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Staffers Say Lawmaker Fired Them For Criticizing His Weak Response To Buffalo Shooting

NY Assemblyman Patrick Burke was afraid of angering voters if he condemned white supremacy, former aides say.

Three former staffers accused New York Assemblymember Patrick Burke of firing them after urging him to condemn white supremacy in response to the May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo in which a gunman slew 10 Black people.

They told The New York Post on Saturday (May 28) that the Buffalo Democrat asked for their input for his planned speech against white supremacy on the Assembly floor. For some reason, his plans suddenly changed and Burke terminated them on May 24 after they argued with him about their concerns.

“We tried to say, ‘Hey, man, you know, we live in this part of Buffalo that people regard as being racist, and we know we have an extremism and a racism problem here in Erie County, and we feel that … as an office, we got to call this out,’” Matthew Dearing, Burke’s ex-director of community relations, told the newspaper.

According to Dearing, one of the lawmaker’s concerns was that some voters oppose him taking a strong stance against white supremacy and informed the staff that he will not do “anything substantial about this issue.”

According to the Buffalo Police Department, Payton Gendron, 18, entered the Tops Friendly Markets store with a military-style assault rifle and opened fire. Gendron allegedly wrote and posted a manifesto online that repeatedly cited the “Great Replacement” theory,” the false belief that a secret political group is working to replace white Americans with people of color. Authorities said he researched the local demographics and chose that supermarket to kill as many Black people as possible.

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Another terminated staffer said her former boss ridiculed Assemblymember Monica Wallace, a fellow Democrat from Lancaster, N.Y., for proposing the creation of a commission to uproot white supremacy.

“Oh, that’s gonna be like, futile or hokey,” ex-legislative director Nicole Golias recalled Burke’s remarks.

The newspaper identified the third former staffer as ex-communications director Brendan Keany.

Burke did not immediately respond to the Post’s request for comments but noted that he told the Buffalo News that he fired the staffers for “gross subordination” after they accused him of being a “political coward.”

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