(photo credit: Darryl Moran)
From the Miami Herald:
The racing organization announced Friday at Daytona that the Xfinity Series/Camping World Truck Series postseason banquet, held at Trump National Doral Resort for the first time in 2014, wouldn’t return there in 2015. This year’s location had yet to be determined, although the convenience of being in the same city as NASCAR’s annual season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway put the Trump-owned resort in good stead.
“Everything weighs in,” NASCAR spokesman David Higdon told reporters in Daytona, where NASCAR annually races during the July 4 holiday. “We started talking about this early in the week. Given all the attention brought to this matter and how it impacts our partners, sponsors, our teams and our drivers and certainly ourselves, it ultimately was decision made today that we will not being going back there.”
Considering the significant power of sponsors in auto racing, a Friday letter from Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis undoubtedly pushed NASCAR’s accelerator in zooming away from the resort. Lemonis wrote he wouldn’t attend the ceremony if it’s held at a Trump property.
http://www.miamiherald.com/...
ESPN has some excerpts from CEO Lemonis' letter:
One of the biggest NASCAR sponsors lobbied to have the event moved. Camping World Chairman and CEO Marcus Lemonis wrote in a letter dated for Tuesday that neither he nor anyone from Camping World would participate in an event at any Trump property "due to recent and ongoing blatantly bigoted and racist comments from Donald Trump in regards to immigrants of the United States."
...
"Our company will not stand to support any person or organization that associates with such beliefs, and we feel strongly about distancing ourselves from any negative and discriminatory comments made against any gender, ethnicity, age group or so forth," Lemonis wrote. "I would hope that the entire NASCAR organization would agree with my sentiments."
And this:
Trump attended the banquet last year, mingling with several drivers before the event and welcoming the crowd at the start of the program.
http://espn.go.com/...
Big thanks to Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis and also to NASCAR, who just last week banned the Confederate Flag!
Cross-posted at Byline.com