Carlos Lopez-Cantera Denies Validity of 'Mexican Accent' Story

Gov. Rick Scott's campaign finance co-chair Mike Fernandez abruptly quit Scott's campaign on Thursday evening, prompting questions about the real reason behind his departure.

According to the Miami Herald, Fernandez expressed frustrations to top Scott allies and "complained about two campaign aides who had joked around in a cartoon-style Mexican accent en route to a Mexican restaurant in Fernandezs home town of Coral Gables."

Fernandez, however, said he was splitting from the campaign to spend more time with his family and businesses.

Questions about Fernandez's departure spilled into a Republican Party of Florida conference call held Monday morning which was supposed to revolve around Scott's latest attack ad against Charlie Crist.

After reporters asked Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera about Fernandez's departure, the lieutenant governor continued to say Fernandez left to spend more time with his family and his business, not because of comments made by campaign aides.

"Mr. Fernandez left to spend more time with his family and concentrate more on his business," Lopez-Cantera said. "This is a diverse organization that we have here and I'm confident that there's probably no basis for any of that."

Lopez said he did not believe the incident happened -- and Scott's camp, he said, looked into the incident and came up dry.

"Like I said, this is a diverse organization," he said. "We don't tolerate inappropriate comments and I don't believe they even happened ... There's no validity that we can find to any of those comments, or what was written."