor; for an overturned federal corruption conviction _ he was re-elected during the trial _ and for a temper that once led him to pummel a combative protester.

Mario Diaz-Balart's challenger, Joe Garcia, 44, mixes an air of old-school cigar-chomping and the occasional seersucker suit with progressive politics. He cut his political teeth at the knee of Miami's most revered and uncompromising Cuban-American leader, Jorge Mas Canosa, before heading a state agency that deregulated Florida's telephone industry.

Garcia and Martinez want to rescind the Bush administration's stringent travel and remittance restrictions on Cuban-Americans and permit direct aid to Cuban dissidents. Neither will go so far as demanding an end to the four-decade U.S. embargo of the island.

Garcia calls the embargo a failure in achieving concrete change. "But it's a moral position," he quickly added.

Both say they would consider cutting money for the U.S. government's Marti TV broadcasts to Cuba, a pet project of Diaz-Balarts, if the station cannot figure out how to get around Cuban jamming or shed its reputation for biased programming.

"Is it wrong for me to ask for accountability?" said Martinez.

Beyond Cuba, the challengers argue they will be more effective than the incumbents if Democrats retain their majority in the House. They have attacked the Diaz-Balarts for voting with Bush on the war, tax cuts, against stem cell research and rejecting health care subsidies for millions more children.

The Diaz-Balarts say they opposed the last bill because it failed to include provisions for immigrant children.

The effort to unseat the Diaz-Balarts is part of a larger nationwide strategy by a Democratic Party flush with cash to challenge in traditionally Republican districts. They are also challenging Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, another Miami Republican, but she is considered safe.

"It puts pressure on Republicans," said Benjamin Bishin, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside. "When you think about the Cuban-American community in South Florida, they're very united, but if they have to defend three seats, that really strains their resources."

Garcia and Martinez are also looking to younger voters. Last week, while Lincoln Diaz-Balart made a campaign stop with veterans from the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the challengers wooed college students at a hip Miami Beach night spot.

Yet the Diaz-Balarts remain formidable opponents. Both helped secure money in recent years for popular projects in Florida _ Lincoln for new explosive detective devices at Miami airport and Mario for Everglades restoration.

Any incumbent is difficult to beat but especially one who created his own district while in the Legislature, which is what Mario Diaz-Balart did. Both have the backing of likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain, whom they refused to desert when his poll numbers were down.

While the brothers are best known for their hard-line stance on Cuba, they have received praise even from Democratic colleagues for their support of legislation to help immigrants. While the national Democratic party supports the challengers, Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Kendrick Meek, D-Fla., have refused to actively campaign against the Diaz-Balarts.

"This is not a process where you come in and get everything you want every day, like you're a strong executive or a strong mayor. Legislating requires give and take and negotiation," Lincoln Diaz-Balart said.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects in recent years sted this year in graf 23. ADDS that national party supports challengers.)

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