THE 2000 presidential election result came as a welcome relief to anti-Castro forces in the United States after the buffeting they had taken that year: first, in the court of public opinion over their handling of the Elián González affair, and second, in the Congress over the vote to exempt food and medicine sales from the embargo on Cuba. The return of a republican to the White House promised a reversal in their fortunes: at a minimum, George W. Bush could be expected to hold the line against the pressure from farm and business interests to ease sanctions and the debt he owed Cuban-American voters in Florida raised the possibility that he might consider harsh additional measures to bring about the downfall of the Castro regime. The new administration, said Cuban American National Foundation's (CANF) Dennis Hays, had a chance to “make a mark” on Cuba policy. To Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, that meant a halt to the “trickling, weakening of the U.S. embargo day-to-day during the Clinton administration.” Lincoln Díaz-Balart had made his position clear in an April 2000 memo to the Bush election campaign: Any move toward normalized relations must be predicated on political democratization and the release of political prisoners. The ever-apocalyptic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) Jesse Helms went further.