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Politico: Cuba Deal Promises to Be Lucrative for GOP
Friday, December 19, 2014 08:02 AM
By: Melanie Batley
Cuban-Americans who are unhappy with President Barack Obama's decision to normalize relations with Cuba will likely start donating to GOP candidates and campaigns who also oppose the move.
According to Politico, Democrats look likely to lose out, particularly if funds are specifically directed at undermining candidates who support Obama's decision.
"The Cuban-American community tends to be pretty quiet until you step on their toes," Otto Juan Reich, a Cuban-American Republican consultant, told Politico. "This is going to motivate a lot of people who have been sitting on the sidelines on this issue."
At the same time, opinions on the issue do not fall along strictly partisan lines. New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, who is of Cuban descent, supports U.S. trade sanctions against the Castro regime, while some Republicans, such as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, support free trade.
Nonetheless, wealthy donors in the Cuban-American community are overwhelmingly opposed to developing relations with the Castro regime, Juan Proano, a Democratic consultant, told Politico.
Donors, he said, "don't care as much about this issue in New York or California. But if you’re talking about Florida, and especially South Florida, which is where people really care about this issue, there are more wealthy Cuban American donors who are conservative.
"It's generational, too. The hardliners tend to be older. The next generation are a little more disconnected."
Since the announcement, some in the Cuban community have already reached out to the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which opposes normalization, to offer their support, the group's director Mauricio Claver-Carone told Politico.
"You're definitely going to see a boon," Claver-Carone told Politico. "It will carry through the next cycle and will translate over to Jeb [Bush] and Marco [Rubio]," said Claver-Carone, whose group has hosted both men at recent events.
Both Bush and Rubio have been highly critical of the deal.
Claver-Carone added that although polling indicates that increasing numbers of Americans support normalization, "the hard evidence — being money and votes — are on the other side."
The LIBRE Initiative, a Koch-backed conservative group which opposes normalization, is also likely to pour money into ads in 2016 attacking Democrats who support normalization.
"We have the position that this is the wrong move and it's motivated by the wrong reasons," LIBRE spokesman Steven Cruz told Politico. "Do we see it becoming an issue of contention in 2016? I think so."
There is support for normalization among some major donor groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, though they are unlikely to spend a significant amount of money on the issue, Politico reported.
"None of the pro-engagement PACs have demonstrated the ability to be even a respectable counter to the US-Cuba Democracy PAC," Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer, told Politico.
