Hillary Clinton undid some family history and hit two of her Republican opponents in their own backyards on Friday as she called for an end to the Cuba embargo.
The former secretary of state became the first major presidential candidate to come to the heart of America’s Cuban exile community to make her case that Congress should lift the Cuban embargo.
That wasn’t the only reason Clinton picked Miami, though. It’s also home to two top Republican presidential contenders: Bush, the former Florida governor, and Sen. Marco Rubio. Bush lives nearby, and Rubio teaches a class at Florida International University — which hosted Clinton’s speech.
The location offered an implicit contrast that Clinton had already made directly earlier Friday morning, when she and Bush spoke within minutes of each other at the National Urban League’s conference in Fort Lauderdale.
“The real test of a candidates’ commitment is not whether we come to speak,” Clinton said, “it is whether we are still around after the cameras are gone and the votes are counted. It is whether our positions live up to our rhetoric and too often we see a mismatch between what some candidates say in venues like this and what they actually do when they are elected.”
Then, she made the 45-minute drive into Miami to draw a contrast with Republicans on Cuban policy, saying the future of the U.S.-Cuban relationship is at stake in the upcoming presidential election.
“We have arrived at a decisive moment. The Cuban people have waited long enough for progress to come,” Clinton said Friday. “Even many Republicans on Capitol Hill are starting to recognize the urgency of moving forward. It’s time for their leaders to either get on board or get out of the way.”
She called out by name Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, urging the two to “step up and answer the pleas of the Cuban people.”
And then she took a shot at the entire GOP field of presidential contenders, saying that their support for the embargo will “play right into the hard-liners’ hands. They would reverse the progress we made.”
“They have it backwards. Engagement is not a gift to the Castros, it’s a threat to the Castros,” Clinton said.
Clinton’s position mirrors one President Barack Obama took weeks earlier, calling for an end to the embargo as he announced the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana.
But it was a major change from the position both Clinton and her husband have taken before.
It was then-President Bill Clinton who in 1996 signed into law a requirement that Congress approve the lifting of any part of the Cuba embargo.
The move made political sense at the time: Clinton was running for re-election and the bipartisan bill landed on his desk after the Cuban military shot down two U.S. civilian planes over the Straits of Florida, killing four members of the Cuban-American exile group Brothers to the Rescue.
“We will not tolerate attacks on United States citizens,” Bill Clinton said at the time, “and we will stand with those both inside and outside Cuba who are working for a peaceful transition to freedom and democracy.”
Hillary Clinton said the embargo should remain in place during her 2008 presidential campaign.
“Until there is some recognition on the part of whoever is in charge of the Cuban government that they have to move toward democracy and freedom for the Cuban people, it will be very difficult for us to change our policy,” she said then.
Clinton acknowledged Friday that she’d previously supported the embargo. But she said watching closer ties between Cuba and America as the Obama administration in 2009 made it easier for Cuban-Americans to visit and send money to people on the island led her to recommend, by the end of her tenure as secretary of state, that the embargo be lifted.
Dropping it, she said, would “strip the Castro regime of its excuses and force it to grapple with the demands and the aspirations of the Cuban people,” and to “figure out how to adapt to a rapidly transforming society.”
Hillary Clinton is visiting a changed Florida, two decades after her original remarks.
The Cuban-American vote, once solidly Republican, has shifted to the left as younger generations with fewer direct ties to Castro’s Cuba make up an ever-growing portion of the population. A Florida International University survey of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County, home of the nation’s largest Cuban exile community, found that a majority favor lifting the embargo.
Meanwhile, Cuban-Americans make up a smaller portion of Florida’s Latino population, as Puerto Ricans and other groups grow in numbers.
The changing trends weren’t the only upside for Clinton: At least 20 television cameras, the majority from Hispanic outlets, were present for Friday’s speech. Just like Clinton’s support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, her position on Cuba is in line with the majority of Latinos — a key voting bloc in several 2016 swing states.
Despite Florida’s changing demographics and the Cuban-American diaspora’s softened view of the embargo, Republican presidential contenders remain stiffly opposed to lifting it — and they’re earning some supporters for it.
Daniela Ferrera, a 17-year-old Miami resident, protested outside Clinton’s event, saying she’ll support Rubio because he “actually believes in freedom for the Cuban people.”
Ferrera’s family left Cuba in a boat with her family when she was 3. She became a U.S. citizen in 2001 and will be eligible to vote in 2016, she said.
Of Clinton, she said, “I respect her as a person, however I don’t see eye-to-eye with her on this issue and frankly, I think she is wrong on this issue.”
She said Clinton should “strengthen, strengthen the sanctions if anything, because right now they are not really strong and they need to be stronger.”
Bush responded in a statement Friday, saying “It’s insulting to many residents of Miami for Hillary Clinton to come here to endorse a retreat in the struggle for democracy in Cuba.”
“This city has become a home and a refuge to thousands and thousands of Castro’s victims,” he said. “Secretary Clinton’s call to abandon the embargo — and the principles of democracy and freedom for the Cuban people — in exchange for nothing in return from the regime in Havana adds insult to the pain they and their families feel.”
Rubio called Clinton’s position “a grave mistake,” issuing a call for Cuban democracy that echoed Bill Clinton’s 1996 position.
“Unilateral concessions to the Castros will only strengthen a brutal, anti-American regime 90 miles from our shore,” Rubio said in a statement.
“President Obama and Secretary Clinton must learn that appeasement only emboldens dictators and repressive governments, and weakens America’s global standing in the 21st century,” he said. “As president, I will stand with the Cuban people and only support an end to the embargo that is accompanied by real democratic reform.”