Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson’s campaign for Congress forces his diversity committee to rebrand

The Mayor’s Diversity Advisory Committee is distancing itself from the man who created it: Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson. Committee chair Peter Ndiang’ui said in a letter obtained by The News-Press that it wanted to maintain its non-partisan focus. But with Henderson now running for Congress, that complicates it. Henderson is one of eight Republican candidates vying for the 19th Congressional District seat being vacated by Francis Rooney, R-Naples. He launched his first campaign ad earlier this month voicing his full support for President Trump and calling a Minnesota congresswoman an “anti-Semitic socialist.” In the ad, he said he would take back the key to the city he had given to Ilhan Omar in 2017, on a visit to Fort Myers before she was elected to Minnesota’s 5th congressional district. “If you make statements that are divisive, we are going to try to steer away from politics,” Ndiang’ui said. “Politics by its very nature is divisive … we cannot remain in a political environment like that.”

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