JOHN PAIN
  Associated Press

  MIAMI - For the first time since he became a U.S. citizen decades ago, 62-year-old Santiago Portal won't vote for a Republican for president.

  The Cuban American says he's fed up with President Bush's policy on Cuba and is urging other exiles to choose someone else in next year's election.

  "He can't ask Cubans for votes if he hasn't helped Cubans get freedom," said Portal, holding a sign saying "President Bush push freedom for Cuba now! Why only Irak?"

  This kind of change of heart among Cuban-Americans - who overwhelmingly supported Bush in 2000 and helped ensure he won Florida's 25 electoral votes - has GOP officials in Florida concerned heading into an election year.

  Some Florida Republicans are now telling Bush they don't think his administration is doing enough to help the Cuban people and opponents of Fidel Castro's communist government. The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, publicly questioned the administration's decision in July to return 12 alleged Cuban hijackers to face trial at home.

  An increasing number of Florida's elected Republicans have urged the president to review or change his Cuba policy.

  "If our concerns are ignored, there's a real possibility that the Cuban community could" stay away from the polls, said state Rep. David Rivera of Miami, one of 13 Hispanic GOP state lawmakers who warned the president that he could lose support in Florida if he fails to revamp his Cuba policy.

  Bush took Florida from Al Gore by only 537 votes in the 2000 presidential election. He received about 80 percent of the state's estimated 444,000 Cuban-American votes, said Dario Moreno, a political science professor at Florida International University.

  Any loss of votes in Florida could make the difference between re-election and becoming a one-term president, Moreno said. Florida now holds 27 electoral votes, fourth largest of all states and a tenth of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

  Some of Miami's Cuban-Americans are growing to distrust Republicans because of the lack of policy change, Moreno said. "They say, 'These guys come down, they make promises to the community, they don a guayabera, they make promises in bad Spanish and they don't deliver.'"

  State Rep. Marco Rubio, R-Miami, said Cuban-Americans appreciate the president's steadfast support of maintaining the U.S. trade and travel embargo against Cuba, but fault the administration for not following through in other areas.

  "There's growing sentiment by the rank-and-file voter that he's done little on the issue of Cuba," Rubio said.

  The Florida Republicans have urged Bush to focus on several key issues: a review or change of the U.S. "wet foot, dry foot" migration policy for Cubans; an increase in aid to Cuban dissidents and more attempts to evade Cuban jamming of pro-democracy radio and TV broadcasts beamed to the island.

  They say recent events require the president to deal with these issues urgently: Castro's crackdown on dissidents and the summary execution of three alleged hijackers who tried to bring a ferry to Florida. Castro's harsh actions also seem to have put off talk in Congress of ending the embargo.

  In Miami's Little Havana, Portal questioned why Bush spent billions of dollars to send U.S. troops half way around the world to liberate Iraq while letting Castro remain in power just 90 miles from Florida.

  "He should ask Iraqis for votes, not Cubans, because he freed them," Portal said.

  Mario Duran, 65, stood by with a similar sentiment: "Castro has been a dictator for 44 years. What about a free Cuba?"

  White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo rejected the notion that the president is ignoring Cuba.

  "The administration is firmly dedicated to a proactive Cuba policy that will assist the Cuban people in their struggle for freedom," she said.

  Mamo said the main policy tool Bush is using is the embargo, in place for more than 40 years. The president maintains that Cuba needs to have a rapid transition to a free-market democracy before that restriction is lifted, she said. Bush will oppose any action to weaken those barriers before Cuba takes those steps.

  Bush made those points in a fiery, well-received May 2002 speech in Miami, when he demanded Castro release his "chokehold on the working people and on enterprise" before the United States would push for closer relations.

  As a presidential candidate, Bush promised to review the Clinton-era "wet foot, dry foot" policy, under which most Cuban migrants caught at sea are returned home and those who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay.

  Mamo refused to say if the president was considering any review or change of his Cuba policy.

  "We've had the sympathy of every president since Kennedy to the current president," said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, powerful Cuban exile lobbying group. "We don't need any more sympathy. We need action."