It never seemed legitimate.
An advertisement for Congressman Joe Garcia‘s campaign, 
featuring the endorsement of a Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas, has caused a lot of controversy and even concern about whether or not the independent journalist and freedom fighter was used or manipulated.
“For decades, Joe Garcia has been a compatriot committed to our struggle,” Fariñas says in the video ad as an image of the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami reaches the sky behind him. But there’s no context. We don’t know where the dissident said this or if he was handed a script without fully understanding that they would use this to urge people to vote for Garcia.
The ad was announced with a press conference this week, eight days before what looks like a very close election in one of the most flippable House seats in the nation. But Fariñas — who has been visiting the United States in recent months — wasn’t there. He has since returned to Cuba.
Read related story: More GOP votes = Carlos Curbelo could be up on Joe Garcia
Critics of Garcia and supporters of Miami-Dade School Board Member Carlos “Cry Baby” Curbelo say the ad, which has photos of people struggling under the Communist regime on the island, is yet another sign that Garcia is growing increasingly desperate with the numbers — because more Republican voters are participating so far with absentee ballots and in early voting — and trying to cling on.
“Now, of course, he takes out the 
Cuban cause card at the 11th hour,” Curbelo told Telemundo, adding that it seemed hypocritical to do that while taking money from people who do business or want to do business with the Cuban regime. Ladra hates to agree with the jerk, but Curbelo is right.
I also think he’s right about pulling the Cuban card to appeal to the massive number of Cuban voters in West Kendall and Westchester. But is that smart? Is it smart to deviate from the message he’s been hammering on about protecting social security and medicare and Obamacare. And is it smart in the district with the largest number of Colombian-American voters in the country? And aren’t Cuban voters who were going to vote for Joe are already there? And those who weren’t — based on his comfy relationships with the apologists that do business with and make money off the Castro regime — aren’t fooled.
How much you wanna bet that Fariñas doesn’t know Castro attorney Ira Kurzban is a Garcia fan who donated to his campaign? Or that he has contributions from the multiple companies that have travel and package export companies that specialize in the division of Cuban families? How much you wanna bet Fariñas doesn’t know that Garcia wants to conduct drug trials of a Cuban medical treatment in the U.S.?
Ladra is sure Garcia doesn’t mention those details to any of the Cuban dissidents he meets for photo ops.
Read related story: What hypocrite Joe Garcia didn’t tell Cuban dissident he met
We can’t ask him. Fariñas has since returned to Cuba. But he issued a statement from Mexico saying he had not endorsed anyone and was staying out of electoral campaigns in the U.S. It was aired on the Maria Elvira Salazar show Tuesday night.
“In regards to the campaign ad in question, I can assure you that I am a Cuban who lives in Cuba and will continue to do so until we have a representative democracy. This is why I do not meddle in the electoral campaigns of the United States of America,” Fariñas allegedly said in this statement, which I f
irst saw on Maria Elvira’s show on Mira TV.
“I maintain relationships with all the members of the Cuban American Congressional Caucus in the senate and the House of Representatives. I am not interested if these are Democrats or Republicans. At no moment in the ad in question do I come out asking for a vote for a specific candidate,” Fariñas adds, and clearly he has gotten some beef about this from the Republicans who welcomed him and wined and dined him in Coral Gables.
“Based on that, it is clear that I am not meddling in this electoral contest,” added Fariñas, who has been on 23 hunger strikes to demand civil rights and the freedom of political prisoners. “I believe that after this public declaration, I won’t have to say anything else in respect to this, which is why I abstain to say anything more about this incident.”
He seems peeved, right?
The truth is, all Fariñas says in Garcia’s ad is that Joe has done good stuff for Cuba, not that he supports his re-election. Garcia has since told other media outlets that it wasn’t an official endorsement, just the campaign’s use of an important dissident’s soundbite. A soundbite they took one day at a parking garage on bayside.
But I bet Fariñas, who will have to work with whoever wins the race, has said something similarly nice about Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and other Republicans with whom he has bonded during his tour here — maybe even former Congressman David “Nine Lives” Rivera.
And it certainly looks like he wasn’t in agreement that his statement be used to campaign. At best, the ad is misleading. At worst, it’s totally bogus.
Tsk, tsk, Joe Garcia. Bad form. Instead of getting you more Cuban American votes, this could cost you some.
The congressman was scheduled to appear on Maria Elvira’s show Tuesday for equal time after Curbelo went on Monday night. But after he was questioned via telephone about the ad and Fariñas statement by her colleague, Rick Sanchez, un muy apenado Garcia never showed up.
Ladra would be embarrassed, too.
Joe Garcia’s Cuban dissident ‘endorsement’ smells bogus added by Ladra on
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