A Belleville, N.J., councilwoman is wrapped up in her own "racist rant" controversy, after she was allegedly caught slurring black folks in the background of a voice mail, NJ.com reports.
The news site also reported that a forensics lab in Michigan claimed it was "85 percent" certain that the voice heard on the message was indeed Councilwoman Marie Strumolo Burke, who is also in the running for mayor.
"This is terrible. This is terrible. This is gonna be a f—king n—gertown," the woman, allegedly Burke, could be heard saying at the end of a 90-second message that was left on another council member's answering machine.
The racially charged comment was apparently spurred on by discussion of proposed alterations to Belleville's tax rates. Incumbent Mayor Raymond Kimble, who will be up against Burke in the June election, is calling for her resignation.
Burke, on the other hand, is pointing her fingers toward Kimble, accusing him of playing dirty and insistently denying the allegations.
"I am outraged and I am '100 percent certain' that Kimble's fingerprints are all over this report. We don't need to pay thousands of dollars to a laboratory to prove that these false accusations lead right back to Kimble," she wrote in an email to the Star-Ledger, NJ.com notes.
Kimble said he didn't know when the call was made but he received the tape in October 2013.
Read more at NJ.com.