Orangutans in a wheelbarrow on their way to the White House. Clint Eastwood with a noose, captioned “Barry, this rope is for you.” These are just some of the incendiary memes routinely posted by West York, Pennsylvania Mayor Charles Wasko, and now his constituents say they’re fed up.
“I wanted to throw up,” said borough council president Shawn Mauck of seeing of the posts. “I don’t think there’s a protected class or a group that he did not hate on.”
Mauck and others have repeatedly called on the mayor to resign. The borough council voted to censure him Monday. There’s also a petition to get him out of office.
“We also voted to approve expending any legal means to get him out of office,” Mauck said Tuesday. “If we’re able to draft articles of impeachment, we’ll be ready and well-situated to participate in that.”
But Wasko says he isn’t going anywhere.
“I don’t care what people label me as. But it’s just a smoke screen, to cover up what’s really going on.” (You mean beside the incessant posting of racist memes?) He admitted to “the racial stuff,” but said he wouldn’t talk about it.
Pennsylvania law makes it difficult to remove an elected official unless they’ve committed a crime, Mauck said. Right now, the council is lobbying the Pennsylvania legislature for the necessary supermajority to get him out.
Image Credit: Flickr User kprints, https://flic.kr/p/F12Fpkvia (CC BY 2.0)