By DIANA MARRERO
Special to The Times-Union

MIAMI -- Wedged in a boisterous crowd, 20-year-old Veronica Castro admitted her folks did not know where she was that night.

Castro, a Cuban-American whose parents are staunch Republicans, was at a John Kerry rally in downtown Miami, cheering on President Bush's rival during the first presidential debate.

"They think I'm at a concert," she said with a sheepish grin.

A registered Democrat, Castro is among a growing number of young Cuban-Americans who have bucked their parents' political beliefs, opting to support a party reviled among older Cuban exiles since the days of John F. Kennedy and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

Long a bastion of the Republican Party, the state's Cuban community is slowly changing.

And new generations of Cuban-American voters are now being targeted by Democratic activists intent on shaking loose the Republican Party's stronghold on the historically conservative community.

These younger voters still only make up a small chunk of the Cuban-American voting bloc in Florida, a key swing state which sent Bush to the White House four years ago with only 537 votes.

But with the stakes at their highest, both camps are aggressively vying for these voters -- though Bush supporters insist Cuban-American's loyalty remains unshaken.

In September, Kerry opened up a campaign office in the middle of Little Havana, across from Versailles Restaurant, which draws Cuban-Americans as much for lively political discussion as for its strong Cafe Cubano. Bush's office is not far away.

"One of the mistakes Democrats have [made] in the past is they have ignored Miami," said Joe Garcia, who left his post as executive director of the influential Cuban-American National Foundation, a bipartisan group, to help the Washington-based New Democrat Network woo Cuban-American and Hispanic voters. "If we give up Cuban-Americans, we might as well give up Florida."

A poll by the New Democrat Network showed Kerry holds a 58 percent to 32 percent advantage over Bush among U.S. born Cuban-Americans, and a 40 percent to 29 percent lead among those who fled Cuba after the 1980s.

Although those groups now outnumber "historic" exiles who came after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, they have not yet matched the older group's political muscle or turnout rates at the ballot box.

Chipping away at just a small portion of those voters could prove crucial for Kerry's success in Florida.

Even North Florida's tiny Cuban population -- nearly 4,000 of the state's 900,000 Cubans -- could be enough to swing the election.

"If one half of one percent of Cuban-Americans stayed home, we'd be talking about Al Gore's re-election," said Garcia, 41, whose group recently launched a series of ads aimed at convincing Cuban-Americans that the Democratic Party has more to offer them on jobs and healthcare issues.

Bush won 80 percent of the Cuban vote in 2,000, a figure political experts say he must match to win the state again. But that may not be easy.

Four years ago, Cuban-American voters, angry with the Clinton administration's decision to return 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba, turned out en masse for Bush. This time, it is Bush who has drawn the wrath of some in the Cuban-American community.

Support began to slip for Bush last year when the United States repatriated 12 Cubans intercepted at sea after they hijacked a Cuban ferry. Soon after, the Coast Guard returned another group aboard a converted 1951 Chevy flatbed truck, drawing the ire of Cuban-Americans who sympathized with the migrants' ingenuity and desperation.

In a letter to the White House signed by more than a dozen Florida legislators, Cuban-American Republicans called Bush's policy on Cuba "offensive and misguided."

They also urged Bush to take a stronger stance against the Cuban government or risk losing the community's long-standing support.

Political observers say Bush's new Cuba policies, unveiled this summer in an effort to tighten the trade embargo against the island, were the result of that pressure.

The measures reduces the number of times Cuban-Americans can visit family on the island from once a year to once every three years, restricts the amount of cash remittances they can send to family members and defines "family" as those in the immediate nucleus, exempting cousins, aunts and uncles.

"These measures are directed at an important objective: to reduce the funds with which the tyranny survives," said Ninoska Perez Castellon, a popular Cuban radio talk show host.

Perez Castellon and others say the U.S. government could weaken the Castro regime by restricting the amount of American dollars that enter the island. By some estimates, Cuban families on the island receive $1 billion a year a year from American relatives.

"I wish they were more strict with Cuba policies," said Norma Vargas, a fifth-grade school teacher from Jacksonville. Vargas, 55, who left Cuba in 1968, said she refrains from sending any money to Cuba. She once sent medicine to a sick relative but rarely even calls the island in an effort to keep cash out of Castro's hands.

"That's exactly why [Castro] is in power," she said. "He's been living off the Cubans who live in the United States. If we had taken stricter policies, maybe Castro would not be there now."

But the measures also elicited unexpected backlash among newer arrivals who promise to vote for Kerry to protest restrictions they say divide families.

Protesting the measures outside the University of Miami during last month's debate, Rosa Reyes said she fears she will never get to see her ailing father alive again.

"This is not a political problem. It's a family problem," said Reyes, who formed the Association of Christian Women in Defense of the Cuban Family in response to the restrictions. "My father is 89 years old and I can't see him in three years. I'll probably have to wait until he's dead to see him."

She plans to protest at the ballot box as well -- by casting a vote for Kerry.

But many of those at her side waving signs that read "Bush, my family goes first," won't be able to join her on election day.

"It's one thing to have a population shift, and it's quite another for that to translate into votes," said Pedro Freyre, a prominent Cuban-American attorney and conservative Republican. "There's no question there's been a backlash. But those folks have not yet come out to vote."

In Miami-Dade County, for example, there are about 100,000 Cubans who could easily become citizens of the United States. There are another 100,000 who are eligible to vote but have not yet registered.

Many of these people simply have no faith in the democratic system, having grown up under dictatorial rule where one party controls the political system, Castro critics say.

"They come from a system where political involvement was meaningless," Freyre said. "You did what you were told to do politically, not because you felt you could make a difference."

Younger Cubans also tend to vote in smaller numbers. But many, a generation or more removed from the island, are planning to vote for Kerry, choosing the Democratic Party for issues other than Cuba policy.

Claudia Gomez, a 32-year-old third-grade teacher, defied her parents' politics when she registered as a Democrat.

"I wouldn't understand any teacher voting for Bush," said Gomez, holding a Kerry for President sign at a Miami rally. "All we do now is teach the FCAT. How to pass the test. How to do the test."

Bush supporters say Gomez stands virtually alone.

"The people who are saying the community is changing are Democratic activists," said Luis Zuniga, a former member of Alpha 66, an exile group that advocated armed action against Castro's government.

He dismisses polls conducted by the New Democrat Network as partisan.

"The truth is found in the voting ballots," he said, noting that voters overwhelmingly voted to send Republican Mario Diaz-Balart to Congress over a Cuban-American opponent who argued for easing the embargo. Another poll, conducted by Florida International University, shows support for the embargo has not ebbed among Cuban voters, he said.

"Republicans are still the ones who have supported our causes," said Zuniga, a former foundation member who was among 22 exile leaders who publicly broke ranks with the organization amidst charges the group was becoming soft on Cuba since the 1997 death of the group's chairman, Jorge Mas Canosa.

Mas Canosa's son, Jorge Mas Santos, who took over his father's post, has been criticized by hard line exiles for advocating dialogue with Cuban officials and embracing the island's dissidents who oppose the embargo.

The recent deaths of other prominent exile leaders -- Andres Nazario Sargen, the highest-ranking member of Alpha 66, and Juan Perez Franco, president of Brigade 2506, the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association -- have also left a void among hard line exiles.

Unprecedented voter registration efforts targeting the state's Hispanics, new voters who often have not yet developed a strong sense of party loyalty, might further crack the solidly-Republican Cuban-American voting bloc.

Aidil Oscariz, 28, was three years old when her family left the island. Growing up in Miami, she had long refused to return because she did not want to prop up Cuba's economy by traveling there.

She finally went six years ago at her mother's insistence she needed to meet her family on the island. It was a trip that made her question the hard-line stance which had kept her from knowing her family for so many years.

"It wasn't the government I was helping. It was my very own family, my neighbors," she said. "If it helps the government, if it sustains the economy a little bit, I can not not support the government at their expense."

Oscariz, who now works for the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a non-partisan group targeting Hispanic voters across the nation, said she wants to help give a voice to those who have been silenced by influential, older hard liners who have dominated the Cuba debate for decades.

The most recent figures available show the state has added nearly 600,000 new voters to since January, boosting voter rolls to 4.1 million Democrats and 3.7 million Republicans.

On a Sunday earlier this month, Oscariz left a family gathering to attend a rally organized by moderate Cuban-Americans, many of whom oppose the new travel restrictions.

Holding a stack of voter registration cards, Oscariz lamented her luck.

"We got 15," she sighed.

Most people were already registered.

Hours earlier, she had been at a baby shower. When she excused herself early to register voters at the rally, family members asked her who she was going to vote for.

She said she was registering anyone who wanted to vote, regardless of their party preference. But the registered Democrat admitted she would be voting for Kerry.

Some family members agreed with her. Others, loudly, disagreed. Soon, relatives were arguing about the presidential candidates.

"I left and they were still fighting," she said.

The next day, Oscariz spent the afternoon making copies of the last batch of voter registration forms her volunteers had gathered.

They would need the copies to make follow up calls, encouraging new voters to go to the polls.

She had slept little the night before, sprawled on her kitchen floor until early morning, sorting through stacks and stacks of paper.

The forms would have to be turned in before midnight the next day.

Glancing at the stacks of forms she still needed to copy, Oscariz held her hands to her face.

"I hope these people vote," she said.