Community no longer Republican monolith in Miami

- Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

Miami -- Picking up her stogie with elegantly long fingers, Lida Escalona pauses and leans on the wooden counter, where she's been lovingly hand-rolling long sheets of tobacco into cigars called "La Gloria Cubana.''

"Bush,'' she says, puffing slowly, "I want him to win.''

Around her, in Little Havana's famed El Credito cigar factory neighborhood, in wooden stalls filled with mostly older Cuban workers who have roots in a homeland 90 miles away, heads nod in agreement.

But in the elegant front sales room, the young sales manager Cesar Marmanillo sees it differently.

"I'm a Democrat,'' he says. "And I think this election is very important. ''

The differing endorsements, equally passionate, illustrate how in the election of 2004, a change may be coming to Miami's Cuban American community, for generations a stalwart of the Republican Party.

On Calle Ocho, the heart of the Little Havana area, where the talk about politics can be as strong and potent as the cigars and café cubano that are the pride of the community, locals say a new generation of voters -- and President Bush's policies that have made it tougher to visit relatives and send money to the homeland -- may mean gains for the Democrats and challenger Sen. John Kerry.

"The Cuban community is a ... lot less monolithic than most outsiders think,'' says George Wilson, a sociology professor at the University of Miami and an expert in ethnic politics. "The stereotype of the right-wing Cuban is very much incorrect. There's a significant element of the right-wing Cuban community that is not supporting Bush.''

So critical are the estimated 600,000 Cuban American voters in Florida that "in the last election, if 1/2 of 1 percent of the Cuban community had stayed home, we'd be talking about Al Gore as president,'' says Joe Garcia, the former head of the Cuban American Foundation, a powerful lobby group. "If you can get 35 percent of the Cuban vote, God can't beat you in Florida.''

Indeed, in 1996, Bill Clinton won 38 percent of the vote; four years later, with Cubans outraged over efforts to send 6-year-old refugee Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba, Gore won just 17 percent.

A new poll of Latino voters in Florida released Saturday showed Bush leading Kerry 44 percent-37 percent in this battleground state with 27 electoral votes. The poll by the nonpartisan Willie C. Velazquez Institute was taken before Thursday's first presidential debate, which was held in Miami.

Garcia, who has joined forces as a senior adviser with the New Democrat Network to organize for votes in South Florida, says the high stakes are one reason his group has announced an unprecedented $6 million advertising campaign aimed specifically at Cuban Americans. The reason: polls suggesting that first-generation Cuban voters, virulently anti-Castro and conservative, are now sidling up to second- and third-generation voters -- many of whom have different issues and political interests.

"Republicans sold the idea that if you're liberal, you're bad,'' says Hilaleah Mayor Raul Martinez, who stars in the new ad campaign to urging Cubans to "join the Democratic movement.''

The appeal is coming as Democrats say they see opportunities for gains even among older voters because of anger over Bush's Cuba policy.

But Professor Jaime Sukliki of the Cuban Institute at the University of Miami says such sentiments are still in the minority.

"There are some Cubans who are unhappy about the regulations that president passed recently ... but the question is: How many are regular voters?'' he asks. "He'll lose some of them, perhaps 3 or 4 percent. But it's not substantial. The bulk will stay with the president because of his strong actions against (Fidel) Castro, and because they don't trust Kerry.''

Bush has paid considerable attention to the critical electorate this year, visiting Florida repeatedly and getting a boost from energetic outreach of his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush.

"Bush is the Liberace of Cuban politics,'' says Garcia. "He knows how to play us. He says every single thing they want to hear.''

E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.