The mayor a small Pennsylvania borough is being pushed to resign by other municipal officials following racist Facebook pictures West York Mayor Charles Wasko apparently posted over the summer, including ones aimed at the first family.
The calls for resignation come after a Facebook page apparently belonging to Wasko posted in June a picture of a monkey, saying it’s a picture of Michelle Obama and a wagon of orangutans captioned “moving day at the White House.”
However, that’s not the only offensive content the Facebook page has posted, or even the most recent. He has various posts calling Obama and Hillary the leaders of ISIS, Hillary behind bars, and various others. One of the more overt posts was a picture of Clint Eastwood holding a noose with the text “Barry this rope is for you. Wanna bring that empty chair over here!”
CNN has reached out to the mayor’s office for comment and has not yet gotten a response. When the York Daily Record reportedly reached Wasko on Thursday, he described the response to his posts as “bulls—” and hung up on the reporter.
The position of mayor in West York — which according to a US census estimate has about 4,500 people in it — is unpaid and Wasko cannot be removed legislatively.
The West York Council President Shawn Mauck told CNN on Thursday that Wasko’s “actions have been absolutely deplorable,” and said he does not have the power to remove Wasko from his position but “the community itself and colleagues have reached out to him and asked for his resignation.” Mauck has not been able to get in touch with Wasko.
Mauck said the council plans to address this issue Monday through a censure vote to “censure him and formally distance our government from those actions,” and he said he has no doubts that the vote will be unanimous.
Mauch also is circulating a Moveon.org petition to push the mayor resign, which as of Thursday evening had more than 130 signatures on it.
Mauck says that the posts are a result of the “age of (Donald) Trump that has made anything possible” and that “it’s time that we start pushing back and say no to this kind of rhetoric.”
