MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2020 A
0 NMIAMI — The conventional wisdom
about the Florida electorate has long
been that Miami-Dade County’s unavoid-
able political destiny was to turn even
more Democratic as younger Cuban-
Americans replaced the older Cuban ex-
iles who formed a powerful Republican
stronghold.
That fate may not have been as prede-
termined as everyone once thought.
Second- and third-generation Cuban-
Americans born in the United States
have continued to drift away from their
parents’ and grandparents’ Republican
Party. But, in a trend that went largely
unnoticed by Democrats until lately,
more recent Cuban immigrants who pre-
viously displayed little engagement in
American politics have started to identify
as Trump Republicans.
They are not enough to flip Miami-
Dade, which Hillary Clinton won by a
record margin of nearly 30 percentage
points in 2016. But their potential impact
to the race has led in part to an unusually
pitched electoral battle in Florida’s most
populous county this year, as President
Trump’s campaign fights to narrow the
Democrats’ lead and compensate for his
expected losses elsewhere, including
among older voters and suburban wom-
en.
If they can bring Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s
advantage down to, say, 20 percentage
points, the political math suggests that
Florida, a must-win state for Mr. Trump,
could remain in the president’s column,
even if the Tampa and Orlando regions
swing slightly toward Mr. Biden.
Narrowing the margins in Miami-
Dade would be a “huge win,” said State
Senator Manny Díaz Jr., Republican of
Hialeah, the most heavily Cuban city in
the country. “How do you make that up
anywhere else in the state?”
Democrats have watched with alarm
as Trump supporters have organized
huge caravans that crawl across the
streets of Miami-Dade on weekend after-
noons, featuring trucks that blare popu-
lar Cuban music and fly Trump, Cuban
and American flags. Passengers bang
pots and pans, a celebratory display typi-
cally reserved in this city for Miami Heat
championships.
At times, things have become tense.
Last weekend, when stragglers from a
caravan organized by “Cubanos con Bi-
den,” or Cubans with Biden, intersected
with a Trump caravan along Southwest
Eighth Street, in the Miami neighbor-
hood of Little Havana, men driving vehi-
cles from the Trump caravan surrounded
a Honda Fit decked out in Biden signs.
“They yelled ‘¡Comunista!’ ” said the
Honda’s driver, Sofia Hidalgo, an 18-year-
old Cuban-American college student who
recently moved to Miami from Maryland.
Democratic-leaning Hispanics make
up an increasingly large proportion of
Florida’s Latino electorate, including
younger Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Co-
lombians and Venezuelans, and Mr. Bi-
den is counting on them to keep his lead
in Miami-Dade to about 24 percentage
points. That’s what it was when former
President Barack Obama won Florida in
2012.
To that end, Mr. Obama traveled to Mi-
ami on Saturday and directly rebutted
Republican claims that his former vice
president, who has a record as a moder-
ate Democrat, is a socialist, or worse.
“Some of the rhetoric that you’re hear-
ing here in South Florida, it’s just made
up — it’s just nonsense,” Mr. Obama said
at a drive-in rally in North Miami. “Lis-
tening to Republicans, you’d think that
Joe was more communist than the Cas-
tros! Don’t fall for that garbage.”
“What is true,” Mr. Obama continued,
“is he’ll promote human rights in Cuba
and around the world, and he won’t cod-
dle dictators the way our current presi-
dent does.”
He did not mention his administra-
tion’s 2014 move to restore full diplomatic
relations with Cuba, a rapprochement all
but dismantled by Mr. Trump.
Hard-liners appreciated Mr. Trump’s
reversals. But the feelings were more
complicated among many Cuban-Ameri-
cans who arrived more recently, said
Guennady Rodríguez, 39, who immigrat-
ed to Miami from Cuba in 2013.
Mr. Rodríguez, who edits a local politi-
cal blog and podcast, “23 y Flagler,” sup-
ported the Obama policy and opposed the
Trump rollbacks. But he said that other
Cuban-Americans less steeped in Ameri-
can politics were disappointed that Mr.
Obama’s re-engagement, in effect for
only a couple of years, did not quickly
soften the Cuban regime. Fairly or not,
that left a lingering frustration that
prompted support for renewed sanc-
tions, he said.
“The Cuban government has spent the
past few years shutting down freedom of
expression,” he said. “People here are ev-
idently frustrated.”
The views of the newer generation of
Cuban-Americans that is more receptive
to Republicans are perhaps most loudly
voiced and shaped by Alex Otaola, a 41-
year-old social media influencer who
mixes culture and politics on a live daily
YouTube show. Mr. Otaola leveraged hislarge online following — about 100,
viewers for his show each day — into a
one-on-one meeting with Mr. Trump this
month.
Mr. Otaola has become well known in
Cuban-American Republican circles for
telling his audience how he voted for Mrs.
Clinton and has since changed his mind,
citing a leftward shift by the Democratic
Party personified by Representative Al-
exandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. The
Trump campaign is one of his paid adver-
tisers.
Among his pet issues is criticizing Cu-
ban artists friendly with the island’s gov-
ernment who try to perform in Miami, a
fight that has stirred anti-communist
sentiment in this town for decades.
To his Oct. 15 meeting with Mr. Trump,
Mr. Otaola wore a green turban and a
swarm of bracelets. Representative
Mario Diaz-Balart, Republican of Miami,
served as his interpreter. Mr. Otaola
asked the president if he could send him a
list of 60 Cuban artists and celebrities
with supposed ties to the Cuban govern-
ment, so that the Trump administration
would consider revoking their U.S. visas.
“So these are people that you don’t
want to have,” Mr. Trump said, according
to a video of the meeting aired by Mr.
Otaola. “We’ll get it done.”
In an interview, Mr. Otaola said hespoke for younger Cubans who experi-
enced communism in the past two dec-
ades.
“I’ve been here for 17 years,” he said.
“We lived through the same things. We
speak the same language. And we are liv-
ing through the same signs that we saw
in the flesh in our country. So we recog-
nize the things that are happening.”
Those views are shared by people like
Giancarlo Sopo, a Cuban-American who
became known in Miami in his 20s for
working in Democratic politics. He now
works as a campaign spokesman for Mr.
Trump.
“Our families fled socialism, we are
culturally conservative, the president’s
policies are popular in our community
and we like hismano dura against the
left,” Mr. Sopo said in a statement, using
the phrase for iron fist. “The Democrats
have always had far-left voices, but its
leaders were once wise enough to keep
them at bay. Now they extol them as ‘the
future’ of the party, which is why many of
us consider ourselves a part of its past.”
Guillermo J. Grenier, a sociology pro-
fessor at Florida International Univer-
sity who conducts a biennial poll of Mi-
ami’s Cuban-American community,
found for the first time this year that a
majority of Cubans who arrived between
2010 and 2015, the most recent dates toqualify for U.S. citizenship, are register-
ing as Republicans. Cuban-Americans
born in the United States “are going the
other way,” he said, with 40 percent regis-
tering Republican, 35 percent Democrat
and 24 percent without party affiliation.
“The Republican Party is really well-
established in the Cuban communities,
and when new Cubans are coming in now,
they don’t see a muted Republican Party
like you had under Obama,” Dr. Grenier
said.
His poll has also shown that Cuban-
American attitudes tend to swing with
the policies of the party that holds the
White House: They opposed diplomatic
relations under former President George
W. Bush, reversed their feelings under
Mr. Obama and again returned to Bush-
era attitudes under Mr. Trump.
“What it shows is that Cubans adjust,”
Dr. Grenier said. “Whoever is in Wash-
ington, Cubans reflect foreign policy —
they don’t create it.”
That leaves room for persuasion, said
Carmen Peláez, a playwright and film-
maker who helps lead Cubanos con Bi-
den. Ms. Peláez said she tried to have cor-
dial conversations with fellow Cuban-
Americans to challenge their views
about Democrats.
“There are people that got here from
Cuba three years ago, and their muscle
memories — the only thing they know as
politicking — is what they saw in Cuba,”
she said. “So when they’re being told with
certainty, ‘This is how you can fight com-
munism,’ they can’t help but respond.
That, to me, is where we have to listen.”
Ms. Peláez, 49, wrote a social media
post that declared Cubanos con Biden to
be “100% anti-comunista, 100% anti-fa-
scista y 100% con Biden.” The slogan is
now printed on the back of “Cubanos con
Biden” yard signs.
Democrats like Mr. Biden have re-
sisted proclaiming that they are not so-
cialists “for the same reason that he did-
n’t make any proclamations about not be-
ing a werewolf — because it’s ridiculous,”
Ms. Peláez said.
“You never want to confirm a lie by de-
nying it,” she added. “But Cubans are
stubborn as jackhammers, and we did
live through a revolution that was very
duplicitous, where neighbors lied about
neighbors. So when I saw my post take
off, I was like, we need to really just throw
the gloves off and be like, ‘Come at me,
bro.’ I am so sickof my family calling me
communist.”
Now, she said, several older Cuban-
Americans have confided to her that they
intend to vote for Mr. Biden. Even if they
won’t tell their families.Cuban-American supporters of President Trump in Miami-Dade County, Fla., on Saturday.
Trump supporters there have organized caravans with trucks that blare popular Cuban music.
Last weekend, when stragglers from a Cubanos con Biden caravan intersected with a Trump one,
men driving vehicles from the Trump caravan surrounded a Honda decked out in Biden signs.PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAUL MARTINEZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESIn Miami, Newer Cuban Immigrants Offer Opening for Trump
Carmen Peláez helps lead Cubanos con Biden. She wrote a social media
post that declared the group to be “100% anti-comunista, 100% anti-
fascista y 100% con Biden.” The slogan is now printed on their signs.By PATRICIA MAZZEIPolitical tensions over the upcoming
presidential election escalated on New
York City’s streets on Sunday, as sup-
porters of President Trump clashed with
counterprotesters during a day of dem-
onstrations.
Seven people were arrested during
skirmishes between opposing sides in
Manhattan, where Rudolph W. Giuliani,
the president’s personal lawyer and the
city’s former mayor, encountered pro-
testers targeting a caravan of cars orga-
nized by a group that identifies itself as
Jews for Trump.
In one video, Mr. Giuliani could be seen
in the passenger side of a vehicle with the
window rolled down as anti-Trump pro-
testers screamed at him.
In an interview, Mr. Giuliani said that
he had encountered the caravan and the
protesters while driving down Fifth Ave-
nue after taping his radio show.
“I would love to have had a campaign
commercial of it and put it on in the mid-
dle of America and say, ‘Who would you
prefer for the next four years?” he said.
“This group of foul-mouthed people who
don’t seem to have a vocabulary beyond
three words, or these very nice Jewish
people who are driving in the car and not
saying anything back and not doing any-
thing other than exercising their right to
say they’re for Donald Trump.”
According to the police, the pro-Trump
caravan passed through Times Square,
where it converged with a group of anti-
Trump protesters who had marched
from Brooklyn. The cars in the convoy
were then blocked by counterprotesters,
and some drivers got out of their cars to
confront the anti-Trump demonstrators.
The two sides hurled political slurs —
calling each other “fascists” and “anar-
chists”— traded blows, and fought over
the Trump supporters’ flags before the
police broke them apart, according to
videos posted online.
In some videos, a group of people can
be seen yelling expletives and throwing
eggs and other projectiles at passing
cars flying pro-Trump flags in Midtown,
while in another, a group of people hold-
ing pro-Trump banners march on oneside of the street as people across the
street yell, “New York hates you.”
The clashes came as the Police De-
partment was preparing for more possi-
ble unrest as Election Day approached,
including days or weeks of protests in the
aftermath of the vote. Hundreds of police
officers have been assigned to polling
stations for both early voting and Elec-
tion Day, with thousands more on
standby for protests.
Top police officials have stressed the
need for officers to remain neutral, de-
spite their unions’ open embrace of Mr.
Trump. But officials said an officer
crossed the line late Saturday, when he
used a police loudspeaker to voice sup-
port for the president while arguing with
a man on the street in Flatbush, Brook-
lyn, who called him a “fascist.”“Trump 2020,” the officer responded.
“Put it on YouTube. Put it on Facebook.
Trump 2020.”
The officer, whose name the police
withheld, was suspended without pay on
Sunday after videos of the incident went
viral on social media. Department policy
prohibits officers from engaging in politi-
cal activity on duty or in uniform, includ-
ing endorsing a candidate or party.
“One hundred percent unacceptable.
Period,” Commissioner Dermot F. Shea
commented on one of the videos of the
suspended officer on Twitter. “Law En-
forcement must remain apolitical, it is es-
sential in our role to serve ALL New
Yorkers regardless of any political be-
liefs. It is essential for New Yorkers to
trust their Police.”
The Police Benevolent Association,
the officer’s labor union, declined to com-
ment.
It is unclear whether two other officers
who were with the suspended officer will
face discipline.
His suspension is the beginning of a
disciplinary process that can take
months or even years to play out. But
Mayor Bill de Blasio promised quick ac-tion.
“ANY NYPD Officer pushing ANY po-
litical agenda while on duty will face con-
sequences,” he wrote on Twitter. “We will
act fast here, and this will not be toler-
ated.”
State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Man-
hattan Democrat, expressed concern
over the incident, noting that police offi-
cers transport ballots from poll sites to
the Board of Elections.
“There must be swift consequences
and protections against election interfer-
ence,” he said.
Despite the directives from the top, the
city’s biggest police unions have heartily
embraced Mr. Trump, whose law and or-
der message resonates with those who
feel Democrats have made the city too
soft on crime. Patrick J. Lynch, the presi-
dent of the Police Benevolent Associa-
tion, endorsed the president in a speech
before the Republican National Conven-
tion. Ed Mullins, the president of the
Sergeants Benevolent Association, has
appeared at the White House and regu-
larly praises Mr. Trump in his official
messages to officers.A Pro-Trump Caravan of Cars Clashes With Counterprotesters in Times Square
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL
and DANA RUBINSTEINMihir Zaveri contributed reporting.
Seven are arrested as the
two sides exchange jeers of
‘fascists’ and ‘anarchists.’
.