Florida Democrats are up in arms over Sen. Bernie Sanders’ decision to heap praise on policies instituted by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Candidates up and down the ballot in the nation’s biggest battleground state want no association with their party’s front-runner after he refused to thoroughly condemn the deceased Communist leader.
“Donald Trump wins Florida if Bernie is our nominee,” state Rep. Javier Fernandez, a Democratic candidate in a majority-Hispanic state Senate district who has endorsed Joe Biden, told Politico.
“If Bernie Sanders is atop the ticket, it’s going to make it tougher for all of us to win in Florida,” he added. “No one really sees Sanders winning Florida and I don’t think his campaign does either.”
“Whether the subject is Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Israel or other foreign policy challenges, @SenSanders has consistently taken positions that are wrong on the merits and will alienate many Florida voters now and in the general election if he is nominated,” Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) tweeted in response to Sanders.
Murphy, who has endorsed former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, faces a serious challenge in November as House Republicans fight to take back the seat.
“As the first South American immigrant member of Congress who proudly represents thousands of Cuban Americans, I find Senator Bernie Sanders’ comments on Castro’s Cuba absolutely unacceptable,” Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) wrote on Twitter.
A freshman Democrat, Mucarsel-Powell flipped her district by a mere two-point margin in 2018.
“The Castro regime murdered and jailed dissidents, and caused unspeakable harm to too many South Florida families,” she added in a follow-up tweet. “To this day, it remains an authoritarian regime that oppresses its people, subverts the free press, and stifles a free society.”
“I’m hoping that in the future, Senator Sanders will take time to speak to some of my constituents before he decides to sing the praises of a murderous tyrant like Fidel Castro,” tweeted Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), along with a gif featuring a cat and the caption “C’mon, bro.”
“I’m totally disgusted and insulted,” Lourdes Diaz, president of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus in Broward County, who is Cuban-American, told the New York Times.
“Maybe this will open people’s eyes to how super, super liberal and radical Bernie is. I’m not going to defend him anymore. I’m over it.”
Sanders has held these views on Castro for decades, as he made clear during the “60 Minutes” interview with Anderson Cooper.
When Cooper pressed the Vermont senator on comments he made in 1985 that the Cuban people didn’t “rise up in rebellion” because Castro “educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed society,” Sanders dug in.
“We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know, when Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing, even though Fidel Castro did it?”
Cooper responded that “there’s a lot of political dissidents in Cuba” to this day.
“That’s right,” Sanders said. “And we condemn that.”
“Senator Sanders has clearly and consistently criticized Fidel Castro’s authoritarianism and condemned his human rights abuses,” Mike Casca, Sanders’ campaign communications director, said in a statement. “He’s simply echoing President Obama’s acknowledgment that Cuba made progress, especially in education.”