Martinez Backs McCain, While Bill Clinton Predicts Dignified McCain/Clinton Race
The AP notes that "Martinez, who was born in Cuba, emigrated to the United States as a teenager and is popular in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood." He and McCain are longtime friends who worked together on illegal immigration legislation.
Rudy Giuliani, for whom a win in Florida is seen as crucial, has also been pushing for Cuban-American votes. In Little Havana today, he boasted of having kept Fidel Castro from the U.N. 50 celebration when he was mayor of New York.
In other McCain news, Bill Clinton today suggested that a general election race between his wife the Arizona senator would be a relatively dignified one.
"She and John McCain are very close," Clinton said, according to the New York Times. "They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."
UPDATE: We just remembered this 2006 report about Clinton and McCain facing off in an after-dinner drinking contest in Estonia, where "the margin of victory was not votes, but shots of vodka." McCain, it's also worth noting, has reportedly described Clinton as "one of the guys."