Beer Merger Trouble For McCain in Florida?

With recent Florida polls showing a very tight race in the state, the last thing that John McCain or Barack Obama need is a problem with the Cuban community in South Florida.

Today McClatchy Newspapers reports that the pending merger of Anheuser-Busch and a Belgian company called InBev could create a backlash against McCain among South Florida's Cuban exile community because InBev brews and sells beer in Cuba. Since Cindy McCain owns Anheuser-Busch's third largest distributor, she would profit directly from InBev's dealings with the Cuban government.

Two Republican U.S. Representatives from Miami, Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, expressed concern that Anheuser-Busch was on the verge of being bought by a company "with ties to the Cuban dictatorship, a state sponsor of terrorism.'' The Diaz-Balarts face tight races of their own, and cannot feel comfortable as Republican incumbents in a region where Democratic voter registration has spiked.

FiveThirtyEight has the latest on ad buys in Florida, which show that the Obama campaign is devoting a great deal of resources to the state.