“So you really are Fidel Castro’s nephew?” I asked then-State Rep. (and U.S. Representative-to-be) Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida when we first met in 1987.
“Yes,” he replied to a question he had undoubtedly heard scores of times. “My Aunt Mirta, my dad’s sister, was the first and only Mrs. Castro. And being married into the Diaz-Balart family, which was politically prominent in the 1950s, certainly helped Fidel.
“My dad [Rafael Diaz-Balart, president of the Cuban Senate] arranged the only known meeting between Fidel and [Cuban strongman Fulgencio] Batista. And you know how ‘Uncle Fidel’ repaid the favor? As soon as he came to power in 1959, he put out a warrant for the arrest of our family, and we were forced to flee Cuba.”
The sad news that Lincoln Diaz-Balart died Monday at age 70 after a long illness brought to mind the image of someone who had memories of Cuba before Castro came to power, although he was very young at the time, and devoted much of his political career to freeing the land of his birth.
But Lincoln Diaz-Balart — named for the 16th U.S. president his father so admired — was a fighter for freedom in the U.S. as well. Whether it was civil rights legislation or his opposition to the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) that he felt strongly would lead to state-managed healthcare, the theme of the congressman from Miami was inevitably freedom.
To those who knew Diaz-Balart and were familiar with his record in the state Legislature and Congress, it was hard to believe that he came to adulthood as a Democrat. As a student at New College of Florida and later studying law at Case Western University, he was a an active Democratic Party volunteer. As a young lawyer in Miami, he was president of the Dade County Young Democrats and the Florida Young Democrats.
“I was a Democrat in large part because it was a Democratic congressman who really got my family into the U.S. when we fled Cuba,” Diaz-Balart recalled to me.
“[Rep.] Victor Anfuso [of New York] saw that all our paperwork was handled properly and that we were cared for when we got to the U.S. with nothing. He didn’t know us or have to do anything for us, but he did. And the Diaz-Balarts owe everything to Mr. Anfuso.”
After losing a race for the state Legislature as a Democrat in 1982, Diaz-Balart saw which way the political wind was blowing among Cuban-Americans in Miami. He became a Republican and won a seat in the state House of Representatives in 1986.
“Lincoln was quiet, but bright and very effective as a representative and then state senator [1988-92],” recalled former state House GOP leader James Lombard.
When a new U.S. House district was created following the 1991 census, Sen. Diaz-Balart took it with ease. In nine trips to the polls until his retirement in 2010, Rep. Diaz-Balart never had any difficulties with reelection.
“I had the honor of hanging out with Lincoln one day in Miami,” former Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., a fellow member of the House GOP Class of ’92 told Newsmax. “Young and old greeted him warmly. He was like the godfather that everyone turned to when they had a problem.”
Kingston also recalled Diaz-Balart as “the go-to guy on anything involving Cuba.”
Indeed, the Floridian was responsible for the codification of the U.S. embargo on Cuba that required all political prisoners be freed and free elections be held before the embargo was lifted. He was also the author of the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central Relief Act, which addressed the asylum cases of Nicaraguans, Cubans, Salvadorans, as well as citizens of former Soviet bloc countries.
It was only natural that Diaz-Balart would also take the lead on the asylum case of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, who was found by the Coast Guard floating on an inner tube after his mother and others fleeing Cuba had drowned in November 1999. Along with his fellow Cuban-American lawmakers, Diaz-Balart argued that the boy should be with relatives in the U.S., while the Immigration and Naturalization Service said he should be reunited with his father in Cuba.
In what seemed to be events that captivated the world’s attention, the INS finally got its way and “little Elian” was repatriated to Cuba in June 2000.
“Elian kept saying he was saved by the dolphins who kept his tube afloat,” Diaz-Balart told Newsmax in 2000. “The [Cuban-American House members] gave him a cocker spaniel for Christmas; and when we asked what he would name his new pet, he replied ‘Dolphin.'” (“Little Elian” was raised in Cuba and is now an engineer and, at 31, a newly elected member of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuba’s Congress).
His reputation as a conservative Republican notwithstanding, Diaz-Balart took some decidedly non-conservative stands.
Passionate about civil rights for all Americans, he voted against the 2006 amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman and for the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, which extended federal hate crimes to include gender and sexual orientation. He also refused to sign the Republicans’ Contract With America in the 1994 midterm elections because he felt its welfare reform provision would harm immigrants.
Lincoln’s younger brother Mario serves in Congress and another brother Jose has had a long career in broadcast journalism and is today a weekend anchor on “NBC Nightly News.”
Lincoln Diaz-Balart will be mourned in a big way and surely remembered as a champion of freedom in his native and adoptive country — not to mention, as those who knew him readily agree, as a good guy.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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