A Charlotte, N.C., mayoral candidate is coming under fire for listing the obvious fact that she’s white as one of her qualifications for the job.
“Vote for me!” Kimberley Paige Barnette posted on her Facebook bio. “REPUBLICAN & SMART, WHITE, TRADITIONAL.”
She might want to scrap the “smart” part.
WBTV reports that Barnette is a former Mecklenburg County, N.C., magistrate making her first run for office and that she significantly trails the other two Republican candidates in the Sept. 12 primary. They’re also white, by the way.
The original post has since been taken down, and her Facebook account deactivated.
On Tuesday she got a good dressing down in a statement from the state Republican Party chair, who quoted Martin Luther King Jr. for good measure.
“The Charlotte mayoral contest will be decided based on who can best promote public safety, provide economic development and improve critical infrastructure needs,” said NCGOP Chair Robin Hayes in a statement.
She continued:
This contest will not be decided based on the skin color [of] the candidates. Any suggestion that a candidate is more or less qualified for political office based on their skin color alone is offensive to North Carolina Republicans, and we condemn it. This type of suggestion has no place in our public discourse. With violent confrontations in the streets under Mayor Roberts, we have seen the dangers to public safety when a Charlotte mayor fails the leadership test of bringing all people together. We believe that bringing people together starts with the Republican belief that government should deliver critical government services in a colorblind way, and in a society that judges all people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.
In a televised debate last month, Barnette criticized last year’s protests of the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott as “an expression of Democratic behavior” (and lest you think she meant an expression of your rights in a democracy, no. She meant the protesters acted like Democrats). She also said that she doesn’t want more “lower-income people” in Charlotte.
In the age of Trump, why dog-whistle when you can just bark like a bitch?
Read more at WBTV.