RTC Calls On Member To Resign For ‘Outrageous’ Online Remarks

CHESHIRE, CT — The executive board of the Cheshire Republican Town Committee is calling on Gil Linder to resign from the committee in the wake of comments he made about State Rep. Liz Linehan, D-103, on social media.

Luther Turmelle of the New Haven Register reports Linder, who is also a member of the town Planning and Zoning Commission, posted in a community Facebook group last week that Linehan “has repeatedly wagged her victimhood of sexual harassment in our face.” Last December, Linehan shared her personal story with of being sexually assaulted and harassed in the workplace. Linehan told the Meriden Record-Journal that she was sexually assaulted by a radio personality while she was working as a producer and on-air personality for a morning radio show in the mid-1990s.

Linehan responded to Linder’s comments in a social media post of her own, challenging him to meet with her and “look me in the eye and say everything directly to me that he’s said online.”

“I am challenging him on behalf of every woman who’s ever felt disparaged, who hasn’t been believed, who has had to silently face the misogyny and oppression of men who abuse, either verbally, physically, or from behind a keyboard,” Linehan wrote in the post.

Turmelle reports Linehan and Linder met for more than two hours over the weekend.

The leaders of the Cheshire Republican Town Committee admonished Linder in a post on the Republicans of Cheshire Connecticut Facebook page earlier this week.

“The Cheshire Republican Party in no way agrees with any of the opinions written by Gil Linder,” the post reads. “We find his actions unacceptable, outrageous and out of touch with what our party represents. Personal attacks are never acceptable in the arena of ideas and to mock someone’s traumatic experience flies in the face of common decency.

“The executive board of the Cheshire Republican Town Committee has asked for Gil Linder’s resignation from the Cheshire Republican Town Committee.”

Read the full story at the New Haven Register here.