Racist remarks by New Jersey candidate Marie Strumolo Burke recorded and may end campaign
The floodgates are open after the Donald Sterling spectacle and the next victim may be a Mayoral candidate from New Jersey.
“This is terrible. This is terrible. This is gonna be a f***in’ n***** town,” was heard on the tape.
The racist statement, recorded on voicemail, has been identified with “85 percent” certainty by a forensics lab as coming from Belleville, New Jersey, councilwoman and Democratic mayoral candidate Marie Strumolo Burke, according to NJ.com.
“It’s her. It’s the same person,” Primeau told NJ.com. “Her speaking style, her pacing. The delivery of all the words spoken in both samples are identical.” Primeau added that the only way he could deem the voices “100 percent” identical would be if Burke were to read aloud the statements made on the phone so he could compare them.
“It’s sad to hear that, in the 21st century, in our state, that we have elected officials who have that type of attitude,” Thomas Puryear, president of the Maplewood-Orange chapter of the NAACP, which represents 11 municipalities, told NJ.com. “It lets us know that racism is alive, and unfortunately doing very well, in our state and in our nation.”
Burke is the municipal chair on the Essex County Democratic Committee, and her bio on Belleville’s website notes she’s served as the town’s Democratic Chairman.
Burke was discussing proposed changes to Belleville’s tax rates when the outburst was captured via voicemail, according to her challenger, the current mayor, Raymond Kimble. Burke and Kimble faceoff for a June mayoral election, but Kimble says he’ll call for Burke’s resignation.
Below is the audio of the voicemail posted to YouTube; Burke’s alleged statement can be heard in the background toward the end just after the main message left by former town planning board chairman Sam Papa, the New York Daily News reported.
“I am outraged and I am ‘100% certain’ that Kimble’s fingerprints are all over this report,” Burke wrote in an email to the Newark Star-Ledger. “We don’t need to pay thousands of dollars to a laboratory to prove that these false accusations lead right back to Kimble.”
[…] New Jersey, councilwoman and Democratic mayoral candidate, Strumolo Burke, was caught on tape, according to NJ.com, saying: ““This is terrible. This is terrible. […]