Lowell Mayor Calls For School Committee Member To Resign Over Anti-Semitic Slur
LOWELL (CBS) - Lowell Mayor John Leahy is asking Robert Hoey, a local school committee member, to resign after using an anti-Semitic slur on local television.
Lowell is a city of 111,000 people. It's also a diverse city, where 60 different languages are spoken in the schools. But at a school committee meeting, Hoey was talking about a former financial planner for the committee, who is apparently Jewish, when he used a slur.
"I hate to say it, but that's what people used to say it behind his back," Hoey said in the video.
On Thursday, Mayor Leahy said he was outraged by the remarks.
"I couldn't believe that came out of his mouth. We don't say those things as elected officials in Lowell," Mayor Leahy said.
Robert Trestan, the director of the Anti Defamation League of Boston, was stunned at hearing the slur.
"It's really, really painful to hear someone in a position of authority, of responsibility, to refer to a group of people or any human being in that way. It's demeaning," said Trestan.
WBZ-TV attempted to contact Hoey, but he was not available for comment.