Here’s yet another valuable life lesson to learn from the mistakes of others. In this case, the mistake of a mayor in Maine who had to resigned over a racist text message.
From the Hill:
Shane Bouchard, the Republican mayor of the second largest city in Maine, stepped down after leaked emails and texts showed he joked that elderly black people were “antique farm equipment,” The Sun Journal reports.
This is one of the screenshots released last night by Heather Berube of her conversations with Lewiston Mayor Shane Bouchard.
— Kiernan Majerus-Collins (@thekiernanmc) March 7, 2019
His messages prove that he is unfit for office. Lewiston deserves a mayor who knows black people are human beings, not "farm equipment." #mepolitics pic.twitter.com/X0TFRfoNXn
Oh boy. And for more icing on the bigoted cake, the texts were leaked because his alleged mistress is angry at him:
In private messages that were released by a woman, Heather Everly Berube, who alleged to have had an affair with Bouchard during his campaign, the Maine Republican reportedly told a racist joke.
EVEN BETTER: Part of the reason that dude won his election was because that mistress was on his opponent’s campaign and was leaking his emails!!!!
For months, Heather Everly Berube volunteered for Democratic mayoral candidate Ben Chin while secretly funneling his campaign emails to Republican rival Shane Bouchard — with whom, she said, she happened to be having an affair.
Bouchard would go on to win the race, in part because those emails were made public.
Holy moly. And it was HUNDREDS of emails!
Berube did not just send a handful of emails. She sent dozens, if not hundreds. As a trusted volunteer, she was among the list of people to receive Chin’s internal emails every day, and they were all sent to Bouchard, she said.
OPEN relationship?!?! What?
Within a few weeks, Berube said, she and Bouchard began having an affair. She said she was under the impression that he and his wife had an open relationship — something she said she realized later was not true.
Both the affair and the sending of emails continued until the beginning of December, Berube said. That is when the Maine Examiner ran a story exposing Chin’s internal emails. The website focused on a few comments Chin had made, including one in which he said he encountered a “bunch of racists” while campaigning.
Wow.
Can’t wait for the smutty cheap television-movie of this story. Also, happy International Women’s Day, I guess.