Mario Diaz-Balart

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Mario Diaz-Balart

Mario Rafael Díaz-Balart (* 25. September 1961 in Fort Lauderdale , Florida ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . The Cuban exile has been a member of the United States House of Representatives for southern Florida since 2003 .

Family, education and work

Mario Diaz-Balart is the son of the exiled Cuban politician Rafael Diaz-Balart and his wife Hilda. He is the nephew of Mirta Díaz-Balart, Fidel Castro's first wife and the youngest of four brothers. His older brother Lincoln was also a congressman.

Diaz-Balart enrolled at the University of South Florida in 1979 , where he studied political science until 1982 , before becoming advisor to then-Mayor of Miami , Xavier Suarez , in 1985 . He is President of Gordon, Sloan and Diaz-Balart , a leading marketing firm in southern Florida.

Diaz-Balart lives in Miami with his wife. You have a son.

Political career

In 1988 Diaz-Balart was elected to the Florida House of Representatives. In 1992 he moved to the State Senate and in 2000 back to the House of Representatives. During his second term in office, he chaired the commission for the redistribution of constituencies. It is an open secret that he tailored the newly created 25th district for himself. The newly created 24th district was tailored by the commission to the spokesman for the Florida House of Representatives Tom Feeney . The 5th district was also designed to fit Senate President Ginny Brown-Waite .

Diaz-Balart then entered the 2002 election in Florida's 25th congressional electoral district and won it. In the 2008 election he won just under 52 percent of the vote against the also Cuban-born Democrat Joe Garcia , ex-director of the Cuban exile organization CANF . After the 2010 election , he represented the neighboring 21st district from 2011, which his brother Lincoln Diaz-Balart had previously represented. After a restructuring of the Florida congressional constituencies as a result of the 2010 United States Census , he has represented the 25th constituency since 2013. He is currently a member of the 116th Congress .

In the House of Representatives, Diaz-Balart is a member of the Grants Committee and two of its sub-committees (Defense and Transport). In the subcommittee for transport (Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies) he is a ranking member , i.e. the highest-ranking member of the minority party.

Positions

Unlike the other two Cuban Americans who represented Miami in the US Congress for many years, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and his brother Lincoln, Mario Diaz-Balart shows a strictly conservative voting behavior. Like them, Diaz-Balart is a strong supporter of the trade embargo against Cuba . His goal is to cut off the communist government of Cuba from access to hard currency through travel and trade restrictions (see also relations between Cuba and the United States ).

Web links

Commons : Mario Diaz-Balart  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ^ Miguel González-Pando: The Cuban Americans. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT / London 1998, p. 172 .
  2. ^ A b Mario Diaz-Balart's Biography. In: Vote Smart.
personal data
SURNAME Diaz-Balart, Mario
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diaz-Balart, Mario Rafael (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Republican Party politician and Congressman
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Lauderdale , Florida