Doña Ana County GOP chairman resigns over online tirade
Jimenez posted that Va. marchers got ‘exactly what they asked for’ in incident
The chairman of the Doña Ana County Republican Party has resigned amid outrage over a tirade he posted on the organization’s Facebook page after a deadly attack on anti-racist protesters in Virginia over the weekend.
Ramon Jimenez, a retired state police captain elected to the post earlier this year, said Sunday that “violent, leftist protesters” got “exactly what they asked for.”
The comments led some Republicans, including the congressman whose district includes Doña Ana County, Steve Pearce, to call for Jimenez to step down.
And Tuesday, the county party said it had accepted Jimenez’s resignation.
In a post on Facebook, the organization also sought to distance itself from the comments Jimenez had posted and apparently deleted two days earlier.
The GOP group extended its condolences to the family of the woman killed as well as those injured when a man drove his car into a crowd of people following a nationalist rally in Charlottesville on Saturday. The man is accused of holding white supremacist sympathies.
“We believe there is no room for bigotry, racism or hate in our country,” said Victor Contreras, who has taken over as interim chairman of the Republican Party in New Mexico’s second-biggest county.
While Republicans and Democrats alike denounced the attack, with some describing it as an act of terrorism, Jimenez posted a screed Sunday about “leftist protesters.”
“The white ones have been taught to hate their color, the women are taught to
hate men, black and minorities want to kill whites and police,” Jimenez wrote. “They then have the audacity to call conservatives racist. Their own racism, hate and violence has created the divide amongst those that refuse to be bullied on anymore. They’re getting exactly what they asked for. A segregated society of groups that they’ve created and even labeled themselves.”
The post was deleted and the party initially contended on Facebook that it was not related to the white nationalist rally in Virginia that erupted in deadly violence Saturday.
Jimenez, who formerly headed the security detail for Gov. Susana Martinez and now works for a private security company, told KOB-TV Sunday night he had not been aware of the attack in Charlottesville when he posted the statement.
But several Republicans were quick to express outrage. Pearce, a candidate for governor, said Monday that the chairman should resign.
Las Cruces City Councilor Ceil Levatino, a Republican, said the county party needed new leadership. The editorial board of the Las Cruces Sun-News said Jimenez should step down.
Some Republicans did not buy the explanation Jimenez had offered about the post.
“What the hell was he talking about if not Charlottesville?” Former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White wrote on Twitter after Las Cruces journalist Heath Haussamen first reported on the comments.
White accused Jimenez of “defending the brutal murder of an innocent American by a neoNazi.” “Resign now,” he wrote. Democrats, meanwhile, piled on. “While the New Mexico GOP was managing the fact that their official posted blatantly racist rhetoric, New Mexico Democrats were attending vigils, condemning violence and taking a stand against bigotry,” the Democratic Party of New Mexico said in a statement.
“This resignation is good news, but it by no means changes the fact that hate and racism exists in the Republican Party.”
Contact Andrew Oxford at 505-986-3093 or aoxford@ sfnewmexican.com. Follow him on Twitter @andrewboxford.