U.S. Senate candidate Mel Martinez navigates tricky political waters in bucking the Cuban exile community's beliefs about U.S.-imposed restrictions.

BY MARC CAPUTO

TALLAHASSEE - Mel Martinez invariably enthralls crowds when he recounts his childhood flight from Cuba's ''tyrannical Communism'' and ''religious persecution'' to a free United States, where he became President Bush's housing secretary and is now running for the U.S. Senate.

With its Horatio Alger overtones and White House ties, the story is the backbone of the Republican's campaign.

But it also means he condones an administration policy largely opposed by South Florida's Cuban exile community: turning back many of the Cubans who flee the very government Martinez escaped and continues to denounce.

''I don't think that's wrong unless that person has reasonable fear of persecution and can prove it,'' Martinez told The Herald. ``Everyone from Cuba does not have a fear of persecution. Many people from Cuba are coming because of economic conditions.''

Expressing such sentiments about Cuba and immigration, while closely mirroring mainstream GOP thought, is a tricky act of political navigation for an Orlando-based candidate counting on Miami-Dade's Hispanics -- who comprise 69 percent of Republicans in the county -- to carry him in the crowded Aug. 31 winner-take-all primary.

Some Cuban lawmakers have joked, under their breath, that Martinez isn't a real Cuban because he doesn't live in South Florida.

HISPANIC SUPPORT

Martinez, who would become the nation's first Cuban-American senator, still has the backing of the majority of South Florida Hispanics, according to polls, though Senate race front-runner Bill McCollum has actively courted the Cuban-American vote, having sponsored a number of exile-backed measures when he was in Congress.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a McCollum supporter and force behind Bush's new hard-line restrictions on Cuba travel, said it was risky for Martinez to ``question the fact or put in doubt the fact that all Cubans fleeing Cuba are seeking freedom from totalitarianism.''

That essential belief has been under assault ever since President Clinton instituted -- and Bush continued -- the wet foot/dry foot policy.

The rule grants asylum to Cubans who step on U.S. soil without first being interdicted.

Those caught at sea are returned unless they can prove they fear persecution.

Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said the wet foot/dry foot policy is unfair because it draws an ''absurd'' distinction based on modes of refugee travel.

''We don't make distinctions because nobody made distinctions with us when we came here. The people who want to leave Cuba today are living under the same dictatorship that we did,'' Garcia said.

Garcia also questioned the way in which Cubans caught at sea have to prove they reasonably fear persecution.

''Not everybody travels with his persecution file on a raft when you're dehydrated and delirious and sunburned and thrown on board a Coast Guard cutter after four days, and have an attorney with you and can prove to an immigration-trained officer that you've been persecuted,'' Garcia said. ``No, most people don't come here like that, so they get sent back and, we believe, many are persecuted.''

CRITICISM OF POLICY

When wet foot/dry foot was instituted, it was roundly panned in the exile community. Bush suggested he would either change or review it when he campaigned in 2000. Exiles complain he has done neither.

Martinez said that he, too, doesn't like the policy.

He said he would want to change it to at least allow rafters to prove their case in a forum other than the deck of a Coast Guard cutter. He said the new Homeland Security Department had supplied him with information showing that many rafters intercepted at sea expressed that they were economic -- not politically persecuted -- immigrants.

Despite his dislike of the wet foot/dry foot rule, Martinez invoked it five years ago in the name of another famous rafter: Elián González.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

When Elián arrived in the United States and touched off an international and interfamily struggle in late 1999, Martinez argued that Elián's ''dry feet'' made him eligible for U.S. residency. Martinez, chairman of Orange County's commission at the time, briefly hosted the boy in Orlando and took him on a well-publicized trip to Disney World.

The parallels between Martinez and Elián were unavoidable: Elián lost his mother on the voyage over; Martinez's parents had sent him to America alone in the 1960s as part of Operation Pedro Pan, organized by the Catholic Church.

In a Jan. 10, 2000, appearance on CNN's Larry King Live, Martinez seemed to think that little had changed in Cuba since he came to the United States.

''A lot of what was going on in Cuba, which is still going on today, is religious repression,'' he said, comparing the Florida Straits to the Berlin Wall.

The analogy is a common one, and was used by McCollum in a Cuba policy statement made with Díaz-Balart and his brother, Mario, also a McCollum supporter and congressman.

VIEWS ON CUBA

Immigration and Cuba have become major themes among the eight Republican candidates seeking the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Bob Graham.

Lawyer Larry Klayman wants to invade the island; former Air Force pilot Sonya March has called for an end to the Cuban embargo; and McCollum is calling for an immediate end to wet foot/dry foot, though he says some Cubans shouldn't necessarily be instantly guaranteed residency in the United States and might be encouraged to go elsewhere.

Having spent 18 years on the House immigration subcommittee, McCollum supported a 1996 law that took away some due-process rights for legal immigrants. In 2000, when he first ran for the Senate, he sponsored a measure to remove some of those restrictions.

McCollum also helped write a plank of the GOP's platform in 1996 declaring that children born of illegal immigrants should not automatically be citizens. Both he and Martinez oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants in the United States, and Martinez has proposed a measure to register and track what he calls ``aliens.''

A HARD LINE

The tough talk on immigration -- coupled with the tale of his immigrant roots -- has only brought Martinez accolades in conservative bastions such as the Panhandle.

Martinez's support appears even stronger in Miami-Dade, which is what makes his talk of ''economic refugees'' so disappointing to many exiles.

''I respect Mel Martinez very much, and if he made that statement, then I would have to categorically disagree,'' said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, president of the Miami-based exile organization Democracy Movement. ``It does not represent reality, what people have to face on that island and why they leave.''