MIAMI - AUGUST 10: City of Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado listens as police Chief Miguel A. Exposito speaks during a press conference to announce "Operation Take Back Our Streets"' on August 10, 2010 in Miami, Florida. The Miami Police Department launched the operation in response to recent shootings in the Model City and Little Haiti communities of Miami. The city has seen a number of shootings recently using high powered assault weapons. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (2010 Getty Images)
The mayor of the City of Miami says Donald Trump evokes memories of a painful time in his life, when he was taunted with ethnic slurs while walking to school.
“They said, ‘Spic, go back home,’” Republican Mayor Tomás Regalado told the Miami Herald. “Because I had very dark hair.”
And the misery that bigotry brought him is one key reason that Regalado, who is 68 and was born in Cuba, says he refuses to vote for Trump.
Earlier in the primaries, Regalado supported fellow Cuban-American and Floridian Sen. Marco Rubio, who withdrew from the presidential race in mid-March.
Regalado noted that he will not vote for Trump’s most likely Democratic opponent in the general election, Hillary Clinton.
“I’m not going to vote for one or the other,” he said, according to the Herald, and added that Trump “mistreats people, speaks derisively of people.”
“A president’s biggest asset is the bully pulpit,” Regalado said. “This guy is capable of creating national and international chaos.”
Trump dedicated a good deal of his campaign announcement speech last June to railing against Mexico, saying it was sending criminals to the U.S. and claiming that he would build a wall on the border and make Mexico pay for it.
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," Trump said. “They're not sending you ... They're sending people who have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with them. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
It is a message he has stuck to and made a cornerstone of his campaign, adding more ways that he would crack down on undocumented immigrants, such has having a deportation army that would round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants.
Despite that, Trump claims, he has nothing against Hispanics, whom he says he has employed by the thousands.
Many Republicans have taken a similar stance to Regalado's, saying they will not support Trump but that they cannot bring themselves to vote for Clinton.
Regalado’s dislike for the real estate magnate is well-documented. He spearheaded an effort last year to get city commissioners to draft a resolution condemning him. The commissioners did pass a resolution, but made it less pointed than what Regalado had sought.
The mayor doesn’t plan to stay home on Election Day. He will cast a vote for other races.
“For senator, for representative, for anything else, yes,” he said. “But this guy?”
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