U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kelly’s spokesman has the former astronaut in hot water over an obscene tweet about police in the days before the campaign brought him on board.
Deputy campaign spokesman T.J. L’Heureux tweeted the inflammatory message six days before Kelly’s campaign hired him. First reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the University of Chicago graduate reacted to a video of Chicago Police officers taking umbrellas from protesters on Wacker Drive that had been shielding others who had been throwing frozen water bottles and other projectiles at law enforcement.
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“@Chicago_Police you worthless f***ing pigs,” he tweeted in reposting a video that’s since been deleted.
He announced less than a week later that he’d been hired by the Kelly Campaign.
L’Heureux offered up an apology to the Arizona Republic late Thursday for his remarks.
“I deeply regret my comment and apologize for what I wrote – I was wrong. My comment does not reflect who I am or what I believe, and most importantly, it is not representative of what this campaign stands for. The language I used and the sentiment I conveyed do not belong in our political process, which is why I have deleted the tweet.”
L’Heureux has since made his Twitter profile private.
Kelly, who is campaigning as a moderate Democrat regarding policing, has not said as of Friday whether L’Heureux would remain on staff and wasn’t responding to emails. His campaign did issue an apology to Fox News.
His opponent, Republican incumbent Sen. Martha McSally, wasted no time in pointing out the matter.
“This is outrageous and unacceptable,” she said Thursday. “Mark Kelly’s weak actions on this prove he has no respect for our law enforcement.”
In a Mesa appearance, Donald Trump Jr. criticized Kelly on his staffer’s remarks about the police.
“You’re not a moderate if you surround yourself with people that would say what they said about the police,” he said.
