How Cubans Transformed Florida Politic and Leveraged Local for National Influence

This paper documents how Cuban Americans have become politically influential in Miami, and leveraged local for national political influence. Their influence is shown to peak in years of presidential elections, when candidates seek the votes of Cuban Americans in the largest “swing state,” and Cuban Americans make campaign contributions in which they expect, in exchange, lawmakers to implement policies they believe will destabilize the Castro regime to the point of collapse. But influential Cuban Americans will be shown not to speak either for the growing diversity of interests within the Cuban American community, or for the growing nonCuban American Hispanic community. Rather, they represent the interests of “hardliners” who emigrated in the early years of Fidel Castro’s rule, albeit increasingly less effectively.