Mayor’s ‘Gorilla Face’ Obama Comments Pushes City Into Municipal Showdown
First Lady Michelle Obama discusses Millennium Development Goals with students during a visit to Global Kids, Inc. in New York, N.Y., July 10, 2014. Amanda Lucidon / White House
The Airway Heights City Council can’t force Patrick Rushing to resign, but they do have a Plan B they’ll deploy on Monday.
A city hall showdown currently playing out in a small Eastern Washington community on the outskirts of Spokane is a good reminder that public officials need to be extra careful with what they say on social media.
Granted, public officials shouldn’t be posting racially offensive comments on Facebook. That should be a no-brainer. But that’s what Airway Heights Mayor Patrick Rushing did this month with this Facebook comment regarding first lady Michelle Obama:
Gorilla face Michelle, can't disagree with that. The woman is not attractive except to monkey man Barack. Check out them ears. Lol.
Rushing said his comment was meant as a joke and he didn’t realize it was racist. “I made a mistake. I owned up to my mistake,” Rushing said last week, according to The Spokesman-Review. “If I do resign that’s admitting I’m a racist and I’m not.”
The Airway Heights City Council has demanded that the mayor resign, but Rushing has refused, saying “that’s admitting I’m a racist and I’m not.”
As the Inlander pointed out last week, Rushing’s “Facebook page has regularly churned out (mostly reposted) images and comments that many might find, well, unbecoming of the Mayor's Office.”
So what’s next in Airway Heights?
With the mayor standing firm, members of the City Council have limited options. But they will be putting forth a resolution on Monday night calling for sanctions on Rushing’s mayoral duties.
As KXLY-TV reported on Saturday:
The sanctions include revoking the mayor’s travel reimbursement, unless it is for performing his essential duties. As well as, preventing him from speaking on behalf of the city without City Council’s permission.
. . . The resolution also states that because the City Council has no confidence in the mayor, they asks that he forfeits the $2,000 he is given each month for public service for the remainder of his term.
Will that prompt the mayor to step down? Stay tuned ...
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty.
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