The following letter was published in this week’s issue of the Gazette.
To the editor:
“Let brown people in to rape our daughters in Westchester. Our white, blonde daughters.”
Sleazy gutter politics? Nothing new for Croton. This is a woke variant on the type of dog-whistle politics which is as old as the Ku Klux Klan.
For those people who thought that living in a one-party village would improve the level of civility, think again. As residents of Croton know, the quote above is from Croton resident Catherine Borgia—the senior politician of the Croton Democrats. Faced with token opposition, the Croton Democratic Party decided to make an example of the only person to contest a race.
““Let brown people in to rape our daughters in Westchester. Our white, blonde daughters.” Sleazy gutter politics? Nothing new for Croton. This is a woke variant on the type of dog-whistle politics which is as old as the Ku Klux Klan. For those people who thought that living in a one-party village would improve the level of civility, think again. As residents of Croton know, the quote above is from Croton resident Catherine Borgia—the senior politician of the Croton Democrats. Faced with token opposition, the Croton Democratic Party decided to make an example of the only person to contest a race.”
So a few months ago, Ms. Borgia told an audience that back in 2017 her opponent had sent a mailer out claiming that Borgia wanted to let “brown”people in to rape “our white, blonde daughters.” She added that one of the children in the photograph looked like her child. In the wake of the success of this lie, Ms. Borgia doubled down with a statement on Facebook that her opponent “spent most of the last campaign calling me an ugly slut.”
When asked to produce the document, Ms. Borgia’s spokesperson said that she “had a recollection” of its existence and when asked point blank about the basis for her allegations, the response was: “her memory.”
2017 was just two years ago. In an age of cellphone video and YouTube, this would have been front-page news. Yet nothing exists, because it did not happen. So the Croton Democrats created alternative facts. Ms. Borgia had a recovered memory. Since she had a recovered memory of being victimized, it must be true. Those are the rules in 2019.
If in 2019 we still believed in objective reality, we would call Ms. Borgia a liar.
Of course, nobody really believes Ms. Borgia. But her decision to smear her opponent with such a vile charge was wildly popular in Croton, and she will remain in the county legislature until Ms. Galef vacates her seat for Ms. Borgia and the voters march to the polls to rubber-stamp her coronation.
Maria Trunzo Slippen is a former Croton trustee. Now that Croton has taken over the Cortlandt Dems, the toxic Croton style is now spreading to Cortlandt. Ms. Slippen holds that people who say Ms. Borgia lied are merely expressing an opinion, and she even said that this has been “positive press” for the opponent who was smeared.
If you ask anyone to define Croton, the first thing you will hear is that we are “progressive” and then you will hear about how we are so nice and neighborly to each other.
Discussing rape of “our white, blonde daughters” is hardly progressive. The KKK was doing that a century ago. And making up vile personal smears against a local father and volunteer firefighter simply because he alone dared to run a campaign against a Croton Democrat is not nice or neighborly. Flipping a racist trope to conform to 2019’s culture of victimhood does not make it any less racist.
There was never any danger of the Democrats losing a seat. There was no political need for Ms. Borgia to get into the gutter and no political need for members of the Croton Democrats to defend this disgusting personal sliming of one of our neighbors.
Nita Lowey, Sandy Galef, and Linda Puglisi all manage repeatedly to win elections without the sewer politics of Croton politicians. It is true that they are from a different age when people were more polite, but there is something else going on here.
The key is understanding that Ms. Borgia framed her vile lies in the language of our woke times. By giving her foil a misogynistic anti-immigrant cast, she ensures that reasoned analysis of veracity goes out the window. By relying on a recovered memory, she ensures that what is objectively false becomes impervious to challenge: evidence and logic is no match for recovered memory, particularly when it comes to anything smacking of misogyny.
Ms. Borgia is the public face of the smear, but the real benefit is to the political party leaders such as Ms. Slippen. Much like Mr. Trump, if Ms. Borgia had shot someone in the middle of the street she still would have coasted to re-election. The genius of this smear is that the target was a well-liked father active as a volunteer first responder. By putting false personal attacks out there in the community, the party forced people to take sides.
Once we put party over decency, the party gets stronger because it is no longer constrained by the individual decency of its members. The corrosion of our values is of little concern compared to party discipline.
Most of us were here in 2017. We know that the “rape… our white blonde daughters” mailer never existed. We know the “ugly slut” campaign never occurred. And those of us who were not here in 2017 know that if such things did occur, there would have been stories on News 12 and LoHud would have dispatched a team of reporters whose articles and video would still be on the website.
Yet Croton residents still went to the polling place to support Ms. Borgia in the only contested race. This was not because their votes were needed; the election outcome was not in doubt. Rather it was because given a choice between withholding a vote (or voting for the target of the smear) and supporting our tribe, we chose to reinforce our tribal identity at the expense of our professed values. This is the same thing we condemn in Mr. Trump’s lemmings, but it is OK if the sleazy politician is on Row A.
Ms. Borgia has a reprehensible moral character, but voters who go to worship on Sunday and tell their children to be respectful and not lie or bully their classmates still came out in droves to vote for Ms. Borgia. And they will again in elections to come.
Who knows the next target of a future “recovered memory” by Ms. Borgia? My guess is it will be anyone who dares to run against her.
It did not matter that the 2019 target is a decent person and Ms. Borgia is not, because the target is of a different tribe. As we all know, objective facts and morality are less important than loyalty to our political party. The fabric of our community is less important than voting a straight party line, and anyone who contests an elected office must know that this is done at risk of false claims designed to damage the challenger long after the election is over.
If we are to change this environment, we need to stop having a double standard. It is not OK to excuse slimy behavior simply because the offender is of our political party, or because the person being slimed is of a different party. At some point we must stop seeing people as members of a tribe. Instead we need to start viewing them as fathers, mothers, neighbors… as members of our community.
The next time someone tells you how tolerant and civil we are here in Croton, ask them if they voted for Ms. Borgia.
Paul Steinberg