POL UNDER FIRE
FACEBOOK POSTS EARN CRITICISM FOR PARKSIDE COUNCILWOMAN
Social media posts have another Delaware County politician in hot water. At a meeting this week, Parkside council members called on fellow council member Anna Guy to resign after she made what other called “deeply disturbing and offensive” posts on Twitter and Facebook.
Council President Shirley Purcival brought the matter up and read a number of the posts that fellow council members criticized, starting with a late August post from Guy, posting under the name @AnnaGuy19, said, “I am most afraid of the gun-loving racists in my neighborhood.”
Other Twitter posts that Purcival read centered on racism including; “Parkside has a serious problem with racism” and “racists are attracted to the GOP.” An additional post that angered Purcival was a photo Guy posted of a gun-rights group in Kentucky with Guy’s comment, “I guess white hoods are out of style.”
Purcival called on Guy to name which of her constituents are socalled racists and said failure to do so demeans, defames and insults all good residents of Parkside Borough.
“Twitter and Facebook sometimes provide an untarnished look into the true opinions and thoughts of our elected officials,” Purcival said. “You have made outrageous claims of bigotry and we need to clear the air here and now. Racism, racists are not to be taken lightly. By making such assertions, you have attacked the reputation and integrity of all your neighbors and the constituents of our fine community.”
Purcival was also critical of a number of other posts which centered on presidential politics. They included: “Voters who voted for Trump are stupid” and “I lost respect for anyone who voted for Trump.”
She added, “Tweets of this nature call into question your character and your fitness to serve this wonderful Borough as an elected council person.”
Purcival then focused on a tweet in which a man claiming he was the founder of Antifa, the political protest movement that those on the right believe are domestic terrorists. Guy replied to his tweet with, “Where is my paycheck?”
Guy has also posted Antifa flags with the comments, “The demonstrators are the ones needing protecting.”
Purcival, a Republican, called for Guy’s immediate resignation from council.
When asked at the meeting, Guy, a Democrat, said the comments about Antifa were “purely humor.” She had no comment beyond that Wednesday evening.
“The fact that you were requesting a paycheck from Antifa, I don’t think anyone finds it funny,” said Purcival.
Councilman Eric Long made a motion calling on Guy to resign saying she serves herself, not Parkside.
Parkside Solicitor John J. Wills noted the vote, which passed on a 4-2 party line, was not binding and the council could not compel Guy to resign.
The solicitor will send a letter to the governor’s office and forward it to the state Senate. State officials will form a committee to review the complaint and send their findings back to the solicitor to determine if she can be removed as an elected official.
“The council president is attempting to circumvent the will of the voters of Parkside. She is directing our solicitor, at the expense of the taxpayers, to pursue action that has zero chance of succeeding in a purely partisan effort to remove me from office,” Guy said when reached by phone Thursday. “The reason it is so difficult to remove an elected official from office is so the majority cannot overturn the results of an election.”
This comes two weeks after Darby Commissioner Marvin Smith was removed from his position as police commissioner for posting a meme to his personal Facebook page that featured an image of two Black men holding guns to the head of a white police officer with the text, “Does it have to come to this to make them stop murdering and terrorizing us?”
Purcival said she learned about the comments in early September from a borough resident.
“It had nothing to do politically. It was a non-partisan decision. If this had been another member on council who had been of the Republican persuasion, it would have been my same responsibility to move forward,” Purcival said. “I took a couple days to mull this over. Do I want to bring this kind of attention to Parkside? I think the whole issue is going to bring negativity to our Borough and the publicity none of us want to our tiny borough.”
Council also took note of a recent Delaware County Council announcement stating elected officials are held to a higher standard and must serve as role models for the community.
The 2019 elections saw Guy and two other Democrats elected to the council. She and Purcival have had issues since she took office earlier this year. In the spring Guy was censured for not following administrative rules imposed by council.
There were no comments from the public at the meeting.