Islamic group demands response from state GOP
HAMILTON >> An Islamic group wants GOP challenger David Henderson to bow out of the township mayoral primary race over a series of Islamophobic Facebook posts he made over the years.
The Council on AmericanIslamic Relations (CAIRNJ) on Monday called on state Republican Committee chairman Doug Steinhardt to “repudiate” Henderson’s posts, which included jokes about the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Henderson posted pictures of severed pig heads with messages such as “Sharia Law Saturday. Ha! There is no Sharia Law in America.”
Another of a bodybuilder carrying two pigs in each hand declared, “Happy Ramadan.”
Consuming pork is strictly forbidden in the Islamic faith, so Henderson making light of such a sacred practice didn’t go over well in the Muslim community.
Imam Qareeb Bashir, president of the Islamic Council of Greater Trenton, condemned the gadfly’s online rhetoric.
Henderson also made racially offensive posts, including one claiming immigrants from Central American countries had “low iQs.”
James Sues, the executive director of CAIR-NJ, told The Trentonian in a phone interview that Henderson’s “bigoted impulses” appeared intentionally designed to offend Muslims.
“Anyone who thinks these images are funny and they think they’re not a bigot they should think again,” Sues said.
Henderson also cracked a joke about the torturous practice of waterboarding, something that was used on prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, where U.S. personnel committed some of the most horrendous human rights violations in American history.
That post included a picture of a prisoner, hands bound and clad in orange, with a towel over his face as a man wearing all-black poured a gallon bucket of water over his face.
In a statement released by the civil rights organization, Sues called the posts “crude and offensive, not only to Muslims, but to anyone of conscience and compassion. The bigoted views expressed by Mr. Henderson are below the dignity of a public official and should serve to disqualify him as a candidate for an office that claims to represent the interests of all citizens, regardless of their race or faith.”
Steinhart told The Trentonian, “The NJGOP is working to build a broad, diverse coalition of support to help steer the state in a better direction. We will never support racism, and Republicans in Hamilton have an opportunity to choose their candidate on June 4.”
Henderson is a Mercer County Republican strategist who also served campaign manager for freeholder candidate Michael Silvestri and township school board candidates Richard C. Crockett III, Sherry Morency and Cynthia Simon.
Crockett and Morency have a long history of posting or sharing inflammatory content on Facebook. Simon, a 2019 Hamilton Council candidate, is running in next month’s GOP primary election on a slate with Henderson.
Henderson didn’t have much to say when reached for comment Monday afternoon, saying he already addressed his posts last week and that CAIR-NJ was “rehashing” the issue.
“They’re entitled to their opinion,” the gadfly said of the organization. “I’m not bowing out of the race. I’ll wait to see what Steinhardt says. I care what he says, but I’m not going to bow out of the race [regardless].”
Henderson apologized last week for the “insensitive” posts, brought to light by township Democrat Pamela M. Thoresen, and promised to learn from them.
“At the end of the day, I’m a human being. I didn’t say I was a perfect human being, and I have my faults. I’ll admit them, and I’ll take responsibility for what I did and I will grow from understanding the hurtfulness of that statement,” he said. “The people deserve to see it and I’ll have to do my best to show my better side to those people. At the end of the day, I’m a quality person.”
That was more of a response than Thoresen got when she said she confronted the gadfly at a meeting.
She told The Trentonian that Henderson dismissed her with a “shrug and a so,” calling out the “Grade-A hypocrisy” in the Republican primary race.
Henderson weighed in when three Yaede loyalists also shared anti-Muslim memes and other offensive posts on their Facebook pages.
After The Trentonan published an article exposing their posts, CAIR-NJ called for the firing of township employees Robert and Colleen
DiPastina and Kenneth Enderle, elected members of the Hamilton Republican Committee.
All three of them kept their jobs, as Mayor Kelly Yaede claimed they were required to attend sensitivity training. It was brought out at a council meeting the training seminar was one they already had attended and didn’t include a curriculum tailored to address the issues raised by their posts.
Sues worried whether the posts represent a undercurrent of anti-Muslim sentiments in the township. He said he hoped the mayor would have taken a stronger stance denouncing her loyalists’ posts the last time around.
Yaede and her camp were quick to pounce on Henderson when his Islamophobic posts came to light saying it was further proof of his unfitness to lead the township.
“There is absolutely no acceptable justification for his posts,” the Republican mayor said in a statement last week. “This is the real David Henderson Hamiltonians know. I brought this to the forefront during the last school board election.”