U.S. election could shift policy on Cuba

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) - Florida's Cuban-Americans have voted Republican for years. But the party could lose its grip on the heartland of exile opposition to Fidel Castro on Tuesday, signaling possible change in U.S. policy toward Cuba.

Polls show Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama slightly ahead or running even with his Republican rival John McCain in the state that decided the 2000 election for President George W. Bush after a disputed recount.

At the local level, in a shift almost unthinkable until recently, three Miami-based Cuban-American Republicans who serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and have long run almost unopposed are locked in tight races with Democrats.

The incumbents are all staunch supporters of the 46-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba and restrictions on family travel and remittances that Bush imposed to toughen it in 2004.

Like Obama, their Democratic challengers want to end restrictions imposed by Bush, and bank on the conviction that Miami's hard-line anti-communism has started to fade.

The Democrats have been buoyed by a rising tide of voter registration numbers for their party and internal polls putting them in a dead heat in at least two of the three adjoining south Florida congressional districts.

Such polls cannot be independently verified, but the incumbents, running scared, have unleashed what analysts call one of the nastiest campaigns in the unsavory history of south Florida politics.

"These people are dinosaurs," said Raul Martinez, who is challenging eight-term incumbent Lincoln Diaz-Balart in Florida's 21st Congressional District.

"They never had any opposition. That's why they kept winning," Martinez told Reuters.

"You're going to see an immediate change on family travel. Those restrictions will be lifted," he added, saying an easing of Cuba policy could gain momentum quickly if it was backed by a Cuban-American lawmaker representing south Florida.

Anti-Castro sentiment still runs high among Miami's 650,000 Cuban exiles, who account for just over a quarter of the total population of the greater Miami area.

BELFAST-STYLE VIOLENCE

Older Cuban-Americans like Martinez, a veteran former mayor of a working-class enclave on Miami's outskirts, still remember when local Cubans favoring closer ties with their homeland risked being firebombed or targeted in a drive-by shooting.

"There were more bombings in Miami than in Belfast," said Martinez.

Violent displays of exile passion are distant memories, however. And change is evident among younger Cuban-Americans more preoccupied with the U.S. housing debacle and surging unemployment than with the situation in Cuba.