This was no honeymoon.
Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio went on a Spanish-language radio Friday to court Hispanic voters — but the plan backfired when he got a Cuban-American host who is no fan of Fidel Castro’s government.
Ino Gómez, who fled Cuba in 1970, caught de Blasio off guard during their interview on WADO 1280 AM when he shifted the conversation from housing and education to the Dem’s visit to Cuba in 1991 for his honeymoon
“What did you see in Cuba? What is your impression going on a honeymoon in a country that hasn’t had free elections in the last 50 years? What did you get from that trip?” Gómez asked.
“If I can ask you one thing you came back from Cuba with, what was that thing?”
De Blasio grew defensive.
“I didn’t go on a trip to study the country. I don’t pretend to have full perspective of the country,” the candidate replied.
“I have a huge critique of the current government there because it’s undemocratic, and it doesn’t allow freedom of the press, and I think there’s a huge number of problems. I also think it’s well known that there’s some good things that happened — for example, in health care,” de Blasio said.
At that point, Gómez — whose biography on WADO’s Web site says he was born in the small town of Baez — set the record straight.
“I just had to send my aunt in Cuba some, you know, the thread to have stitches, because they don’t have in Cuba the thread,” he told the mayoral front-runner.
“But that’s your opinion about the health-care situation in Cuba. I hear otherwise.”
De Blasio did not reply and the interview shifted to other topics.
Gómez did not return calls seeking further comment.
Gómez’s bio states he immigrated to the tri-state area in 1970 with his family and started working in radio in 1986.
De Blasio, who won the Democratic primary on a campaign platform of ending income inequality, caused a stir with his illegal Havana honeymoon and revelations that he traveled to Nicaragua in 1988 at age 26 to bring food and medicine to the Sandinistas.
His 18-year-old daughter, Chiara, said she learned of the Cuba jaunt only when the question was raised during a lightning round of a televised debate in June.
At that time, de Blasio was the only candidate on stage to say he had visited the country.
In an interview this month with New York magazine, Chiara said she was proud of her “badass” dad.
“They had always told me they went to Canada. They actually flew out of there to go to Cuba, but they’d never told us. I thought it was awesome. I was like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that? That’s so badass,’ ” Chiara said.
In an interview published by the New Yorker on Friday, de Blasio doubled down on his defense of his trip to Nicaragua.
Provided with a a chance to call it a “youthful indiscretion,” de Blasio went the other direction.
“No, it’s not a youthful indiscretion,” he said.
“I was involved in a movement that I thought made a lot of sense, and it began, and the reason I got involved, was because of United States foreign policy.”
In a radio interview earlier Friday, de Blasio acknowledged that fixing income inequality is more likely to be accomplished on the federal level than by a city mayor.
Still, he said, it is important to raise the matter.
“I think a mayor of New York City’s in a profoundly empowered position to act on this issue, nowhere near as much as the federal government could by definition but let’s face it — the federal government isn’t addressing this issue because of the Republican Congress.”
He went on to applaud President Obama for articulating “a very clear path for investing in the future of this country.”
De Blasio’s Republican opponent, Joe Lhota, has pounded the Democrat for fraternizing with communist regimes.