Racist, homophobic letter sent to Biden backers in Erie area

Anne Carney and her husband have been putting political signs in the front yard of their West Seventh Street home in Erie for 25 years.

Never have they received anything like the letter that landed in their mailbox Wednesday. The two-page letter — the envelope hand-addressed to “resident” — is anonymous and contains no return address. But whoever sent it knows the Carneys have “Biden/Harris” yard signs in their front yard, in support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris.

“The sign in your yard is an embarrassment to many of your neighbors even if it doesn’t embarrass you,” the first page of the typed letter ends. “You bring your neighborhood down a notch and advertise your political and moral ignorance. You advertise that you are either low wattage, hard hearted, spiritually lacking or totally unawares. SAD”

Erie County Democratic Party chairman Jim Wertz said at noon Thursday that he was aware of at least five other Democrats who had received the letter in the Erie and Fairview areas.

“In my political experience, this is the first modern, real influx of hate mail to people because of their political affiliation,” Wertz said.

The letter is not personally addressed to anyone, but begins with the words “Joe Biden represents the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party represents baby butchers, communists, admitted BLM ’queers’ and domestic terrorists.”

It refers to the Democratic Party as “anti-American” and “Marxist Socialism,” which is “Cannibalism, which is admittedly Satanic.” It says that “social justice” is an “excuse for domestic terrorism.”

In a long paragraph about abortion, the letter makes wildly false claims that “baby parts” are being sold to laboratories which “clone human cells and graft them onto animals” and that, “The latest thing is ... human cannibalism restaurants.”

It makes racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic remarks about former President Barack Obama and billionaire George Soros, an investor and philanthropist who has supported Democrats and Democratic causes.

The second page of the letter is entirely devoted to a racist, anti-Black and anti-Black Lives Matter screed that demands Blacks apologize to whites.

Carney on Thursday went to the Erie County District Attorney’s Office to file a complaint. She was instructed to file the complaint with her district judge instead, which she said she intends to do.

“I read the whole thing and in places you almost wanted to laugh because it was so ridiculous,” Carney said. “I know everyone's entitled to their own political beliefs, but this is really kind of like the crack-potty.

“And then, of course, the next page was the Black Lives Matter letter, which was really atrocious,” she said.

Carney believes it amounts to voter intimidation, but says it won’t stop her from voting for Biden. What disturbed her most was the fact someone likely canvassed her neighborhood to see who had a Biden sign in their front yard.

Carney said her husband, Brian, got the Biden signs three or four weeks ago and until Wednesday they had not encountered any problems, except for a neighbor on the block expressing his disapproval of the candidate.

“I feel more unnerved by the fact that somebody took the time to target us,” she said. “They don't know us, so they don't know our name, but they know where we live, our address, and they took the time and went through neighborhoods and wrote an address down and then sent this thing. I mean, you know, it's creepy.”

The letter makes no reference to Biden’s opponent, President Donald J. Trump, or the Republican Party.

Another recipient of the letter, 41-year-old Daniel Thomas, said he expects to get random mail during election season. This was different, though.

“This is sad,” he thought. “This is somebody who is really misinformed. It reads like a checklist of Republican conspiracy theories with a healthy dash of racism thrown in. It checked all the boxes. Then I thought, this feels like voter intimidation. It seems like it’s somebody who is afraid to sign their own name and engage in actual debate or discussion because they don’t have any real facts, is trying to scare me from voting for Joe Biden.”

Thomas, a resident of West Sixth Street, said he is gay and felt “personally insulted” by the homophobic slurs and rhetoric. But because the letter was sent to others, he does not believe its author was specifically targeting him.

And he does not believe the letter is representative of all Republicans. The division in this country isn’t the fault of one party only, Thomas said.

“I’m guilty of this as anyone else: I think it’s hard for one side to listen to another,” he said. “That being said, I get something like this that’s racist, sexist, homophobic, religiously intolerant from someone who is clearly on the opposite side of the aisle from me and it makes it harder for me to take people over there seriously. I really don’t believe the author realizes how much he is hurting his cause.”

Dawna Baney, 43, a West Seventh Street resident, also received a copy of the letter. She was “appalled” and “disgusted.” Many of its religious references, she said, are the antithesis of Christianity and God.

“It’s a very sad state of our world for people to speak this way when only a couple of years ago we thought this was changing,” said Baney, a business owner and the mother of three teenage boys. “Unfortunately, we have a leader who condones this kind of behavior.”

Wertz said he believes the letter is an "illustration of the way that this administration has emboldened its supporters to behave badly and to promote a hateful ideology and to use that hateful ideology as a form of voter intimidation and voter suppression.“

Verel Salmon, chairman of the Erie County Republican Party, was not aware of the letter until the Times-News brought it to his attention. Not only does the local party have nothing to do with it, Salmon said, he also condemned its hateful rhetoric

"Such letters absolutely do not come from the Erie County Republican party or its Trump Victory campaign,“ Salmon said in a statement. ”Nor will such letters influence the people who receive them ... for sure.

“We've seen nastiness from some individuals in our area which is far from the norm of our citizens,” he continued. “We do not want to ever give up our freedom of speech but such letters do not help our candidates. Erie County voters, Black, brown, yellow or white, will vote for candidates who they believe have demonstrated accomplishment. That’s Erie; that's us. Most Democrats, Republicans and Independents want the best for our community, our families, our faith and our great nation.”

Contact Matthew Rink at mrink@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ETNrink.