Florida’s busiest early voting site is magnet for Cubans — and Trump supporters

Outside Florida’s busiest early voting site deep in Miami-Dade County, where free arroz con pollo and Cuban sandwiches fed hungry poll workers, some of the most important voters in the country were casting their votes this week: Cuban Americans, many of whom in 2016 were unenthusiastic about President Donald Trump but now appear to be backing him in greater numbers over former Vice President Joe Biden.

The location of the Westchester Regional Library early voting site is a suburb west of Miami with one of the highest percentages of Cuban Americans of any U.S. neighborhood, a voting bloc that could shift the outcome of the presidential election. By Thursday, as early voting in Florida headed for its final big weekend, the library had seen more than 25,300 voters.

But when John Euges, 20, showed up Friday afternoon, there were no lines, just a steady stream of voters coming to cast ballots in person or drop off mail ballots. Euges is a Cuban American who became a citizen last year — and became a Republican mostly so he could vote for Trump.

He cast his first vote Friday — for the president — six years after moving from Cuba to Miami.

“I think he only wants the best for the country,” Euges said. “He’s been doing what he says he’s going to do.”

Euges said he supports the president because he wants a better economy, and believes Trump wants to help immigrants come to the U.S. legally.

“I believe he is not against immigrants,” Euges said. “He’s not against them. He just wants them to have papers.”

Pro-Trump Cuban American voters like Euges made up the majority of more than two dozen voters interviewed by the Miami Herald at the Westchester site this week.

Daniel Diaz, a 53-year-old Cuban American whose parents were born in Cuba, said his mother and father influenced his politics. They’re the reason he’s a Trump supporter.

“My father was a political prisoner in Cuba,” Diaz said. “He showed up with a third-grade education, no money in his pocket. He opened up his own business in Manhattan. He came here looking for opportunity.”

Diaz said his main reasons for voting were economic. He liked the direction of the pre-COVID economy under Trump and said his biggest issue is energy independence.

But he said he doesn’t really care for Trump personally.

“I don’t like listening to him, I don’t like looking at him,” Diaz said of Trump. “But I like what his policies are doing for the country as a whole.”

According to polling from Florida International University released this month, Trump’s policies, with the exception of immigration, are popular with Cuban Americans. A majority of Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County approved of Trump’s handling of the economy and planned to vote for him in the upcoming November election.

Ruth Reyes, 66, a Cuban American Republican who hasn’t always voted along party lines, said she was eager to vote for Trump because of what she called a lack of a solid plan from the Biden campaign.

“He says he wants to change all these things, but there has been no plan,” Reyes said.

Enthusiasm for Trump may be up among Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade, but Democrats are hoping that their advantage in mail-in ballots and a blue wave among registered independents, combined with Trump performing worse among senior citizens compared to 2016, will help them overcome those numbers.

“One thing that most people aren’t paying attention to is exactly how many NPAs [no-party affiliated voters] are breaking for Biden,” said Miami-Dade Democratic Party chairman Steve Simeonidis. “Our data is telling us it’s going to be about two to one” in favor of Democrats.

Simeonidis also predicted that Cuban-heavy early voting sites like the Westchester Regional Library won’t have the most voters by Sunday evening, when early voting ends. He expects North Dade Regional Library in Democrat-heavy Miami Gardens to be Miami-Dade’s biggest early voting site. North Dade Regional Library counted 16,373 voters through Thursday, more than 9,000 votes less than the Westchester site, but that was before the church-based push over the weekend called Souls to the Polls.

And that also doesn’t take into account voters like Eli Sabatier, 42, a registered independent who has voted for Republicans in the past but is backing Biden this year.

Sabatier said he generally agrees with Republican ideals, but doesn’t like Trump: “I don’t need a president who’s less mature than my own daughter.”

If there was a different candidate he said he would have considered casting a Republican vote.

“I’m a Republican at heart. I believe in global markets and free trade,” Sabatier said, after casting his vote for Biden in Westchester.

He didn’t stop there. Sabatier, a sales manager from Kendall, said he also voted for Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell over Republican Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez for Florida’s 26th Congressional District.

“I think the party just left me behind,” he said.

Melissa Garcia, 23, cast her first-ever vote this year — for Biden. Garcia, a Democrat, arrived in Miami from Cuba when she was 8. One of the biggest issues that drove her to vote for Biden was how Trump has handled immigration, a policy area identified in the FIU poll as one where Trump struggles to gain a majority of Cuban support.

Garcia said coming to the U.S. gave her a chance to succeed in ways she wouldn’t have in Cuba,

“I would love for everyone to have that opportunity,” Garcia said. “This country really does change lives.”

But throughout the week, Trump supporters had a bigger presence at the polling place.

At around noon on Wednesday, a gold Buick pulled into the parking lot blaring the horn and waiving a Trump sign out the window. The car circled the lot before the woman parked and got out in the middle of the street waiving her sign.

One side was a standard Trump campaign sign. The other read “Trump is a genius” in Spanish.

Jordan Llanes, a campaign worker for Franccesca Cesti-Browne, a Democrat running to represent Westchester’s eastern half in the Florida House, said that the flag-waving and honking has been a regular occurrence at the location. He said over the weekend people were yelling at each other, though the weekdays are generally calmer.

Llanes, 23, said he hasn’t seen the loud displays deter any voters. He said it’s actually attracted some voters since there are many Trump supporters in the area.

“People love it,” Llanes said. “They see it and they want to hang out and eat popcorn and watch.”

This story was originally published October 31, 2020 at 6:00 AM.