House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) walked into a Cuban bakery in Miami last week hoping to help a Democrat win a congressional seat, but instead set off a political firestorm that has ended with two Cuban bakeries publicly denouncing socialism.
Here's what happened.
Jeffries, who's hoping desperately to become speaker of the House come January, accompanied Democrat Eliott Rodriguez – a former CBS Miami anchor who is challenging Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar in Florida's 27th Congressional District – to the Cuban-American CAO Bakery & Cafe on Friday.
There was the usual campaign song and dance routine, with Jeffries and Rodriguez sipping cafecitos and making all kinds of promises to the voters of South Florida. It was after the duo left the cafe that things began to go sideways.
Rodriguez's campaign immediately posted video of the campaign stop, including a shot of Jeffries heaping praise on the cafe for hosting them.
🇺🇸 Thank you, Leader @hakeemjeffries, for supporting our campaign! I look forward to joining you in Congress to lower costs and undo the damage MAGA loyalists like @MaElviraSalazar have done to FL-27 families. Special thanks to Yvette Cao and the @CaoBakery team! https://t.co/8vZYOW7Xws
— Eliott Rodriguez (@ERodforCongress) October 16, 2026
The backlash from the local Cuban community was fast and fierce because, well, Cuban Americans know quite a bit about the harsh realities of socialism. Things became so intense that CAO owner Yvette Rodriguez Cao felt compelled to make it clear that allowing Democrats into her bakery was not an endorsement of their politics.
“We stand by beliefs that we want to support freedom, we’re against communism,” Rodriguez Cao told NBC 6.
Vicky Bakery, another Cuban bakery run by Rodriguez Cao's family, then jumped into the fray with its own statement denouncing socialism and making clear that the political event at CAO had nothing to do with Vicky Bakery.
María Elvira Salazar did some denouncing of her own, calling out Eliott Rodriguez for campaigning with Jeffries in the first place and bringing him into a Cuban cafe, saying, "It is an insult to parade this ideology through a community built by survivors of socialism and embrace the very people who champion it."
Eliott Rodriguez brought the man who wants to lead the socialists in Congress into a Cuban bakery in Miami and, in one move, showed just how little he knows this community.
He and his socialist friends turned a Cuban small business into a political prop and left the business dealing with the fallout.
It is an insult to parade this ideology through a community built by survivors of socialism and embrace the very people who champion it.
If Eliott does not understand the people he is asking to serve, how can Miami trust him in Congress?
Rodriguez immediately went into damage control mode, indignantly stating, “I think it’s incredibly sad that in these tough economic times, my opponent is trying to destroy a small business by using her social media goons to attack a business that all they did was invite two non-socialists to have pastelitos and cafecito.”
"Non-socialists" is doing a quite a bit of heavy lifting there. Jeffries can try to run from the label, but remember that he endorsed Zohran Mamdani last year and helped to kick off the socialist overthrow of his own party.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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