When people tell you who they are, believe them.
Recently, video surfaced of congressional candidate John Ward telling us exactly who he is.
"Puerto Ricans shouldn't be allowed to register to vote in Florida,” he confidently told the crowd at a campaign event.
These comments, suggesting that certain American citizens shouldn’t be allowed to vote in Florida, caused an uproar both in Florida and nationally. While Floridians are making tremendous efforts to welcome our fellow citizens to the Sunshine State, John Ward is working overtime to strip them of their right to vote. Incendiary talk like this is meant to score cheap political points and leaders on both sides of the isle are standing up for our fellow Americans by denouncing this clown.
John Ward’s bigotry toward certain American citizens with a different accent and skin color than his own does not represent the values of hardworking Floridians of either political party, or the people living in Congressional District 6. He stands alone in his call to prevent these Americans from voting this year, receiving harsh rebukes last week from Governor Rick Scott, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam and Congressman Ron DeSantis, among numerous other conservative Republican leaders across the state.
When a second video surfaced, Ward doubled down and took his loathing of these American citizens to a whole new level: "We should be looking to put the Puerto Ricans back in their homes.” Anyone who believes American citizens living in Florida should not be allowed to vote and the priority of our government should be to send these citizens “back in their homes” is unfit to serve Florida in Congress. Period.
John Ward is part of the hypocritical elitist class in America, earning his degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and self reportedly a multi-millionaire, which makes his blatant bigotry all the more disgusting. He knows exactly what he’s saying. He didn’t misspeak, and he wasn't taken out of context. The irony appears to be lost on John Ward, a Massachusetts carpetbagger who doesn’t even live in the district he is attempting to represent in Congress, in trying to prevent American citizen from voting merely because they didn’t begin the election cycle living in Florida.
As his high-priced campaign consultants move to deflect from his words and control the damage to his candidacy, don’t let them fool you. His words have already shown us that he believes in his heart that certain American citizens are second class.
John Ward is telling us who he is, and we should believe him. It’s time for him to withdraw his candidacy.
Julio Fuentes is the president and CEO of the Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
