Rick Scott's campaign denies staff made fun of Hispanics now there's an email
03/25/2014
Failing still another campaign lesson, Rick Scott's campaign tossed its newly minted Hispanic lieutentant governor into a media frenzy of denial that could badly backfire.
Let us begin at the beginning.
The Miami Herald's intreprid political writer Marc Caputo revealed Friday that Mike Fernandez, a top Scott fundrasier, had resigned from the campaign. One of his concerns was a report from a business partner that top Scott campaign staffers were making fun of Hispanics on the way to a Mexican restaurant.
That must read story is here.
An excerpt:
Before he abruptly resigned as a top fund-raiser for Gov. Rick Scott, health care executive Mike Fernandez complained to top Scott advisers about a “homogeneous” team of campaign advisers who don’t understand the culture of Hispanic voters he needs to win re-election.
Fernandez’s politically explosive complaints were in an email he sent last month that foreshadowed his abrupt resignation last Thursday as co-finance chairman of Scott’s re-election effort. A billionaire owner of and investor in health care plans, Fernandez remains a strong Scott supporter, and hosted a $25,000-per-couple fund-raiser at his Coral Gables mansion Monday that featured 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
But the aftershocks of Fernandez’s resignation are a major distraction for Scott’s campaign and underscore a key part of the Democrats’ opposition strategy: that Republicans can’t relate to Hispanic voters. The most explosive part of Fernandez’s Feb. 20 email was his claim, first reported in the Miami Herald, that two Scott campaign aides imitated a Mexican accent.
When Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera said Monday there was “no validity” to the Herald report, it prompted Republicans sympathetic to Fernandez to release a copy of the email, which in broader terms reveals Fernandez’s uneasiness with the direction of Scott’s campaign.
Fernandez’s email indicates that he never heard the comments he complained about. A business partner named “Luis” apparently did on the way to a Chipolte Grill, a Mexican restaurant.
“It’s culturally insensitive for him to hear a senior staff members [sic] mimicking a Mexican accent on the way to Chipotle. It shows that the team does not understand the culture YOU need to win,” Fernandez wrote on his iPad.
Scott's campaign denied the accusation:
“Mike was not in the van,” Scott’s campaign manager, Melissa Sellers, said in an email to the Herald.
“I spoke to every staffer in the van,” Sellers wrote. “If something was said in an accent, no one remembers what it was. We are a diverse organization and we do not tolerate inappropriate comments.”
Fernandez's email indicates that he never heard the comments he complained about. His business partner, identified in the email only as Luis, apparently did on the way to a Chipolte Grill, a Mexican restaurant.
Ummm...."Country bumpkin?" Really? You are complaining about insensitivity while suggesting people in Mississippi are country bumpkins?
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