Republican grip starts to loosen in Little Havana

[kskiska]

(snip)

The change is clear to anyone who looks out of the Versailles window and across the road, where the John Kerry presidential campaign has set up an office, plastered with Democratic paraphernalia.

As electoral effrontery, this is on a par with Republicans opening up in Harlem. In Florida, the Cuban vote is the rock on which President Bush's 2000 electoral victory was built. Coralled and coddled by Jeb, his Spanish-speaking brother and state governor, 82% of Florida's 450,000 Cuban-Americans voted Republican.

That near-monopoly is now showing signs of crumbling. Younger Cubans and more recent immigrants are turning away from the politics of the post-revolutionary exiles, los historicos.

One of the younger men drinking coffee, Ignacio Luzarraga, is a perfect example. He is 26 years old, a second generation Cuban-American, who will not follow family tradition at the polling booth on November 2. He will be voting Democrat, for Senator Kerry.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1319719,00.html

[aquart]

1. He will be voting Democratic. Pity the Guardian doesn't know.

They've let the Republicans tell them what we call ourselves and what we do.