Joe Garcia at the Barack Obama event last week. Photo by Larry Thorson

Joe Garcia’s ego is like his hair — wild, unruly and probably in need of some clipping.

But he’s also very bright and prone to impolitic statements, which makes for stimulating conversation. Garcia is the director of the New Democratic Network’s Hispanic Strategy Center and chairman of the Democratic Party of Miami-Dade County.

Not so long ago, he was the new face of the Cuban American National Foundation, once the powerful vehicle of Miami’s most famous unelected politician — Jorge Mas Canosa. Garcia became CANF’s executive director toward the end of the Elian Gonzalez affair, just as the organization, under Chairman Jorge Mas Santos, began to take a new direction.

Under Garcia and Mas Santos, CANF became, depending whom you talk to, either more modern and centrist, or too weak-kneed and liberal for the tastes of some of its former members, the leaders of which led an exodus featuring lots of bitter radio diatribes. Garcia left his position in 2004 to join the New Democratic Network, which is attempting to revive the Democratic Party’s decidedly lackluster ground game.

He also won control of the local Democratic Party, where he’s testing out some of this strategy business in the apathetic heart of our sprawling metropolis. Last week he helped orchestrate an appearance by presidential candidate Barack Obama at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium. Obama spoke in part about his support for lifting restrictive bans on Cuban-Americans visiting family members in Cuba, or sending them money.

Garcia is also working to get more Democrats elected locally, citing the recent election of Democrat Luis Garcia to the state Legislature from a solidly Republican district as a measure of success. He’s also hounding Raul Martinez, the former Hialeah mayor, to run against Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Garcia and I had breakfast at the Van Dyke on Lincoln Road recently. Fresh from the gym, Garcia picked at some concoction of granola and fruit while he talked my ear off in characteristic fashion. Here is some of that conversation.

How do you think CANF is doing without you, Joe? There are those who feel it is not as relevant an organization as it once was.

CANF is still the single most important Cuban organization there is. One of the large problems I had as executive director was trying to work with other people. Any press conference I showed up at, I was the center of attention because you’re the gorilla that’s been in 30 battles and people want to talk to you. Of course it created jealousy. So CANF has always had that problem. But it’s leading on the issues. The position Obama just took on travel restrictions? CANF took that position last year.

You don’t think CANF has lost a certain zing in the years since it was the Mas Canosa cult of personality?

Jorge [Mas Santos] is doing a good job. Is he his father? No. When the chairmanship came up, I told Jorge, get as far away from that as you can and he said, “If I don’t step up, the people who are running it will destroy it” with this right-wing crazy stuff and he was right. He brought me in to clean it up. Some of the people that left were the ones who asked me to do the job. Look, if someone leaving pulls a sign off the wall that says “right-wing intransigent” and says, “I’m the real right-wing intransigent,” I’ll hand them the nail and hammer so they can put it up at their place.

I know they criticize the foundation on a regular basis. That’s fine. They’re playing their Mickey Mouse role. Which is necessary by the way. One organization can’t carry the left, right and center at the same time.

OK, so seven years after Elian, we now have another case of an international child custody battle. Why isn’t this case producing the same impact?

I think the rhetoric is controlled. People understand the mistakes we made in Elian. Look at the coverage of Obama coming to speak here. I had 25 people protesting for free outside and inside I had 1,800 people who paid to be there and at least half of them were Cuban-Americans. In the heart of little Havana. I think that was great and it couldn’t have happened a few years ago.

I agree with that. I’ve seen the polls showing there are significant gaps in opinions among Cuban-Americans in Miami depending on when they got here — the ’60s, the ’80s or the ’90s — on various Cuba issues. Yet the majority of Cuban-Americans who actually vote are still holding those traditional views they’ve held for decades. What do you as the DNC’s man in Miami, do with that?

Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana [Ros-Lehtinen] will do TV and say, “Well the new people don’t vote.” So they don’t matter. It’s like, “You stupid fuck, sooner or later, they’re going to vote and they’re going to remember you saying that.” That’s what makes Bob Graham a statesman. He supported Haitian issues before Haitians were voting. These people are registering to vote.

I think it’s funny that the New Democrat Network’s “Hispanic strategy” is being represented by a Cuban-American because the Cuban story is so different than that of any other Hispanic immigrant group. It’s almost like the Anglo perspective in other cities. So how do you develop a strategy across those perspectives?

It is an Anglo perspective because Cubans hold power in Miami. But maybe it’s not different. The myth of the Cuban-American story, yes. Cuban-Americans are supposed to be these right-wing, self-reliant, bootstrap guys. No other immigrant group in the history of the United States has received more aid from the federal government than Cuban-Americans. And that’s why it’s an immigration success story. In the end we [Hispanic immigrants] are the same, and this is probably heresy in the Cuban community.

Immigrants comprise some of the best characteristics of the entrepreneurial spirit.

Absolutely.

Another thing that is different is the exile versus the immigrant mentality. The exile was thrown out, but they never analyze why the fuck HE was able to throw them out. An immigrant says, “This place failed me.” That implies that where I’m going is better than where I left. Where the exile thinks that where they left is still somehow better than where they are. There’s no self-analysis because those points of reference are different. Castro fucked us, but Cuban culture is perfectly fine. It’s bullshit. But it’s bullshit and myth that works. It’s the same way it works for Jews.

Or Americans for that matter. We believe those myths about ourselves, which is why it’s so hard to steer clear of morasses like Vietnam and Iraq.

It’s the strength of any enclave standing together. The problem for Cubans in Miami is that we haven’t learned that the things you can say as a minority you can’t get away with as a majority. The hyperbole can be offensive. You now have the responsibility of being the majority.

And the other thing is learning to accept divisions within the enclave.

More than 70 percent of Cubans alive today were born under the Castro government. Fidel Castro, for most people there, is like the sun, the moon, the tides. He’s like a boulder in the middle of a field. Cubans in Cuba don’t argue about Fidel Castro — they plow around him. Cuban-Americans engage in argument because Castro is not a practical consideration for them. It’s because the rhetoric became more important than the reality. It’s a rhetorical game for the first generation [of Cuban immigrants], but it’s not a rhetorical game if my daughter is in Cuba.

We have in Miami significant populations of Colombians, Nicaraguans, Dominicans, every country in the Americas. Why don’t we see them in local politics? You would think these groups would be ripe for Democratic recruitment. Why are you guys so bad at that?

In the end the reason democracy works is the alternative has to be unbearable. This was once the Deep South and the Democratic Party was this amalgamation that was weird here. They didn’t need to let the Cubans in. You need one generation, about 20 years, to go from immigration to voting; for the Cubans that coincided with Ronald Reagan talking about Cuba and the Cold War. I think in the next election you will see Nicaraguans vote in huge numbers for Democrats because they’ve seen the alternative with the Bush administration.

So how do you engage people in Miami? The voting turnout here is abysmal.

You’ve gotta find issues that are important to people and you’ve got to talk about them. I’m on TV a lot. I don’t let the space be taken. Because what the Republicans do is they put up a really good-looking guy in a suit. So the Democrats have the guy in the tie-dyed shirt who’s got a beard and a ponytail and lives in a van down by the river and he likes to smoke pot. And he speaks his opinion and it’s not the Democratic position. My job is to get rid of that guy. Last year we decided to go after a Republican state seat in the heart of Little Havana. [Former Miami Beach Commissioner] Luis Garcia is a great candidate. He’s old-line Cuban but a lifelong union member and his son is gay. We pushed out all the other Democrats, we stopped the internecine wars and we kicked [Republican] ass. We did it by having a credible candidate. And we’re busily courting Raul Martinez to run against Lincoln Diaz-Balart. I’ve seen polling that Raul would kick Lincoln’s ass.

Please God, let Raul say yes. We haven’t had a really good boxing match here in ages.

An outsider could not have come in and taken over the local Democratic Party if it wasn’t in such bad shape. One strength we have is that the modern paradigm of information exchange is more like the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. Communication is not hierarchal; it is diffuse. Ideas come at you from all over the place. That’s good for Democrats because we’re just not good at the discipline thing. But then the discipline thing hasn’t worked too well for America either.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.