It was late January, just eight days before the Florida primary, and a crowd of supporters, a dozen TV crews, and a gaggle of journalists had jammed into a small dining room at the Versailles Restaurant in the Little Havana section of Miami. "I am proud to have sat on the flight deck of a United States Navy aircraft carrier during the Cuban Missile Crisis," John McCain, the 71-year-old Arizona senator, declaimed from an old faux-wood podium. "I'm proud to have fought for and defended freedom of the people of Cuba, consistently calling for continuing the embargo until there's free elections, human right (sic) organizations and a free and independent country. Then and only then — and only then — will the United States of America extend aid and assistance, because we don't want American tax dollars to go to a corrupt government headed by either Fidel or Raúl Castro or anyone else who's denied freedom of the Cuban people."

Standing behind McCain as he spoke were Miami's three Cuban-American members of Congress: Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Ros-Lehtinen has held office since 1989, Lincoln Diaz-Balart since 1993 and, after a new district was created, his brother Mario since 2003. All are Republicans and staunch backers of maintaining the U.S. trade embargo and travel ban against Cuba.

Republican strategists consider Florida's 500,000 or so Cuban-American voters (about 80 percent of whom are registere d as Republicans) a crucial part of the calculus for winning presidential elections in the state, solidly Republican until Bill Clinton's win by 300,000 votes in 1996. George W. Bush's margins of victory in Florida in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were 537 and 381,000 votes, respectively. About 72 percent of Cuban Americans who voted in Florida — roughly 300,000 — voted for Bush in 2004, according to a post-election analysis by Bendixen & Associates.

McCain's pro-embargo pledge wasn't his only Cuba-related campaign offering in Little Havana. He wants to spend more on Cuba democracy assistance and Radio and TV Martí and maintain an open door for Cuban émigrés, positions long supported by the hard-line anti-Castro community. In a question-and-answer period, he was asked where he stood on the wet foot/dry foot policy, which grants immediate amnesty to illegal Cuban immigrants once they touch U.S. soil, a privilege no other nationality enjoys. "I rely to a large degree on my three friends here who are members of Congress," McCain said. "Their advice to me is that this policy is not a good one, but there's none better.

"And I will continue to rely on them for their advice and counsel."

A week later, McCain won the Florida primary by five percentage points, taking slightly more than half of the Cuban-American vote. Were this like previous presidential election years, that might have been the end of the Cuba talk for a good long while, except for a few campaign appearances closer to the general election to ensure a good Cuban-American (i.e., Republican) turnout.

But this year promises to be different. Three Cuban-American Republican members of Congress — incumbent stalwarts of a crucial GOP electoral stronghold in this swing state — have strong Democratic challengers. Those challengers — two Cuban Americans and a Colombian American — appear to have at least remote chances of winning.

The trifecta of congressional contests and Fidel Castro's recent resignation will likely bring the United States' controversial 47-year-old Cuba embargo under more scrutiny than usual. They will also bring a largely unacknowledged reality into public view: The extreme perspectives that once characterized the Cuban émigré community of South Florida — and that all but forced presidential candidates of both parties, eager to win Florida's electoral votes, to swear allegiance to the continued isolation of Cuba — are changing. Older émigrés still by and large fiercely advocate for the trade embargo and travel ban, but newer arrivals from Cuba have less hard-line views on relations with the island.

Will Democratic challengers in the three "Cuban" congressional districts of South Florida loosen the stranglehold that old-line anti-Castroism has had on presidential politics and Cuba policy? That's a question that can be answered only in the by zantine maze of Little Havana politics.

The three Cuban-American congressional incumbents from South Florida sit in what have been considered safe Republican seats. Only one of the districts includes the geographical section of Miami known as Little Havana, but over the decades Little Havana politics have, along with the Cuban exile population, spilled into all three. The incumbents in those districts have won recent elections by large margins, in part by remaining relentlessly hard-line when it comes to Cuba policy.

A recent focus: the humanitarian waiver that had permitted frequent family visits and virtually unlimited cash remittances to Cuba. With the three Cuban-American members of Congress pushing to tighten the policy, President Bush issued an executive order in June 2004 prohibiting U.S. residents and citizens from visiting relatives in Cuba more than once every three years. Monetary remittances were reduced to just $300 every three months, and such basics as seeds, clothing, soap, toothpaste and fishing equipment were added to the list of items the Commerce Department forbids U.S. citizens and residents from giving to anyone in Cuba.

In recent years, the Diaz-Balarts and Ros-Lehtinen have also worked hard to ensure that millions of federal taxpayer dollars flow to Miami each year. Some $33 million of the total outlay of almost $80 million pays for Radio and TV Martí, which beam anti-Castro shows into Cuba despite evidence that few people on the island tune in. The rest is known as Cuba democracy assistance, which the State Department and the Agency for International Development channel to private groups, mostly based in Miami, that purport to help dissidents in Cuba. Reports by government inspectors in 2006 and 2007 found the programs rife with inappropriate record keeping, questionable expenditures, cronyism and possible fraud.

Just the same, last June, Lincoln Diaz-Balart introduced a measure to more than triple annual spending on Cuba democracy assistance, raising it to nearly $46 million. The House voted 254-170 in favor of the increase, and it became part of an appropriations bill President Bush signed in December.

For the first time in decades, however, at least some Democrats seem ready to shake up the political calculus of Cuban Miami. The day after McCain's appearance in South Florida, Raul Martinez, a tall, 59-year-old, sometimes-irascible Cuban-American Democrat, announced he was running against Lincoln Diaz-Balart, 53, in Florida's 21st Congressional District. A real estate developer and former mayor of Hialeah, Fla., Martinez sounded predictable Democratic themes: He criticized President Bush and his fellow Republicans for the poor state of the economy, mortgage foreclosures, rising health care costs and the war in Iraq.

But he also made clear that Cuba policy would be an issue, particularly the harsh restrictions on family visits and remittances that his opponent had fought hard to impose. "I think family values should be extended also to those people that are living inside the island," Martinez declared to a crowd of about 200 gathered outside Hialeah City Hall. "I believe that we should encourage, not discourage, family reunification. I believe that for those individuals that get to travel to Cuba and visit and help those inside, that's going to bring change in Cuba."

Criticizing the restrictions on travel and remittances is nothing new in Miami. People with relatives in Cuba and owners of now-defunct freight-forwarding and travel agencies specializing in Cuba have clamored about the sanctions. But Martinez also took aim at something few in Miami — or Washington, D. C. — have dared attack out loud: the Cuba democracy funding that the Diaz-Balart brothers have dedicated themselves to expanding.

"First and foremost, I want accountability," the ex-mayor demanded. "I want to make sure that the federal funds that are being sent or supposed to be sent to Cuba to help the dissidents — I want to make sure that those funds are going into the island and not staying in Miami paying for rents of offices, paying for leased cars and paying for salaries."

Two weeks later, Lincoln Diaz-Balart's younger brother Mario, 46, also had a Cuban-American challenger: Joe Garcia, the 44-year-old director of the New Democratic Network's Hispanic Strategy Center and a local Democratic Party activist. Garcia has had a tempestuous history with the Diaz-Balarts and the establishment of wealthy embargo supporters that surrounds them. This history, if nothing else, illustrates the rancor beneath the surface of émigré politics.

In 2003, as executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, Garcia and the group's chairman, Jorge Mas Santos, engineered a major policy shift for the influential lobbying group, founded by Mas' father, Jorge Mas Canosa. A majority of the foundation's board voted to continue its pro-embargo stance but said the organization would now advocate for talks with Cuban officials as a way to bring reconciliation with and eventually democratic reform to Cuba. The Havana government ridiculed the idea. Two dozen CANF board members — for whom talking with Cuban officials is tantamount to treason — angrily walked out. They started a new group, the Cuban Liberty Council.

Some of the defectors sought out like-minded, wealthy Cuban-American entrepreneurs in Miami and set up a new fundraising network, the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee. Its mission: to thwart efforts in Congress to loosen the embargo or otherwise shift Cuba policy from confrontation to reconciliation. Since 2004, the PAC has spent $2.3 million on those efforts, making campaign contributions to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

Now the PAC's nemesis was running for Mario Diaz-Balart's District 25 seat. In a short speech announcing his candidacy, Garcia didn't even mention Cuba policy, a reflection of polling data showing that Cuban Americans are more concerned about other issues in 2008.

Still, Cuba will always be a political issue in South Florida, and when it comes to Cuba, Garcia also takes the new line of the Democratic challengers: pro-embargo but against restrictions on family visits and remittances to Cuba. "It's about my grandmother being able to visit with her kids in Cuba, cousins being able to visit with cousins in Cuba, aunts and uncles. The reality is that if there is any hope for the Cuban tragedy, it is not based on U.S. foreign policy. It is not based on harsh words from Calle Ocho," he said, referring to Eighth Street, a Little Havana thoroughfare that passes by the Versailles Restaurant. "It's based on people who have the strength and character to stand up and have their voice heard in Havana."

A week later, Ros-Lehtinen, the third Republican incumbent, also had a new Democratic foe, Annette Taddeo, a 40-year-old Colombia-born businesswoman who founded a large translation and interpretation company. Echoing Garcia and Martinez, Taddeo criticized Ros-Lehtinen's support for the war in Iraq and her lack of leadership on environmental protection and economic issues, such as reducing the exorbitant cost of property insurance in hurricane-prone Florida.