Maine GOP mayor resigns after calling elderly black people ‘antique farm equipment’

Shane Bouchard, the Republican mayor of the second largest city in Maine, stepped down after leaked emails and texts showed he joked that elderly black people were “antique farm equipment,” The Sun Journal reports. 

In private messages that were released by a woman, Heather Everly Berube, who alleged to have had an affair with Bouchard during his campaign, the Maine Republican reportedly told a racist joke. 

{mosads}“All my jokes are quite racist lol,” he reportedly said in a text, later adding: “What do you call 2 old black people sitting on your front lawn.”

“Antique farm equipment,” he said. 

“Yikes,” Berube wrote back.

Berube released that text exchange, as well as more than 150 additional texts, she shared with Bouchard on Wednesday, according to the paper.

The exchange involving the racist joke also reportedly came roughly two months before internal emails from Bouchard’s opponent in the past election, Ben Chin, were made public.

In one of those emails, Chin said he had encountered “a bunch of racists” while campaigning. Chin’s comments were reportedly considered divisive by some and partly cost him the race, according to the local paper.

Berube, who had previously volunteered for Chin’s campaign, also said that she was a source of the internal emails obtained by the Maine GOP to attack Bouchard’s Democratic opponent.

Bouchard resigned from his position as mayor of Lewiston on Friday morning. His resignation is reportedly effective immediately.