03-10-2001

LOBBYING: The Bush Brothers' Cuban Connection

The state of Florida, which put George W. Bush in the White House by the
slimmest of margins, continues to stir up dust for him. This time, the
issues aren't hanging chads and electoral votes, but rather Fidel Castro,
trading sanctions, and the 2002 re-election campaign of his younger
brother, Gov. Jeb Bush.


The President and members of his Administration-principally Agriculture
Secretary Ann M. Veneman-are being drawn into the two-year-old lobbying
battle over the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.


Based on recent developments, anti-Castro Cuban-Americans and their allies
in the pro-embargo lobbying camp have gained an inside track with Bush to
continue the trading sanctions. That would represent a reversal for
anti-sanctions business and farming groups, which last year had won some
support from President Clinton and Congress to ease the embargo against
the Communist island nation.


The pro-sanctions forces are feeling pretty good right now, according to
anti-Castro Cuban-Americans, because they have the President's brother on
their side. The Cuban American National Foundation, the Union of Cuban
Workers in Exile, and others met in Miami on Feb. 24 with Gov. Bush. Joe
Garcia, executive director of CANF, said to National Journal that Gov.
Bush told the group "to have faith and keep working to move [the
sanctions policy] forward." Carlos M. Lluch, head of the UCWE, urged
Gov. Bush to "tell your brother to support the embargo,"
according to the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sun-Sentinel. "If [President
Bush] does that," Lluch added, "he will always have the
solidarity and support, not only of the workers, but also of the entire
Cuban community."


Dennis Hays, CANF's executive vice president, said in an interview that
the governor responded, "The President was clear in his position that
Cuba needs to respect basic human rights and move to a democratic system
of government." The governor also criticized the Clinton
Administration for having "done nothing in the last eight years"
with respect to improving human rights in Cuba, and he promised that
President Bush would "stand for freedom," according to the
newspaper report.


The anti-Castro forces' resurgence comes on the heels of two momentous
events in U.S.-Cuban relations. Late last year, a coalition of pro-trade
groups successfully punched a hole in the U.S. embargo policy for the
first time in 40 years, as Congress approved a bill that lifted sanctions
on sales of food and medicine to Cuba. And just a year ago, the
Miami-Cuban community took a severe hit when Elian Gonz--lez, who was
rescued off the coast of Florida in Nov. 1999, was returned to Cuba to
live with his father.


The Bush family understands the impact that Cuban-American voters have on
Florida politics. In 2000, the Cuban-American community in Florida voted
for President Bush by a 4-1 ratio, which perhaps was the difference in his
victory over Vice President Al Gore. Gov. Bush will need a strong turnout
from Cuban-Americans to win re-election next year.


Pro-trade groups say they are concerned that the Bush Administration is
moving in support of the positions of the anti-Castro Cuban-American
community. They worry that forthcoming regulations will not go far enough
to allow sufficient food and medicine sales. Americans for Humanitarian
Trade with Cuba, whose members are farming and business interests that
want to end the sanctions, has been lobbying the Bush Administration not
only to issue effective regulations, but also to take other actions to
further open the door to trade with Cuba.


These groups believe that Gov. Bush is putting pressure on President Bush.
Lissa Weinmann, executive director of AHTC, said Gov. Bush persuaded the
Bush White House to appoint Otto Juan Reich, an anti-Castro
Cuban-American, as the assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere
affairs. Recent press reports stated the nomination was expected any day.
(See this issue, p.667)


"The concern is that the political needs of Jeb Bush in Florida are
interfering with the circumspect approach to foreign policy-making,"
Weinmann said, "particularly in reference to the appointment of
someone as problematic as Otto Reich." She said this same political
calculation might have caused the Bush Administration to delay its release
of regulations for enforcing last year's successful Cuban trade
legislation.


The AHTC wrote in a Feb. 23 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell,
Agriculture Secretary Veneman, Attorney General John Ashcroft, National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill,
that the regulations should "reflect the will of a clear majority in
Congress to lift unilateral food and medicine sanctions." The letter
also said that Cuba should be removed from the State Department's list of
state sponsors of terrorism and notes that the "Department of State's
own standards indicate no Cuban government entity is directly or
indirectly involved in promoting terrorism."


Agriculture Secretary Veneman seems to be taking a different tack. On Feb.
27, she told a meeting of state agriculture commissioners that Congress
"provided some opening of the door to Cuba" last year, but that
the Bush Administration will not support "a lot of changes" for
Cuba.


Last year, a loosely knit coalition-which includes organizations ranging
from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops, and the American Farm Bureau Federation-demonstrated that a
majority in Congress supported greater U.S.-Cuba relations. The House
passed, by a vote of 301-116, legislation that lifted the food and
medicine trade restrictions against Cuba, and also voted 232-186 to lift
the restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba. The Senate voted
79-13 to lift the food and medicine ban, and President Clinton signed
legislation lifting the ban on food and medicine trade. But a last-minute
compromise engineered by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and
Cuban-American Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
R-Fla., barred U.S. banks or the U.S. government from financing any
transactions involving Cuba. The compromise legislation also codified
restrictions on travel to Cuba, despite the House vote in favor of lifting
the travel ban.


The action galvanized anti-Castro Cuban-Americans to lobby even harder on
the human rights situation in Cuba and to remind legislators of the
political clout of the Cuban-American exile community.


"I think a lot of people are unfocused about the fact that we have a
Stalinist police state 90 miles from our border," explained Gardner
Peckham, a lobbyist for Citizens for Liberty in Cuba, a group that some
Cuban-Americans formed last year in response to the new legislation.
"Business and farm groups have been enormously successful" in
pushing for a lifting of trade restrictions, said Peckham, a managing
director at the lobbying firm BKSH & Associates and a former aide to
ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. Citizens for Liberty hired Peckham's
firm to help prevent Congress from further loosening the Cuba trade
sanctions.


The pro-sanctions lobbying effort got some help from a Human Rights Watch
report earlier this year that called human rights practices in Cuba in
2000 "generally arbitrary and repressive." (Human Rights Watch
takes no position on the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba.)


Meanwhile, CANF, the largest of the anti-Castro groups, bought a town
house last year near the White House and has opened what it calls a
"Free Cuba Embassy" there. Hays, a longtime civil servant and a
former director of Cuban affairs at the State Department, runs the
"embassy." The group plans to open a "Freedom Tower"
in Miami this May, to mark the place where Cuban refugees were processed
after fleeing Cuba in 1959.


CANF is also working with Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., on legislation aimed
at weakening the Castro regime. The legislation would earmark aid for
Cuban political dissidents and loans for the few independent Cuban
artisans who are permitted to operate on the island. The bill would also
allow the United States to import the products made by those same Cuban
artisans.


The foundation says the Bush Administration should fully enforce the 1996
Helms-Burton law, which calls for U.S. trade penalties against foreign
businesses that make use of property seized from U.S. individuals or
companies after the Cuban revolution. President Clinton repeatedly waived
that portion of the law.


CANF points out that Cuba has a smaller trading capacity than Guatemala. A
recent International Trade Commission report said that the embargo against
Cuba has had "minimal overall historical impact on the U.S.
economy." While American rice and wheat farmers would benefit from
removal of sanctions, the report said, other businesses, such as citrus
and vegetable growers, would face new competition from Cuban
imports.


On the other side, pro-trade forces have bipartisan support to loosen
sanctions. AHTC will support legislation, introduced by Sens. Christopher
J. Dodd, D-Conn., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., that would lift the travel ban
and permit U.S. financing of trade in food and medicine. Farm-state Sens.
Max Baucus, D-Mont., Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and
Pat Roberts, R-Kan., are co-sponsoring the legislation.


The group is also opposing Bush's effort to regain authority over travel
licenses, fearing that Bush could make the rules more stringent. Another
worry is that Reich, should he be confirmed, could have the final say on
who receives licenses to make trips to the island.


Audrae Erickson, the international trade director for policy and
negotiations at the American Farm Bureau Federation, is convinced that
Bush "will cast a wary eye on Florida until after he runs for
re-election."


The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one pro-trade group that is forging ahead
to win a greater opening to Cuba. The chamber began soliciting $10,000
contributions from members of its Western Hemisphere Task Force late last
year in an effort to launch a working group aimed at lifting the embargo.
"We believe on principle that all unilateral sanctions are
ineffective and hurt U.S. businesses. We aren't backing down one
bit," said former chamber Senior Vice President Craig Johnstone, who
was overseeing the effort. Public support for returning Elian Gonz--lez to
his father in Cuba demonstrated that Americans are receptive to the idea
of expanding U.S.-Cuba relations, he said.


CANF's Garcia acknowledged that the Elian controversy, in which
Cuban-Americans opposed returning the boy to Cuba, "was a moral
defeat." It was "almost a death blow," he said, with
President Clinton "committed to weakening the embargo" and
"ill-informed agricultural leaders willing to sell America's
conscience for a few dollars. But we didn't lose. We made it through, and
though we were labeled savages during the Elian situation, we very quietly
went to the voting booth and made our presence felt. Over 82 percent of
our community voted for Bush. There is no question where he
won."


Politically, the Elian issue may have played out in favor of the
anti-Castro forces. The issue was a minefield for former Vice President
Gore, who hesitated before coming out against returning the boy to Cuba.
Last April, after federal agents removed Elian from the home of his Miami
relatives, President Clinton told National Journal writer Carl Cannon at
the White House Correspondents' Dinner that lingering resentment in the
Cuban-American community would cost Gore the state of Florida in the 2000
election. It was a telling observation, both for Gore's presidential
prospects, and for this year's debate on Cuba trade.


Shawn Zeller

National Journal