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It's now been ONE WEEK AND ONE DAY since Pauline Basso and Joel Urice brought shame to our city with their bigoted emails and no word from the OTHER ELECTED OFFICIAL who:

1.: Received the racist bigoted emails from Joel Urice and Pauline Basso from APRIL TO AUGUST and,

2.: Apparently didn't tell Majority Leader Basso to stop sending these emails to her and other people.

Well, since a week is MORE THAN ENOUGH time for this person to show some sense of leadership, dignity, and any since of remorse for not doing the right thing, I was about to announce the mystery person BUT the Fairfield Weekly (a.k.a the paper you now can't find in Danbury because their boxes somehow "disappeared") beat me to the punch.

Pauline Basso is screening her calls.

Every time we tried to reach the Majority Leader of Danbury's Common Council, the line was either busy or we got an answering machine.

A day ago, the Danbury chapter of the NAACP released emails Basso had forwarded to friends—including Mary Teicholz, a fellow Republican councilwoman, and Joel Urice, an appointee to the city's Planning Commission running for Zoning Commission on the GOP slate—that included:

The rest of the article is so revealing AND mirrors what I've stated when it come to the lack of leadership when it comes to Mayor Boughton and the Republican Party.

Local NAACP president Rev. Ivan Pitts stood before City Hall and called the emails "offensive, hateful, racist and dehumanizing."

Both he and Rev. Boise Kimber, president of the Baptist State Convention, demanded the Common Council denounce the emails and Basso apologize and resign. Emad Ismail, president of the Islamic Center of Greater Danbury, and Helena Abrantes, the Democratic mayoral candidate, also said Basso should go. Kimber added, "the mayor of Danbury certainly should stand up and speak out for such words and language of this nature."

A week later, the response from Danbury's Republican leadership has been underwhelming.

Emails to Republican Town Committee President Wayne Baker, Common Council President Joseph Cavo and Joel Urice went unreturned (though Urice told the Danbury News-Times, "I just thought that it was funny").

After repeated phone calls, Mayor Mark Boughton emailed us to say, "Mrs. Basso was wrong by forwarding these e-mails. They are unacceptable and inappropriate." He says he is arranging a meeting between Basso, Urice, and Pitts, believing in "more communication and less confrontation."

That seems to be what those who first got hold of the emails wanted two months ago.

"Someone came up to me said they had received some emails from a public official that made them very uncomfortable," says Rev. Gayle Keeney-Mulligan, of St. John's Episcopal Church in New Milford, who was apparently the first outside Basso's circle to uncover them. After a second person forwarded them to her, she thought "something should be done but I wasn't sure what and by whom." As an outsider from Danbury who was not among the religions and ethnicities the emails targeted (as encompassing as they were), Keeney-Mulligan began anonymously fishing them out to various statewide media and activist groups, including the NAACP.

Pitts says he met with "the power players and tried to resolve this quietly, behind the scenes." He says he got a "half-hearted apology and way to pacify the situation until after the election." Though Basso never met him face-to-face, he has a letter from her, hand-delivered to his church and dated Oct. 1, stating "I have clearly made a poor decision for which I am very sorry." She has not made a public apology.

When statewide news networks WTNH and WVIT were in town, neither the mayor nor the councilwoman returned their calls.

This reporter finally went to Pauline Basso's home, where there was a uncarved pumpkin on the porch, a scarecrow in the bushes, a Re-elect Basso sign on the yard (she's running to retain her representative at large post) and not the slightest indication she was the center of a racial controversy.

"I really have nothing to say," she told us. "I made my apology and that's it."

Thanks to the true nature of Basso and Urice being exposed for all to see, the absolute disappointment in Councilwoman Teicholtz, and the ABSOLUTE LACK OF LEADERSHIP from Mayor Boughton, Danbury is now referred to as the craziest city in Connecticut.

The title of the Weekly's article tells the story when it comes to what people think about Danbury: "The Hate White North"

Thanks xenophobes...Thanks Elise Marciano...Thanks Pauline Basso...Thanks Joel Urice...Thanks Mary Teicholtz...Thanks Mayor Boughton.

Vote for change
Eileen, Helena, Lori, and Brian