Republican strategist Ana Navarro says she’s voting for Clinton

Republican strategist Ana Navarro, who supported Jeb Bush in the Republican primaries, says she’s voting for Hillary Clinton.

{mosads}Navarro, a CNN commentator who has spent the entire election season condemning Donald Trump, often colorfully, said this will be the first time in her life she’s cast a vote against the Republican nominee for president.

“I voted against Donald Trump because I am Hispanic,” Navarro wrote in a CNN.com opinion piece on Monday announcing her decision. 

In the op-ed, Navarro lists all the things Trump has done and said that she believes disqualify him from being president.  

“On June 16, 2015, the first day of his campaign, Trump called Mexicans ‘rapists,’ ” she wrote. “I was not born in Mexico. I am not of Mexican descent. But I knew he was also talking about me.”

Navarro, who served as national Hispanic campaign chairwoman for GOP nominee John McCain in 2008, said she voted against Trump on behalf of all the people she believes he has insulted or intimidated.  

In the op-ed, Navarro mentions Gonzalo Curiel, the American judge assigned to the Trump University fraud case. Trump said Curiel couldn’t do his job fairly due to his Mexican heritage. 

Navarro also mentions lesser-known people. She says she rode a taxi in Washington and the driver, an African immigrant, feared “that if Trump became president, his children’s ability to be professionals would be questioned because their father happened to have been born in Ethiopia.” 

Navarro says she felt no pleasure casting her vote for Clinton. She initially thought about writing in her mother’s name as a symbolic protest vote. But she ultimately decided that with polls showing Trump and Clinton so close in her home state, she had to vote for Clinton because “Florida could be the decisive state (again) as to who ultimately becomes the next president of the United States.” 

“I did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Navarro wrote.

The Democratic nominee has consistently demonstrated “bad judgment” through her use of a private email server and her blurring of public service and financial gain, wrote Navarro.

Despite these reservations, Navarro said, her conscience compelled her “to do every little thing I can to make sure a bad person is not our next president.” 

“In America,” she wrote, “we don’t choose our leaders through violence or armed insurrections.” 

“One vote is our right,” Navarro adds. “One vote is our weapon. I am exercising mine against Donald Trump.”