Inside Politics

Kerry’s fib

John Kerry misrepresented his voting record on Cuba during a recent visit to Florida, the Miami Herald reports.

Here’s how reporter Peter Wallsten put it in a story published Sunday: “John Kerry had just pumped up a huge crowd in downtown West Palm Beach, promising to make the state a battleground for his quest to oust President Bush, when a local television journalist posed the question that any candidate with Florida ambitions should expect:

“What will you do about Cuba?

“As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry was ready with the bravado appropriate for a challenger who knows that every answer carries magnified importance in the state that put President Bush into office by just 537 votes.

“‘I’m pretty tough on Castro, because I think he’s running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,’ Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney. …”

“Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: ‘And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.’

“It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote — as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton’s re-election after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.

“There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.

“Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form — and voted for it months earlier.”

Both sides now

John Kerry says he was opposed to and in favor of returning Elian Gonzalez to Cuba in 2000.

The presidential candidate took both sides of the issue when asked about the Clinton Justice Department sending the little boy back to Cuba, which angered Cuban-Americans and may have cost Al Gore the White House.

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