2020 contender Sen. Bernie Sanders might have a tough time garnering votes from Cuban and Venezuelan Americans living in Florida following his comments defending dictator Fidel Castro.
Sanders sparked anger among the Hispanic community in Florida this week when he said, “It’s unfair to simply say everything is bad” about the late dictator and his regime. Fox News spoke to people dining at a popular restaurant in Miami’s Little Havana on Friday to gauge how voters feel about a socialist potentially becoming president.
“He has turned off all of the Cuban population in Miami, and I would venture to say the Venezuelan population, Nicaraguan population, because of those comments that he has made,” Maria Fernandez Gomez, a Cuban American, said.
Gomez said it’s “very insulting” to the people who escaped communist dictatorships to come to America only to grapple with a Democratic front-runner who is a “known communist sympathizer.”
Florida is home to at least 1.3 million Cuban Americans and at least 60,000 Venezuelans. In a state where just a few thousand votes could swing an election, Sanders’s comments could cost him the state during a general election.
“The reality is that, in a state that is a 2% state, it’s very important. Sixty thousand votes could make the difference. Cubans are clearly far and beyond the most important,” Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University politics professor, said. “Among Hispanics, the big issue is that Bernie has kind of become the caricature of what the Republicans have painted.”
Sanders said in a 60 Minutes interview Sunday that he condemned “the authoritarian nature” of the Cuban regime but added he thinks it had some highlights.
“When Fidel Castro came to office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing, even though Fidel Castro did it?” Sanders said.
Raquel Robaina, a Cuban immigrant, shot down his comments, saying: “Literacy is education. Who cares if someone can read at a high level if all they’re reading is propaganda and lies and they have no freedom of thought — that is not education. That is indoctrination. Moderate Democrats: We do not agree at all with Bernie Sanders’s line of thinking.”
Younger Cuban and Venezuelan generations are starting to lean more liberal in Florida, but Sanders’s recent comments might pull them to the right, according to those Fox News interviewed.
“For Republicans, it will be Christmas in August if Bernie gets the nomination. I think it might even mobilize people to vote against the Democrats,” Gamarra said.
