Top Jeb Bush donor Mike Fernandez has pledged to give Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over $2 million to defeat Donald Trump.
“I specially call on all Latinos to reject a man who encourages violence against you,” Fernandez, a health-sector billionaire, said in an email obtained by the Miami Herald.
His millions will go towards “Latino outreach and registration in Florida,” a critical swing state worth 29 electoral votes. Fernandez gave $3 million to Bush’s ill-fated Right to Rise PAC, which collected $100 million while committing bizarre blunders, such as photoshopping a black man’s hand onto Bush for an Iowa mailer sent to 86,000 Iowa voters. One furious donor said that the PAC should be sued for fraud.
The Cuba-born billionaire, who made his money in the healthcare industry, backed Mitt Romney in 2012 and endorsed Clinton on Aug. 31, the day she gave her alt-right speech. Fernandez also denounced Trump in highly emotional terms:
This abysmally unfit candidate has unleased [sic] racist and violent acts. There has been no need for dog whistles. The call to brand entire religions and countries as unworthy and despicable, and the call for profoundly un-American practices, including asking the honorable men and women serving our country in the military to engage in the profoundly dishonorable task of torturing human beings and killing innocent families, has been open and unequivocal. The very worst in our society, the Klan and the neo-Nazis, revel in this horrific rhetoric.
“I harbor no illusion that Hillary Clinton is perfect; none of us is. I do not see eye to eye on some issues with the former senator from New York. However, Clinton is, without doubt, a superior choice to Donald Trump,” he wrote. He has also funded ads comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
Florida remains competitive, with 61 percent of likely Hispanic voters there supporting Clinton in a four-way race, according to one poll conducted in part by the New York Times. Clinton is tied with Trump, however, thanks to a massive surge of white voters’ support: Fully 50 percent back the real estate mogul. Trump is also outperforming Romney in some polls among Hispanics, making Democrats increasingly nervous about their November prospects.
Fernandez’s comments on funding Clinton’s campaign come on the same day Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a daughter of Robert Kennedy, claimed former Republican president George H. W. Bush will vote for Clinton over Trump on November 8.
A bitter Jeb Bush said in May he will not vote for Trump — but doesn’t plan to vote for Clinton, either. George P. Bush, however, plans to back Trump: “From Team Bush, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you know what? You get back up and you help the man that won, and you make sure that we stop Hillary Clinton,” he said at a Texas Republican event.
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