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In Yorktown, GOP district leader Tom Pomposello was forced to resign after calling Town Councilman Vishnu Patel a racist slur after the latter lost to a pair of GOP challengers following a decade in office.
The slur targets people from the Middle East. Patel is an Indian American.
Video of the incident from a Yorktown GOP celebration event was first posted on social media and was later taken down, but not before it made the rounds online and rapidly spread.
Partial video from TAPintoYorktown can be found here.
Pomposello was quickly identified as the perpetrator, and he quickly came under fire.
“We should all be totally disgusted by the hate language directed toward Yorktown Councilmember Vishnu Patel on an Election Night video made at the town’s (Republican Headquarters),” State Sen. Pete Harckham said. “We need more than pro forma apologies here. A serious soul-searching about racism in our communities is required.”
Marni Rabin-Marron and Mark Lieberman, Yorktown Democratic Committee co-chairs issued a statement calling the incident “reprehensible that this person felt comfortable at a Republican celebratory function to gleefully shout disgraceful words that carry tremendous ignorance and hate.’
Yorktown Town Supervisor Matt Slater said that after receiving his video, he spoke to Patel “to express my disgust with what had transpired.”
“While we cannot take back the words that were said, we can be sure to send a clear message that racism will not be tolerated and people will be held accountable for their actions,” he said. “We need to combat racism and hatred together as a community and the Town should not partner with anyone who fails to uphold these values.”
Slater also applauded “the swift action of the Yorktown Republican Town Committee for immediately accepting the resignation of Tom Pomposello as a Republican District Leader.”
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