Latinos are a crucial voting bloc in the United States and one would imagine that in a place like Santa Fe, New Mexico, their votes would be even more so.
Tell that to the Santa Fe County Republican Party, who punished what would seem to be a rare find -- a Latino Republican -- for his response to racist statements made by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has had a running commentary degrading Latinos.
Ignacio Padilla, the former treasurer for the local Santa Fe chapter of the GOP, was fired over the weekend for responding to Trump's anti-Latino racism like many others have, with a Trump piñata.
"I put his big mouth on it," he told KRQE, adding he stuffed it with fake money instead of candy and let members of the public take swings at it.
According to KRQE, Padilla received an email on Sunday that said he was being relieved of his position.
"The Republican Party of Santa Fe County Executive Board has voted unanimously to remove you as Treasurer," it read.
Padilla says he was never notified to attend the meeting in which the vote was made to remove him.
"When [Trump] is saying all those bad things about us, I am going to stand up like I always have," he told KRQE. "I can understand that coming from a Communist Party, but not from the Republican Party of the USA."
The Republican is vociferously anti-Trump and still displays the piñata on his car, which is also decked out with signs calling Trump out as a racist and showing his face in the middle of the Confederate flag, KRQE reports.
Watch the report from KRQE here:
