Former Jeb Bush campaign adviser Sally Bradshaw has left the Republican Party and has registered as an independent in the state of Florida because of Donald Trump, CNN reported Monday.
According to the report, Bradshaw will vote for Hillary Clinton in November if the race is close in Florida.
After years of working with the Bush family and helping author the Republican Party’s autopsy report, Bradshaw told CNN she could no longer look her children in the eye and support the Republican candidate this cycle.
“This is a time when country has to take priority over political parties. Donald Trump cannot be elected president,” Bradshaw told CNN in an e-mail interview. “As much as I don’t want another four years of Obama’s policies, I can’t look my children in the eye and tell them I voted for Donald Trump. I can’t tell them to love their neighbor and treat others the way they wanted to be treated, and then vote for Donald Trump. I won’t do it.”
Bradshaw told CNN that while she had seen Trump as a “bigot” and “misogynist” throughout the race, Trump’s latest attacks against the Khan family who lost their son in the Iraq war in 2004, was just another reminder of why she couldn’t back him.
“If anything, that reinforced my decision to become an independent voter,” she told CNN. “Every family who loses a loved one in service to our country or who has a family member who serves in the military should be honored, regardless of their political views. Vets and their family have more than earned the right to those views. Someone with the temperament to be president would understand and respect that.”
Jeb Bush has already said he cannot vote for Trump. But, Bradshaw’s insistence she will vote for Clinton if the race is close, raises the stakes for the GOP.
Bradshaw said that she will re-register as a Republican if the party returns to its values.
“If and when the party regains its sanity, I’ll be ready to return,” she told CNN. “But until Republicans send a message to party leadership that this cannot
stand, nothing will ever change.”
