Vice President Mike Pence (right), pictured here with Venezuela’s Chargé d'Affaires Carlos Alfredo Vecchio, has emerged as the administration’s point man on Venezuela. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Foreign Policy Trump Venezuela policy scores in Florida ‘This will absolutely help the Republicans,’ says one Florida Democrat.

MIAMI — Vice President Mike Pence and top Florida Republicans plan to rally Friday in Miami to support Venezuela’s new interim president and highlight the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to the ongoing political crisis.

But it’s also an opportunity to open a door with Hispanic voters in a state that’s critical to the president’s reelection. The Hispanic vote here is far from monolithic: About 17 percent of Florida’s active registered voters are Hispanic, about a third of whom are estimated to be of Cuban-American descent and a third of Puerto Rican descent, followed by those whose families have roots throughout Latin America: Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico.


Between ongoing strife in Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega and the unrest in Venezuela under dictator Nicolás Maduro — which has also led to troubles in neighboring Colombia — Republicans see a window to send a hardcore anti-socialist message — one that, some say, helped the GOP win just enough of the overall Hispanic vote in November’s midterm elections to keep Florida’s governorship in Republican hands and take a Senate seat from the Democrats.

The Friday event — which could feature Gov. Ron DeSantis, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott — follows the Trump administration’s decision last week to lead a multinational coalition to formally recognize Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez as the legitimate acting president of Venezuela amid what many nations see as an unconstitutional power grab by Maduro.

In Florida, Trump’s decision was cheered by Republicans as well as Democrats. But some Florida Democrats fret that Trump could politically benefit both from the policy and from the critical reaction to it by a few national members of their party — including Sen. Bernie Sanders, a likely presidential candidate — who have raised the specter of a U.S.-led “coup” taking place in Venezuela.

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“It’s been very frustrating,” said Miami state Sen. Annette Taddeo, a Colombia-born Democrat who represents a 70 percent Hispanic district and advocated two weeks ago that the Trump administration declare Maduro an illegitimate leader and recognize Guaidó.

“Trump is doing the right thing, and I’m not going to criticize Trump for doing the right thing because you lose credibility,” she said.

In 2020, Trump supporters acknowledge he needs to carry Florida and its 29 Electoral College votes for a second time. In a state the president won by just 1.2 percentage points in 2016, the shift of any distinct Hispanic group can make a difference.

“Florida is won by tiny margins,” said Taddeo, who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in 2014. “If they can get enough margins with Venezuelans, with Colombians, with Nicaraguans, that’s how you get the 1 percent that you need. And Republicans are smart about playing the margins. We are not.”

Taddeo and others caution that Republicans can get only so far with Hispanics under Trump. Many Puerto Ricans loathe him because of the administration’s response to Hurricane Maria, and his hard-line position on immigration are net negatives in the Hispanic community. Aside from racist and racial overtones, they say, Trump immigration policy designed to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants — tens of thousands from Honduras and Nicaragua — limits his appeal to Hispanic voters.

At the same time, Rep. Diaz-Balart is co-sponsoring legislation with Democratic Rep. Darren Soto to extend TPS to Venezuelans, about 3 million of whom have fled amid food shortages and hyperinflation of more than 1 million percent under Maduro.

Diaz-Balart’s office wouldn’t confirm or deny his scheduled appearance with Pence in Miami on Friday. No time or venue has been set or announced. But sources familiar with the plans for the event say the congressman will join, as will Scott and DeSantis. Rubio, who has been a leader urging the Trump administration to take a hard line on Maduro since Trump took office, has another event that he’s trying to reschedule.

Pence, who has emerged as the administration’s point man on Venezuela, has worked with the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, Carlos Trujillo, to lay the groundwork to expel Venezuela from the OAS. Trujillo, a Miami Republican, is part of Rubio’s circle of Cuban-American foreign policy hawks exerting outsize influence in Latin America in general and, specifically, in Venezuela.

Amid the crisis in Venezuela, Maduro last year held what critics say was a sham election and took office Jan. 10. But since they don’t see his election as legitimate, the Venezuelan opposition, democracy activists, the Trump administration and most South American countries say there’s a vacancy in the Venezuelan presidency, thereby elevating Guaidó to acting president under the country’s constitution because he’s the leader of the National Assembly.

The day after Trump’s recognition of Guaidó, Sen. Sanders issued a three-tweet thread on Twitter that urged caution while criticizing Maduro’s “violent crackdown.”

“But,” Sanders wrote, “we must learn the lessons of the past and not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups — as we have in Chile, Guatemala, Brazil & the DR. The US has a long history of inappropriately intervening in Latin American nations; we must not go down that road again.”

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, also a Democratic presidential hopeful, warned on Twitter that the “United States needs to stay out of Venezuela.” Of the Democratic responses, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar’s tweet most outraged Venezuelan exiles by suggesting Guaidó was part of a “US backed coup” in Venezuela and saying he was part of “Trump's efforts to install a far right opposition” in the country.

A US backed coup in Venezuela is not a solution to the dire issues they face. Trump's efforts to install a far right opposition will only incite violence and further destabilize the region. We must support Mexico, Uruguay & the Vatican's efforts to facilitate a peaceful dialogue. — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 25, 2019

Guaidó isn’t a conservative politician. He’s a member of the social-democratic Popular Will Party, which would look far left in the U.S. political system.

“I am disgusted by some of the statements Democrat lawmakers around the country have made,” said Helena Poleo, a Florida Democrat and Venezuelan exile and commentator, citing the “ignorant and damaging statements” from Omar, Gabbard and Sanders.

“When it comes to facilitating democracy in Venezuela, my party has historically dropped the ball,” she said. “This will absolutely help the Republicans in Florida if this keeps up. In Florida, Democrats are saying the right things. But nationally, some of them don’t know what they’re talking about and the damage they’re doing to our party.”

To Venezuelan exiles in Florida, the national Democrats criticizing Trump sound as if they’re echoing Maduro, who took to social media Wednesday with this message: “People from #USA, I ask for your support in order to reject the interference of Donald Trump's administration which intends to turn my Homeland into a ‘Vietnam war’ in Latin America. Don't allow it! today compared US intervention with Vietnam.”

Also on Wednesday, Trump congratulated Guaidó in a phone call, according to a White House spokeswoman.

Juan Escalante, an undocumented immigrant and activist whose family fled the Chavez regime 19 years ago, has little love for the Trump administration’s policies on immigration, but he said its actions in Venezuela and the “wall-to-wall” coverage on Spanish-language media lauding the work of Rubio, Diaz-Balart, Scott and DeSantis could have an impact in 2020.

“If you compare and contrast actions and say who showed up at the end of the day, people remember these things,” he said. “It’s going to be imprinted in a lot of people’s minds.”

Another Trump critic, former Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Miami, said he doesn’t like the president’s position on immigration but no one can ignore the positive effect that administration’s policy on Venezuela could have in 2020.

“For all those people bewildered that so many Hispanics in South Florida are Republican-leaning, now we’re seeing why,” Curbelo said.

“There’s a great camaraderie with different groups that have been victims of leftist movements: Colombians who fled FARC, and Nicaraguans who fled Ortega twice,” Curbelo said. “So yeah, there are just a few thousand Venezuelan voters. But everyone in Miami hates Nicolás Maduro. And if Trump wins by 20,000 votes, this will be why.”

