A Florida Republican has left his job after a photograph of him, allegedly in a Ku Klux Klan costume, made the rounds on-line.
Gadsden County Commissioner Jeffery Moore, a Republican appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in July, resigned from the five-person county board of commissioners on Friday, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
The photograph reportedly exhibits Moore at a Halloween get together sporting a Ku Klux Klan hood and gown, based on the newspaper.
Moore, the one white individual on the board with 4 Black commissioners, lives in a county the place 55% of the residents are Black, based on U.S. census knowledge. Gadsden County is on the Georgia border, simply west of Tallahassee.
Tracey Stallworth, a pastor in Gadsden County, informed the Tallahassee Democrat there’d be a information convention on Wednesday calling on Moore and the governor to weigh in on the photograph.
“It’s a really unhappy day in our historical past and a tragic time for this county ... the blackest county within the state, this isn't OK,” Stallworth mentioned.
Moore, who didn’t elaborate on why he was resigning in his letter, additionally reportedly stopped his marketing campaign to proceed as county commissioner in November.
“Thanks for the chance to have served within the place, nonetheless for private causes I'm not capable of proceed,” Moore wrote to DeSantis’ workplace.
The Tallahassee Democrat reported that Moore wrote he was “in the course of hurricane preparations” and would contact them on Tuesday or Wednesday. Hurricane Ian is predicted to strike Florida this week.
HuffPost has reached out to each Moore and DeSantis for remark.
The racist costume controversy comes over three years after one other DeSantis-appointed official, Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel, resigned when a photograph emerged of him in blackface and dressed as a “Hurricane Katrina sufferer.”
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