Can a Cuban Democrat win in South Florida?

Currently, three Cuban-American Republicans represent South Florida in the U.S. House, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in District 18, Lincoln Diaz-Balart in District 21 and Lincoln's brother Mario in District 25. Each of these adjoining districts is at least 44 percent Cuban-American, and all three lawmakers are staunch backers of the embargo and the travel ban. Democratic strategists acknowledge privately that the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate will have little appetite for altering U.S. Cuba policy until one of these three incumbents is unseated.

But such an event, once close to inconceivable, may now be within the realm of possibility. In all three districts the Republican Party has the largest number of registered voters. But in all three districts, the incumbents, who used to be reelected without serious opposition, have seen their margins of victory drop in each of the past three elections. In 2006, the Democratic challengers won from 38 to 41 percent of the vote. Last fall, in part of District 18, a Cuban Democrat won an election for an open state legislative seat formerly held by a Cuban Republican. And in all three districts Republican voter registration numbers are down since 2006 while Democratic registration is up and independent registration is up even further. "Independents, I don't care what district you're in in this country, are leaning Democrat this year," says political consultant Jeffrey Garcia of Rindy Miller Media, who is working for two of this fall's three Democratic challengers.

Garcia also says his own polling shows that reelection numbers for all three GOP incumbents -- the percentage of district voters who would like to see them reelected -- are at 45 percent or below. Coming from an independent pollster, those figures would be enough to make the incumbents nervous. Coming from a partisan source, they're at least sufficient to help the Democratic candidates raise money. Garcia claims the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is considering committing funds to all three challengers later this year. The DCCC has already funded Spanish-language radio attack ads targeting all three incumbents for voting against the expansion of the federal State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

The challengers have put together a unified Democratic position that mirrors Obama's: Lift the restrictions on family travel and remittances that President Bush imposed, at the urging of the three Republican incumbents, in 2004, but keep the rest of the embargo in place for now. Garcia says his figures show that more than half the voters in all three districts oppose the current travel restrictions. One of the challengers, Joe Garcia, a Cuban-American running against Mario Diaz-Balart in District 25, is the director of the New Democratic Network's Hispanic Strategy Center. (He is not related to Jeffrey Garcia and is not his client.) Garcia has promoted a relaxation of the travel ban since taking the job in 2004, and was involved in the discussions between the NDN and the Obama campaign that contributed to shaping Obama's Cuba policy. "To help advance democracy we need to allow for the reunification of Cuban families and the direct sending of remittances to the island's brave dissidents," Garcia said in a statement released after Castro announced his resignation Tuesday. "It's time to break from the status quo."

The other Democratic candidates, both Jeffrey Garcia's clients, are Colombian-American Annette Taddeo in District 18, running against Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Cuban-American Raul Martinez, challenging Lincoln Diaz-Balart in District 21. Martinez, a charismatic figure who served nine terms as mayor of Hialeah, the district's largest municipality, looks to be one of the strongest congressional candidates the Democrats have yet fielded in the three Cuban districts. (He also survived a federal corruption prosecution initiated by U.S. attorney Dexter Lehtinen, Ileana's husband. But that's another story.)

It is still against the odds that there will be a Cuban-American Democrat representing South Florida in Congress next January. But should just one of the challengers prevail on Election Day, it would provide significant political cover for a shift in relations between Cuba and the United States. Having a South Florida Latino calling for an easing of the travel ban would give the Democratic leadership -- whether that means a Democratic president or Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or both -- license to do the same. And rolling back the travel ban would be the first step toward ending the embargo. It would also mean that at long last, after half a century, someone besides Fidel Castro would actually be in charge of America's Cuba policy.