Billionaire Mike Fernandez is fed up with the GOP backing Trump
He bought anti-Trump newspaper ads
He says he won’t back Trump if he’s the party’s nominee
Mike Fernandez, a Coral Gables healthcare magnate and top Jeb Bush financial backer, has launched a newspaper ad campaign against Donald Trump. He is pictured here in his office in 2011. PETER ANDREW BOSCH MIAMI HERALD STAFF
He has led polls nationally and in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire for more than three months.
A CNN/ORC poll released Friday, 58 days from the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, showed Bush garnering only 3 percent support nationally. That’s 33 percentage points behind Trump, who at 36 percent polled 20 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Bush and his allies have spent more than any other contender on TV ads: nearly $30 million.
Dario Moreno, a Florida International University pollster backing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for president, said confronting Trump will take a lot more than a few ads in local newspapers.
“To make an impact on a national race in states, you have to buy TV or direct mail,” he said. “This is an indication of how unsettled some of the Bush backers are. Fernandez is trying to be helpful, but I don’t think it’s going to be effective.”
THIS IS AN INDICATION OF HOW UNSETTLED SOME OF THE BUSH BACKERS ARE.
Dario Moreno, pollster and Marco Rubio supporter
Fernandez sent the ad, which was first reported by Politico, to various news outlets — and, he said, to “103 friends who are equally frustrated.” Upon learning about his plans, the Bush campaign “chewed me out,” he said, though Fernandez still plans to attend a Saturday gathering of Bush donors and campaign staff. A Bush spokesman declined to comment.
Perhaps most striking in the ad is its comparison of Trump and several dead dictators.
“Look at Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Peron in Argentina,” it says. “When people lose hope, they are susceptible to those who offer to think for them.” (“I’m not comparing him to Mother Teresa and a guardian angel,” Fernandez quipped.)
Notably absent from the list: Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
“He’s too old, and he’s useless,” said Fernandez, one of the most prominent Cuban-American Republicans to favor President Barack Obama’s renewed diplomatic ties with the island. “If I put Fidel, it becomes a Cuba thing.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Fernandez, who chairs MBF Healthcare Partners, left Cuba for the U.S. at age 12 in 1964. He said Trump’s rhetoric about illegal immigration pains him. Last year, Fernandez published an autobiography, Humbled by the Journey, about growing up in exile. He has also tried to build a 425-foot-high “Flag of Gratitude” in the city of Miami.
In 2014, he parted ways with Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s reelection campaign — Fernandez had been its finance co-chairman — a few weeks after calling out Scott staffers when a Hispanic business partner of Fernandez’s overheard them crudely mimicking a Mexican accent on their way to a Coral Gables Chipotle restaurant.
“I’m just a freaking immigrant, so no one is going to listen to me. But this is like a kick in the teeth,” Fernandez said of Trump’s candidacy. “It just bothers me that Americans could be fooled this way.”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment