de Blasio apologizes after quoting Che Guevara at Miami rally

Fresh off the first Democratic presidential debate in Miami on Wednesday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio continued to shore up his liberal bona fides. He visited a children's migrant shelter Thursday morning and lambasted the Trump administration's treatment of immigrants. That afternoon, he joined a rally for workers on strike at Miami International Airport.

"We should be putting working people first," he told the crowd, which roared its approval.

But then, the mayor quoted the extraordinarily divisive revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who many in the city's Cuban expat community consider murderous and tyrannical for helping Fidel Castro establish his communist regime.

"Hasta la victoria, siempre," de Blasio declared. At the protest, the call - which translates to "Until victory, always" - won him more cheers. But the backlash came hard and fast, as those on the left and right criticized de Blasio for quoting one of the most widely reviled figures in Miami.

The head of the state's Democratic Party wrote on Twitter that de Blasio "does not speak for Floridians or the Florida Democratic Party and he would be wise to apologize."

Shortly thereafter, de Blasio did just that.

"I did not know the phrase I used in Miami today was associated with Che Guevara & I did not mean to offend anyone who heard it that way," de Blasio said in a tweet. "I certainly apologize for not understanding that history. I only meant it as a literal message to the striking airport workers that I believed they would be victorious in their strike."

Florida Sen. Annette Taddeo, a Democrat who spoke at the strike before de Blasio, said she was "utterly disgusted" with his remark.

"This is completely unacceptable!" she wrote on Twitter. "How can anyone wanting to be the leader of the free world quote a murderous guerrilla - in Miami no less! A community filled with his victims!"

Meanwhile, Republicans who have sought to paint Democrats as radical leftists seized on de Blasio's slip-up. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., tweeted, "In case there was any doubt about the Democrats running for President embracing socialism, @BilldeBlasio is in Miami quoting . . . Che Guevara. You can't make this up."

Cuban American Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., suggested that de Blasio knew precisely who he was quoting, noting the Democrat's early activism and his time spent studying Latin American politics in college.

A 2013 New York Times investigation chronicled the then-mayoral candidate's bygone admiration for Nicaragua's ruling Sandinista party in the 1980s (de Blasio has since criticized the group's tactics).

The article describes him during a trip to Nicaragua in 1988: "He spoke in long, meandering paragraphs, musing on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Karl Marx and Bob Marley. He took painstaking notes on encounters with farmers, doctors and revolutionary fighters." He also honeymooned in Cuba, The Times reported, in violation of a United States travel ban.

"But he had NO IDEA he was quoting Che Guevara today," Rubio wrote Thursday evening. "It was all just an incredible coincidence."

The misstep came at an inconvenient time for de Blasio, whose debate performance had injected excitement into his 6-week-old campaign.

Last month, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed some ominous numbers for the New Yorker's campaign: His net favorability was worse than every other Democratic candidate's. Last week, numbers from a Suffolk University-USA Today poll foudn that 11% of respondents were excited about his candidacy, while more than 4 in 10 hoped he'd drop out of the race.