The Cuban American Vote in the 2020 US Election: The Reason Behind Donald Trump’s Win in Florida
Introduction
Old generation Cuban exiles living in Florida have always been crucial in determining the State’s choice of Red or Blue in the US elections. Though several Democrat candidates like Obama have been influential enough on the community to make them lean Democrat and vote for him in both 2008 and 2012, they showed that the change was not permanent as they now mostly lean more Republican ever since Trump’s nomination in 2016. Trump turned them into strong Trump supporters due to many policies he proposed that would benefit them but the most important reason why they voted for him lay behind his strong anti-socialist rhetoric.
The reason why Cuban Americans have always wanted to keep socialism away from US, where they found refuge, could be best explained with the fourth wave of Cuban immigration during the period of 1993–5. That period is known as the “Special Period” in the Cuban history, “Special Period in a Time of Peace” as actually named by the Cuban government, and it started with the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and lasted until 2000. Cuban economy that was already on survival mode took a big hit with the news and by 1994, food production, all imports and especially oil imports decreased by 40%-83%. This economic crisis eventually led to a decrease in body weight in Cubans as tragic as 25% because there was no food, no medication or any other basic needs. Cubans had no other option but to flee from the country in anything that would float, which later caused them to receive the name “Balseros” meaning “rafters”.
Balseros in the US, now, have the latest memory of what communism did to their homeland and how the communist leader Castro tried to silence them, instead of trying to save the country’s economy. They have not just decided to be politically active on matters that concern US-Cuba relations but also raise their US born children as anti-communists.
Theory
Florida, holding 29 electoral votes in the election, has one of the biggest Hispanic populations in the US, according to a research done by Pew and they lean to the Democrat party more than Republicans as seen in both 2008 and 2012 elections where Obama was highly influential with Floridian Hispanics. While 83% of Hispanics identified as Democrats in 2016, increasing number of registered Republicans in the Cuban-American community has completely changed the statistics between 2016 and 2020 elections. To understand the reason why Florida turned Red after the 2012 election, we must look into the division of Hispanics in Florida: though there is a great growth in the number of other Hispanic groups who are eligible voters, Cuban Americans still make up the largest Hispanic group in Florida with 29%. Thus, 65% of 1.4 million of Cubans living in Florida and 58% of them voting for Trump in 2020 , it was no surprise that non-Cuban Democrats could not turn the state Blue.
The greatest difference between Cuban and non-Cubans’ opinions appeared on their decision whether foreign policy is less or more important as “a far higher share of Cuban voters than non-Cuban Hispanic voters say foreign policy is very important, 76% vs. 45%, reflecting in part the close immigrant ties many Cuban Americans have to the island”. “Republican Party has promoted itself as having a stronger foreign policy in opposition to communist regimes than the Democratic Party” (43) explained Girard, Grenier and Gladwin in their joined article and that’s mainly because conservative Cubans in the US soil wanted the US government to pay great attention to “three C’s”: Castro, Cuba, and Communism. As discussed in Garcia’s 1998 article, the propaganda led by Cubans in the land did received “financial and institutional support from the United States government” (5) most of the time and eventually, they made it to the US Congress where they had real political power over Cuba-US relations.
Currently, there are four Floridian Cubans serving in the Congress who are all Republican US Representatives (Diaz-Balart, Giménez, Rubio and Salazar) and many scholars see them and Cuban exiles in Florida behind the reason “why the United States has failed to lift its thirty-eight- year-old trade embargo”(5). In both 2016 and 2020 especially, Trump’s promise for harsh sanctions on Cuba and Cuban-Americans endless support for it proved that point. Their support for Trump’s hardline policies is best explained in Herman and Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media: “If the triumph of communism is the worst imaginable result, the support of fascism abroad is justified as a lesser evil. Opposition to social democrats who are too soft on Communists and ‘play into their hands’ is rationalized in similar terms” (29). Because Biden was seen as a candidate who would reverse Trump’s policies and improve the relationship between US and the “socialist” Cuba , Cuban Americans voted for Trump who played the role of a patriotic American man who fought the “Reds”.
But Cuban Americans weren’t completely desperate. “We’re confident that the president has listened to us,” said Marcell Felipe in an interview, the president of the Inspire America Foundation which runs ads in Spanish in Miami to urge the Cuban voters to push harder for hardline policies. “The real question to them there is, “Why is it that we have an inside line to the White House?” he added, “It’s because we have the votes” This is why Republicans and Trump knew they had to make their campaign and rallies in Florida about being against socialism and Castroism and assure Cuban exiles that those ideologies would not have a part in the US government. Trump, especially, relied his entire Florida campaign on the energy of Cubans and even went as far as to “explicitly tell administration officials that he wanted to keep Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), (…) and the Cuban American community happy in an effort to ensure a 2020 win in Florida” .
What Cuban Americans wanted from the US government was to help them create democracy on the island. As discussed on Schoultz’s 2002 article: “(…) the Congress, urged on by anti- Castro lobbyists, has taken the initiative by writing today’s policy of promoting Cuban democracy” (398) because it has always been clear that winning Florida meant getting along with the Cuban Americans. They have never been afraid of changing the party they vote for as can be seen in every election from 2000; they went from voting for Republican George W. Bush for 2 years to keeping Democrat Barack Obama in the office for 8 years and recently, they’ve turned into strong Trump supporters. Each candidate they voted for had, one way or another, a plan to deal with Castro’s Cuba whether it was sending Cuban political dissident groups in the island money to put a pressure on the Castro regime or trying to normalize bilateral relations between two countries to create more travel, visa etc. options for both Cubans and Cuban Americans or completely reversing the policies of the latter and keep the rope tight on communism and Castro.
To look at the polls, again, Grenier and Lai conducted a poll called “How Cuban Americans in Miami View US Policy Toward Cuba” and one of the many questions was whether Cuba posed a threat to vital American interests or not. Though in total of 38% said no, the exception came from the “oldest group of respondents as well as those migrating before 1995 and registered Republicans” (16). Some critics think that Trump or his officials’ continuous visits to Florida to ensure the community of their safety while he was still in the office caused the Cuban community to not trust any other leader than Trump to keep US away from communism. But as we can see in the video, it was his typical tactic he used for Cuban Americans: communism is a threat to the freedom of the hemisphere and US citizens can count on Trump to handle it.
Though domestic concerns like taxing and economic growth to local businesses was also a reason for the community to vote for Trump, his harsh foreign policy seemed to weight heavier like pre-2008 elections. A recent research shows that sixty six percent of Cuban Americans opposed “normalizing relations between US and Cuba” during the Obama administration and support Trump’s now delivered promise of increasing the economic pressure on the island. To keep their trust, Trump campaign used the media to either put pressure on his Democrat rivals and show them as the allies of communism who would ruin all the achievements that were made under the Trump administration to keep communism away from the country or connect with local Latinx and Cuban Trump supporter communities to get them spread his propaganda. Thus, the most vital point that led to Trump’s win of Florida and its 29 electoral votes in the 2020 election became Republicans efforts to portray Democrats as “leftists” up until the election and their focus on that rhetoric until Cuban Americans feared socialism enough to vote Red.
Bernie Sanders and his interview on 60 minutes
The earliest controversial debates began, of course, with the nomination of Bernie Sanders on the early stages of the 2020 election. Sanders has always been an advocate of free health care, taxing the rich, having open doors to immigrants and the government paying the student debt. Having run against Trump twice and lost both, Florida was an infertile ground for Sanders as his non-capitalist policies allowed his rival to sell him as “socialist” to both Trump supporters and independent voters.
Even though he did not stay the front runner for long, the time he had in rallies and television was enough for him to repeat the same things he’s been saying for over four decades and likewise, it was enough for Trump and his supporters to dig up interviews and speeches from his past to give it to the press and watch him deal with the controversy those stories created. One interview, especially, was the sign of his downfall in the eyes of both the Republicans and Democrats. It was an interview from the 1980s on the “60 Minutes” program where Sanders was seen making positive comments in regard to Castro’s regime. In a new interview, Sanders defended his comments and though he did not forget to point out that he opposed the “authoritarian nature” of Castro’s power and condemned the torture and murder of political dissidents during that era, he backed his support for Castro’s literacy plan and added: “Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?” (0:33) Sanders did, later, try to turn this against Trump by saying that unlike Trump, he was not a friend of Vladimir Putin or a “murdering dictator” referring to the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but the media and fellow Democrats’ focus was still on him.
“As the first South American immigrant member of Congress who proudly represents thousands of Cuban Americans, I find Senator Bernie Sanders’ comments on Castro’s Cuba absolutely unacceptable” (@DebbieforFL)
said Florida Democrat Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in a tweet; another Florida Democrat Rep., Donna Shalala also said in a tweet she was in the hopes that “Sanders will take time to speak to some of my constituents before he decides to sing the praises of a murderous tyrant like Fidel Castro” (@DonnaShalala). Many Florida House Democrats’ negative comments on Sanders’ resurfacing interview were a sign that even his own party members were not happy with his approach to Castro and “cast him as too extreme in his views to represent the part in the presidential nominee”.
Sanders’ campaign was short-lived but it had long-lasting effects in the long run. Trump took the opportunity to get more Cuban voters in Florida and kept pushing the same propaganda by repeatedly saying that “Biden is a puppet of Bernie Sanders” and that Biden is a “radical socialist” like Sanders. Sanders’ support for Biden after withdrawing, the Green New Deal signed by both, and Sanders’ hopes to “move him (Biden) in a more progressive direction” did definitely not help Biden in the Latino community which later made it impossible for him to win the Sunshine State.
Joe Biden and his support for the Black Lives Matter Movement
One overlooked reason why Cubans were worried that socialism would intervene the government issues was when Joe Biden supported the Black Lives Matter movement and did not approve of Trump’s actions during the protests. “Black Lives Matter. Period,” said Joe Biden in a video shared by his official account on YouTube, he did not address the protests or the movement yet he made a promise to the Black community to end the systemic racism and wanted the African-American vote: “Let’s build back better!”
Ever since 2016, Black Lives Matter movement has made it clear that they have Castroist sympathies within the community: “Fidel vive!” (Fidel lives!) they shouted during a protest in 2016 as a tribute to Castro and later in 2020, Black Lives Matter leaders & participants came together with the Albany Cuba Solidarity group to protest embargo and travel restrictions that Trump put on Cuba during his office. Though the Cuban anti-racist activist and co-founder of the Cofradía de la Negritud, Norberto Mesa Carbonell, predicted that “BLM’s (support) for Fidel Castro could be used to undermine support for the group in the Cuban and Cuban-American sphere,” and it should be kept in mind that “the BLM’s claims warrant solidarity for reasons of justice, which should not be determined by political motivations”, it did not help with the increasing tension between BLM protesters and Cuban-American Trump supporters. In Miami Lakes in 2020, Black Lives Matter activists faced with the group called “Cubans for Trump” who held Blue Lives Matter signs and were there to show their support for the former President.
Knowing that he already had Cuban American support on the BLM issue, Trump used went on the Fox News to talk about the violence of the “leftist” protests in Democrat led cities and that Biden was a “very weak” (4:55) person who could not succeed what he did to stop the violence. Biden’s decision to not use the movement “for political gain” and the mentioning of “Biden and Sanders task force on policing” (1:46) was no help either. Especially Afro-Cubans accused both Biden and Black Lives Matter movement for raising more tension between Black and white Cuban communities, allowing white Cubans to use the “anti-socialist” rhetoric as a disguise for anti-Blackness and hijacking the movement to “legitimise their leftist agenda”.
Cuban Trump supporters’ spread of misinformation and propaganda
Trump never missed the opportunity to frame Biden and Democrats as socialist who would be a harm to the United States, but it was the Trump supporters who carried his messages to small Latinx communities via mostly Facebook, Telegram, Whatsapp and Youtube. The most infamous group on Facebook was “Latinos for Trump”, which Trump himself funded its ads with a total of 372.329$. Though the ads attacked such issues like healthcare, the economy etc., its main focus was the Dems and its connection to socialism. One ad that they promoted exactly 8 times in September 2020 said:
The Radical Socialist Left imagines an America with no free-speech, no police, and no patriotism. President Trump, on the other hand, imagines a prosperous and peaceful Nation that ALL Americans can be proud of.
We simply cannot afford four years of big government socialist policies, which is why the President is calling on YOU to step up and help us CRUSH our End-of-Quarter goal.
These ads targeted Latinos in Florida specifically where Cubans reside in the most and it is thought that “52% of those 65+ and 53% of those aged 45–64” that followed the group have reportedly voted for Trump in 2020.
But even “Latinos for Trump” could not do what a Cuban American Youtube star Alexander Otaola could do. 41-year-old Cuban immigrant living in FL, Otaola was seen as “the one” among Republicans: “He’s the one changing the newly arrived Cubans from Democrats to Republicans. He is the one”. With his pro-Trump and anti-Marxist attitude, he blamed those who used the killing of George Floyd to “launch an all-out attack on U.S. democracy” , spread distrust for voting by mail, because Biden could disrupt the election process and most importantly claimed that Biden would follow a Fidel Castro style of socialism if he was elected. In an episode of his show, according to Lanard’ article, Cuban actor Pedro Moreno was the guest and he helped Otaola to paint the Dems as socialists and Trump as the savior of all this: “‘Alex, there’s a party that’s pushing socialism, and they want to impose it here in the United States,’ Moreno said. ‘Trump is the vehicle against that, and I have to vote for Trump’”. Otaola’s right-wing media personality, though, seems to have worked for both Trump and him as many reporters believe that Otaola is the reason why the post-1995 generation of Cuban Americans has increasingly moved to the right after 2016.
Conclusion
After all, it can be said that Trump and his campaign played their socialism card well in the election process by constantly portraying the Democrats teaming up with “evil”. Relentlessly using Bernie Sanders’ clips from his old interviews where he defends Castro’s literacy program — not Castro personally- and pining Biden as a weak person who would let “leftist groups” burn down cities and create chaos during BLM protests and using Cuban Trump supporters to reach out to local and Spanish-speaking communities helped them secure 29 electoral votes from Florida. Experienced Cuban-American studies scholars, those like Guillermo Grenier, have argued that Democrats were not able to win over Florida after the 2012 election, because of their inability to to understand the “exile ideology” and “anti-communist politics in the Cuban American community”. Thus, “having a stronger foreign policy in opposition to” communism has helped Republicans to keep the state Red in the 2020 election too.
It is a mystery what will happen in the 2024 election because even though conservative Cuban Americans did not want Biden in the office, it is too early to talk about how they feel under the Biden administration now. In the early days of August 2021, Biden surprised not just Cuban Americans but everyone by being tougher on the island than Trump. The reason for the newly put sanctions on Cuban officials was due to Cuban riots against the regime for its inability to manage the Covid-19 pandemic and the food and medicine shortages caused by it.
“(…) I want Cuban Americans to know that we (…) see your pain, we hear your voices, and we hear the cries of freedom coming from the island. (…) We brought to bear the strength of our diplomacy rallying nations to speak out and increase pressure on the regime, and we’re holding the regime accountable”
said Biden during a meeting with Cuban American leaders at the White House. Though his unexpected action towards Cuba has left some Cuban Americans disappointed as they have a hard time sending money to their loved ones in the island, Cubans who have voted for Trump are surprised with Biden’s decision to not continue Obama’s Cuba policy.
Biden is thought to have adopted the same anti-communist regime rhetoric Trump did during both 2016 and 2020 elections because winning the Cuban American support is important for the Democrats to “clinch the swing state in the 2024 presidential election”. “I think if Biden has a successful Cuban policy that is able to put the regime on the defensive and provide concrete support to Cubans, that will benefit him with voters in Florida,” says John Suarez, and adds: “If the regime collapses on his watch, that could be a game changer” . The result of the 2024 election remains unpredictable for both parties but there is hope for the Democratic Party to turn the state Blue for the first time since the Obama administration.
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